Hoover Dam - The tallest dam on the Colorado

About a month ago, your two favorite Steem mouths (@lamouthe and @lemouth of course ;) ) left for 2 weeks of vacation aiming to camp and hike in the US canyons, as announced in our trip introduction post.

For a change, @lemouth is writing today :)

As a frequent traveler (for those who do not interact with me on the SteemSTEM discord server, I am traveling 30% of my time as a consequence of my job), I am once in a while upgraded to business class. This time, the flight was overbooked, and my wife and myself got upgraded as a pair. That made the trip much smoother :)

_{[Source: Galaxy S7; location: in-flight]}

We landed in Las Vegas, but with the sole intention to handle the necessary shopping to complete our camping material. Indeed, there are things one is not allowed to transport by air, and we needed to rent a car. This was quickly done, and after a good night of rest (and a great American burger ;) ) in Las Vegas suburbs, we were ready to leave and start our trip!

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Hoover Dam

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While the first milestone of our trip was the Grand Canyon, we made a few stops on the way. The first of these was the Hoover Dam, the tallest dam every built on the Colorado River.

It consists in an arch-gravity dam made in concrete. As can be guessed from the name, it is both a gravity dam and an arched dam… I admit this is a very useful definition! ;)

Let me further dig into precision, but not too much as the above link could help any interested reader.

In practice, the weight of the dam is used to resist to the thrust of water (here is the gravity part), together with its arched form that deflects the thrust of water to the surrounding canyon walls (here is the arched part). This type of dam hence combines two technologies, the one of gravity dams and the one of arched dams, to resist to water pressure.

Hoover Dam is located on the Nevada-Arizona border and has been built 80-85 years ago. The reason behind its construction is manyfold. First, there was a wish to control the Colorado River because of its frequent floods.

Second, as a water reservoir forms subsequently to the building of a dam, this provides water both for irrigation and to cities (drinking water). Lake Mead is the name of this reservoir, which is the largest in the US. It consists additionally in a recreation area, with a marina so that tourists can boat, fish, swim and so on.

_{[Source: Canon EOS Rebel T2i; location: Hoover Dam (Nevada, USA) ]}

Finally, Hoover Dam produces electricity for three American states: Nevada, Arizona and California).

We noticed that the dam is actually a major touristic attraction. Visitors were everywhere. It was a real nightmare to find a parking spot. We however didn’t stay long, as both of us had already seen many dams in the past. We were more there to enjoy the view and admire the architectural greatness of the dam.

On the way back, we walked down Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge (see the picture below), that allows for bypassing Hoover Dam when traveling from Nevada to Arizona. This bridge is the first concrete-steel composite arch bridge ever built in the US, and the highest in the world for this category.

_{[Source: Canon EOS Rebel T2i; location: Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge (Nevada, USA) ]}

And before closing this post, a nice picture of the surrounding colors.

_{[Source: Canon EOS Rebel T2i; location: Canyons around Hoover Dam (Nevada, USA) ]}

In the next episode, you will be able to enjoy driving the mythic Road 66 with @lemouth and @lamouthe, on our way to the Grand Canyon!