We drove out from Las Vegas to do the tour of Hoover Dam - the guide takes you down inside the dam wall and into the power generation area. It's a very impressive place and they have the thousands of tourists under control - and even took our photo and scanned us and our backpacks because they're concerned about security since 9/11.
We also saw a film about the damming of the Colorado from top to bottom which, we were told, was necessary to control the river which was prone to flood at inopportune times and to generate electricity. We weren't told about how many people died building the dam (hundreds), about the fact that fish can no longer swim upstream to breed, altered the vegetation on the river's edges, slowed the water so that sediment now settles where it never used to and the deeper water attracts different birds. The guide did tell us about the water 'wars' by the various states, the cheap cost of the water because of the clauses in the original agreement and the fact that power generation provides the only income for the dam authorities, and that the water level in the dam has been dropping for years because of climate change.
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| A sculpture commemorating the workers on the dam. |
Boulder City was the home of the thousands dam workers. We liked the art deco style of the buildings and the genteel style of the town. It's a lovely town and we would have liked more time to explore it.
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| Blues Brothers, Elvis and Marilyn, for sale in Boulder City. |
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| We've seen a few restaurants with guns as door handles! This one was in Boulder City. |
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