From a series written for ABC Radio National’s Blueprint for Living. The Hoover Dam was first broadcast on 12th August 2023. You can listen to the audio here.

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Water is life, which is why we relish the great rivers of the world. Damming them has long been seen as the best way to provide water to our populations and the Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border is perhaps the archetype of what we think a dam should look like. The tallest in the world when finished, it’s the Eiffel Tower of dams.

The story of the Hoover Dam is as much a story of the United States, just as the Snowy Hydro Scheme reflects a particular moment in Australia’s development. The Colorado River flows from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California and while there are other dams on it, the Hoover, with its proximity to the desert city of Las Vegas, is its most famous. Like the others, its purpose is threefold: to supply freshwater for irrigation and domestic use; to control floods; and to generate electricity. Electricity was what interested the Edison Electric Company in their proposal for a smaller dam in the Boulder Canyon but by the 1920s it’d evolved into a much larger project. Work started in 1930, with the new settlement of Boulder City built to house a workforce that preferenced war veterans and African-Americans, although the latter were later found to be underrepresented. The dam structure, built in an elegant curve, was a hybrid arch and gravity type design, meaning it used both its own weight and the sideways force onto the canyon walls to hold back the force of the water. Its thick base rose to a thinner top, along which Route 93 ran, until redirected over a new bridge in 2010. Four water intake towers rise directly behind the dam wall like the turrets of a fortress. When it opened in 1935, it was seen as a symbol of the modern age, having employed over 21,000 people at a time when the Great Depression robbed many of a living. The power it generated made Las Vegas sparkle more confidently and the agricultural areas of southern California flourished. It’s no wonder that the Dam became a major tourist attraction, its scale outshining any filmset in the Hollywood it helped hydrate.

We’ve always needed spectacular constructions to marvel at, whether lofty temples, Egyptian pyramids or mighty aqueducts. The Industrial Age brought the wonder of railway infrastructure and the great mills and factories, and, later, the invention of steel made the new skyscrapers possible, altering our cityscapes forever. Imposing projects reinforce the power of humankind.  

And sometimes, perhaps, its folly. The damming of rivers always has a negative impact, too, with the ruining of ecosystems and the obliteration of communities. This came to global attention with the building of the enormous Three Gorges Dam in China, completed in 2006, with its destructive ecological impact and displacement of millions of people. While it generates more than ten times more power than the Hoover ever did, the uptake in wind and solar generation has reduced the need for such huge hydro-electric schemes. The ability to control floodwater is also being challenged by climate change with river levels altering and rain less predictable. Projects for new dams have slowed and it’s possible that some existing ones might even be decommissioned.

If water occupies the core of life then stopping its flow seems symbolic of how we often improve and impede our futures in one go. And yet dams remain remarkable, if only in the way they glory in the power and unpredictability of water itself. Symbols of life, indeed.