Intro
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Route
66 The Hoover Dam
Las Vegas
Route 66
The Travelodge in which we stayed in Williams, Arizona, was nothing special
(except well situated about an hour south of the Grand Canyon), but it was
located right along historic Route
66, for which Williams is famous.
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Williams has the distinction of being the last town
located on Route 66 to be bypassed by Interstate 40 (in 1984). Some
segments near Williams are on the National Register of Historic Places.
The 2,500-mile highway became the first completely paved cross-country
highway in the U.S. in 1938.
Route 66 led the country west: first during the Depression as people migrated
to California to escape the dust storms of the Great Plains, and then at the end
of World War II as factories in Detroit stopped making trucks and tanks in favor
of automobiles. Touring America via Route 66 then became a national
pasttime. |
| Today, nearly every business in town has capitalized on
Williams' ties to
Route 66. Rod's Steak House, in business at its Route 66 location for 56
years, is Williams' oldest continuous restaurant on the highway. Old Smoky's has
served up breakfast and lunch to travelers since the '50s. You'll also find
Cruiser's Cafe 66, the Route 66 Roadstore, the Route 66 Magazine Gift Shop and
Publishing House, Twisters Back to the '50s Soda Fountain, Old 66 Coffee House,
and The Route 66 Inn. We ate breakfast across the street from the Travelodge in
the Route 66 Diner [right]. |
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The Hoover Dam
| On the way to our plane ride home from Las Vegas, we stopped
at the Hoover
Dam. Although we didn't stay long enough to take the extensive
underground tour, we did look around the impressive structure, read a few
signs, and visit the attractive new gift shop/cafeteria building.
Hoover Dam [right] is a testimony to a country's ability to construct
monolithic projects in the midst of adverse conditions. Built during the
Depression, thousands of men and their families came to Black Canyon to
tame the Colorado River. It took less than 5 years, in a harsh and barren
land, to build the largest dam of its time. Now, more than 60 years later,
Hoover Dam still stands as a world-renowned structure. The dam is a
National Historic Landmark and has been rated by the American Society of
Civil Engineers as one of America's Seven Modern Civil Engineering
Wonders. |
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The dam is a concrete arch-gravity type, in which the
water load is carried by both gravity action and horizontal arch action.
It is 726.4 feet from foundation rock to the roadway on the crest of the
dam [left]. The towers and ornaments on the parapet [see above] rise 40
feet above the crest. It weighs more than 6,600,000 tons. The maximum
water pressure at the base of the dam is 45,000 pounds per square foot.
There are 4,360,000 cubic yards of concrete in the dam,
power plant, and appurtenant works. This much concrete would build a
monument 100 feet square and 2-1/2 miles high; would rise higher than the
Empire State Building (which is 1,250 feet) if placed on an ordinary city
block; or would pave a standard highway 16 feet wide, from San Francisco
to New York City.
To build the dam, more than 5,500,000 cubic yards of
material were excavated, and another 1,000,000 cubic yards of earth and
rock fill were placed.
The principal materials, all of which were purchased by
the government, were reinforcement steel, 45,000,000 pounds; gates
and valves, 21,670,000 pounds; plate steel and outlet pipes, 88,000,000
pounds; pipe and fittings, 6,700,000 pounds or 840 miles; structural
steel, 18,000,000 pounds; miscellaneous metal work 5,300,000 pounds. |
| An average of 3,500 men were employed during the dam's
construction, and a maximum of 5,218 were employed in June 1934. The
average monthly payroll was $500,000. There were 96 industrial fatalities during the construction of the
dam. (Industrial fatalities includes deaths from drowning, blasting,
falling rocks or slides, falls from the canyon walls, struck by heavy
equipment, truck accidents, etc. They do not include deaths from the
heat, pneumonia, heart trouble, etc.) No bodies are buried within the
dam itself. The plaques at right state, They died to make the
desert bloom. The United States of
America will continue to remember that many who toiled here found their
final rest while engaged in the building of this dam. [The country] will
continue to remember the services of all who labored to clothe with
substance the plans of those who first visioned the building of this
dam. |
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Lake Mead, created by the dam, has a high-water line at 1,229 feet above sea
level. At this elevation, the water would be more than 7 1/2 feet over the top
of the raised spillway gates, which are at elevation 1221.4 feet. At this
elevation the reservoir covers about 157,9000 acres or 247 square miles. It
extends approximately 110 miles upstream toward the Grand Canyon and 35 miles up
the Virgin River. The width varies from several hundred feet in the canyons to a
maximum of 8 miles. At elevation 1221.4 feet the lake can contain 28,537,000
acre feet of water. (An acre-foot is the amount of water required to cover 1
acre to a depth of 1 foot, or approximately 326,000 gallons.) The reservoir can
store the entire average flow of the river for two years. That is enough water
to cover the State of Pennsylvania to a depth of 1 foot. |
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Las Vegas
After our brief dam tour, we continued the last leg of our
journey to Las Vegas. Our first stop was the Paris
hotel, where we ate a
wonderful dinner at the buffet (which offers food by the region: Burgundy,
Alsace, Brittany, etc.) Next we visited New
York, where Jan and Cameron
rode the roof-top roller coaster. We ended our afternoon at The
Venetian,
strolling the "canals" and window shopping. A whirlwind world tour to
finish our western weekend!
 
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