AMERICA’S GREAT DAMS: Hoover and the Constructions of the 1930s and 1940s

The large dams built across the United States in the period from 1931 to 1944 were monumental undertakings, and in some ways rival the great pyramids of Egypt in size, construction and impact. These dams, constructed by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Army Corps of Engineers, changed American life. In this presentation, Richard Guy Wilson, Commonwealth Professor Architectural History, University of Virginia, will focus on the design and building of Hoover (originally Boulder) Dam, located on the Colorado River between Arizona and Nevada, and also examine its impact upon the other great dams.