At 726 feet, the Hoover Dam is the highest concrete arch dam in America and one of the seven engineering wonders of the United States. It created Lake Mead, the country's largest man-made reservoir, by blocking the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona. The world's largest electric power generating station and concrete structure when it opened in 1936, Hoover Dam made the development of Las Vegas possible. Through its history, it has also accumulated a few myths.
Who's Buried in Hoover Dam
According to retired state archivist Guy Rocha, the biggest myth is that workers on several occasions during the dam's construction slipped and were buried in its 5 million barrels of concrete. Victims were left entombed, says the myth, because supervisors were unable to stop the pouring before the workers were completely buried. The myth may have been inspired by the truth that the human cost of the 6.6 million-ton dam was high. Of more than 21,000 workers, 96 officially died (although some accounts put this number as high as 114). Rocha debunked the burial myth with the fact that concrete was poured in small 1,000 cubic yard sections. All a worker had to do was stand up to get out. There is no record of anyone falling in. Any human body left in the concrete would have created an unstable foundation and risked the entire project.
U-Boat Target?
A new myth came from a story in the newsletter of the USS Shaw in 1996. It claimed the last mission of the German U-Boat U-133 was a daring raid to blow up the Hoover Dam during the Second World War. The U-boat was said to have traveled up the Baja Peninsula to the Colorado River, then up the river to Laughlin, Nevada. It was stopped by sandbars, and the captain, named Peter Pfau in the story, with 54 sailors, scuttled it. The truth is that a VIIC type U-boat could never have traveled from Europe around the Cape of Good Hope to California; it didn't have the fuel range. This type of U-boat had to use some of its water tank storage for extra fuel to make it to the east coast of North America from Europe. There is also no record of a U-board commander named Pfau.
The Myth of Its Name
The dam was initially called the Boulder Canyon Project. It followed the standard procedure of being named after Hoover, the sitting president in 1930. Many people, though, including critics of its high cost in both money and lives, called it the Boulder Dam. The Boulder Dam Hotel was built in Boulder City in 1933. The mythical name persisted even after Congress officially named it after Hoover in 1947. The myth has caused tourists to arrive in Las Vegas and ask to see the Boulder Dam.
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