Lake Mead - Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam was constructed in the early 1930s with a vision of bringing power, water, commerce, and development to what was then mostly arid wilderness of the interior Southwest. It crosses the Colorado River at a narrow point west of the Grand Canyon. The reservoir that formed behind the dam is Lake Mead.

 Statistics of the dam:

Height: 726.4 feet (221 m)

Width: 1,244 feet (379 m)

Thickness at base: 660 feet (203 m)

Thickness at top: 45 feet (13 m) thick at the top

Nearly 4.4 million yards of concrete were used in dam construction. U.S. Highway 93 crosses the dam, although high bridges are currently under construction to divert traffic from the top of the dam (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, 1941; U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, 2008).