Doheny Memorial Library, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0189 Public Domain. Release under the CC BY Attribution license--http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/--Credit both “University of Southern California. Libraries” and “California Historical Society” as the source. Digitally reproduced by the USC Digital Library; From the California Historical Society Collection at the University of Southern California Send requests to address or e-mail given USC Libraries Special Collections specol@usc.edu
Description
Photograph of Hoover Dam (also known as Boulder Dam) under construction, February 1, 1935. The canyon (or river) is drained of any water. Temporary construction buildings or facilities are occupying the area just before the dam. A bridge(?) spans from one side of the canyon (left of the dam) to the right side of the canyon. Other temporary construction facilities are built on the side of the canyon. A conveyor belt runs from the base of the dam to the top (center). Skeletal framework of the buildings below the dam is visible in the foreground. "Hoover Dam is known by the locals and old-timers as Boulder Dam. This name came from Boulder Canyon and yet the dam is built in Black Canyon. How did all this name confusion happen? By 1920, Government hydrographers and geologists had been looking for 18 years for the best place to put a dam on the Colorado River. Based on preliminary reconnaissance by government engineers, Boulder Canyon was chosen in April 1920. Thus when California Congressman Phil Swing and California Senator Hiram Johnson introduced their legislation for construction of a dam in 1923, they called it the Boulder Canyon Project Act. That site eventually proved less favorable than Black Canyon, but the name Boulder Canyon stuck. The press and the public had begun referring to the project as the Boulder Canyon Dam and later Boulder Dam and the name became so associated with the project that it was hard to change." -- unknown author (part 1 of 2). "On September 17, 1930, Interior Secretary Ray Wilbur, after driving a spike into the beginning of the new railroad from Las Vegas to the dam, gave a short speech at the end of which he announced that he had the honor of naming this great project Hoover Dam. Immediately the anti-Hoover press was up in arms about changing the name of the dam by executive fiat. Others questioned the propriety of naming the project after an incumbent president. The name became a political football for the next seventeen years. On May 8, 1933, new Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes in one of his first administrative acts declared that the dam would be called Boulder Dam, a 'fine, rugged, individual name'. During the dedication of the dam on September 30, 1935, Ickes used the name Boulder Dam five times in his speech. President Franklin Roosevelt finished his address by congratulating the men who created 'Boulder Dam'. But, finally, the issue was put to rest on April 30, 1947, when a joint resolution of Congress permanently decreed the name of the dam to be Hoover Dam. In his quintessential book, Hoover Dam, An American Adventure, Joseph Stevens reports the reaction of at least one member of the public who wrote a letter to the Las Vegas Review-Journal and suggested changing the name to 'Hoogivza Dam.'" -- unknown author (part 2 of 2).
Type
image
Format
2 photographs : photonegative, photoprint, b&w 21 x 26 cm. negatives (photographic) photographic prints photographs
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