Hoover Dam 75th Anniversary History Symposium : proceedings of the Hoover Dam 75th Anniversary History Symposium, October 21-22, 2010, Las Vegas, NV

420 Pages·2010·23.37 MB·English

by  Richard L. Wiltshire

H D 75TH
OOVER AM
A H
NNIVERSARY ISTORY
S
YMPOSIUM
PROCEEDINGS OF THE HOOVER DAM 75TH ANNIVERSARY
HISTORY SYMPOSIUM

October 21–22, 2010
Las Vegas, Nevada

SPONSORED BY
The History and Heritage Committee
of the American Society of Civil Engineers

EDITED BY
Richard L. Wiltshire, P.E., F.ASCE
David R. Gilbert, P.E., F.ASCE
Jerry R. Rogers, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, Dist. M.ASCE

1801 ALEXANDER BELL DRIVE
RESTON, VIRGINIA 20191–4400
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hoover Dam 75th Anniversary History Symposium (2010 : Las Vegas, Nev.)
Hoover Dam 75th Anniversary History Symposium : proceedings of the Hoover Dam
75th Anniversary History Symposium, October 21-22, 2010, Las Vegas, Nevada /
sponsored by the History and Heritage Committee of the American Society of Civil
Engineers ; edited by Richard L. Wiltshire, David R. Gilbert, Jerry R. Rogers.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7844-1141-4
1. Hoover Dam (Ariz. and Nev.) -- Congresses. I. Wiltshire, Richard L. II. Gilbert, David
R. III. Rogers, Jerry R. IV. American Society of Civil Engineers. Committee on History and
Heritage of American Civil Engineering. V. Title. VI. Title: Hoover Dam Seventy-five
Anniversary History Symposium.

TC557.5.H6H684 2010
627'.820979313--dc22 2010035841

American Society of Civil Engineers
1801 Alexander Bell Drive
Reston, Virginia, 20191-4400

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ISBN 978-0-7844-1141-4
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Preface
The dedication of Hoover Dam 75 years ago on September 30, 1935, culminated
what many regard as the world’s greatest dam design and construction project of the
20th Century. Hoover Dam has remained highly regarded within the national and
international civil engineering profession, which lead ASCE to designate Hoover Dam
as its Monument of the Millennium dam in 2000 after a vote by ASCE’s members.
Also, Hoover Dam has been designated an ASCE National Historic Civil Engineering
Landmark in 1984, a National Historic Landmark in 1985, and was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places in 1981. Hoover Dam is still the highest concrete
dam in the Western Hemisphere, was the world’s largest hydropower installation from
1939 to 1949, and annually produces over 4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity,
which still ranks it as one of the largest hydropower installations in the USA.

The sixteen papers included in these proceedings are a wide-ranging collection that
gives the reader an excellent understanding of the outstanding engineers and the
magnificent engineering and architecture that created Hoover Dam. There is probably
no other dam in the world that has received as much public interest and press coverage
as Hoover Dam. The hardships overcome by the engineers and the construction
workers at the Black Canyon site are hard to imagine today, but President Roosevelt’s
dedication speech on September 30, 1935, gives a good picture:

“Ten years ago the place where we are gathered was an unpeopled, forbidding
desert. In the bottom of a gloomy canyon, whose precipitous wall rose to a height
of more than 1,000 feet, flowed a turbulent, dangerous river. The mountains on
either side were difficult of access, with neither road nor trail, and their rocks
were protected by neither trees nor grass from the blazing heat of the sun.”

Since being established in 1964, ASCE’s History and Heritage Committee has
sponsored and organized a number of symposiums intended to enhance and preserve
the knowledge and appreciation of our civil engineering history and heritage. While
many publications and books have been written about Hoover Dam, we hope this
collection of symposium papers focused on the engineering associated with the design
and construction of Hoover Dam, its performance over the last 75 years, and the
lessons learned will be of historic value to civil engineers in the USA and
internationally.

The Steering Committee for the Hoover Dam 75th Anniversary History Symposium
included Richard L. Wiltshire (Symposium Chair), David R. Gilbert, and Dr. Jerry R.
Rogers. The Steering Committee members reviewed and provided the authors with
comments on the papers included in these proceedings.

Richard L. Wiltshire, David R. Gilbert, and Dr. Jerry R. Rogers
iii
ivxlcdm
Acknowledgements
The Steering Committee for the Hoover Dam 75th Anniversary History Symposium
would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the authors of the symposium
papers in our proceedings publication. The authors have spent many hours in
preparing and revising their papers, most of which will be presented at ASCE’s 140th
Annual Civil Engineering Conference during its Hoover Dam 75th Anniversary
History Symposium on October 21-22, 2010. These papers have been reviewed by the
members of the Steering Committee who put in their valuable time and helped make
these papers even better – thank you. The Steering Committee would also like to
acknowledge the assistance of ASCE’s Carol Reese, the History and Heritage
Committee’s Liaison, and Donna Dickert of ASCE’s Book Production Department.

iv
Contents
Keynote Paper
Politics and Dam Safety: The St. Francis Dam Disaster and the Boulder
Canyon Project Act ................................................................................................................. 1
Donald C. Jackson
Politics, Economics, Technology, and History
Building Blocks of Hoover Dam: Technology, Politics, Economics ................................... 25
Brit Allan Storey
The New Town of Boulder City: City Planning and Infrastructure Engineering
for Hoover Dam Workers ..................................................................................................... 40
Jerry R. Rogers
Reclamation, the Army, and Hoover Dam during World War II ..................................... 48
Jim Bailey
Concrete Technology
Advances in Mass Concrete Technology—The Hoover Dam Studies ............................... 58
Timothy P. Dolen
Long-Term Properties of Hoover Dam Mass Concrete ..................................................... 74
Katie Bartojay and Westin Joy
Engineering, Hydraulics, and Structural
Hoover Dam: Evolution of the Dam’s Design ..................................................................... 85
J. David Rogers
Hoover Dam: First Joint Venture and Construction Milestones in Excavation,
Geology, Materials Handling, and Aggregates ................................................................. 124
J. David Rogers
Hoover Dam: Construction Milestones in Concrete Delivery and Placement,
Steel Fabrication, and Job Site Safety ............................................................................... 163
J. David Rogers
Hoover Dam: Operational Milestones, Lessons Learned, and Strategic Import ........... 189
J. David Rogers
Hoover Dam: Scientific Studies, Name Controversy, Tourist Attraction,
and Contributions to Engineering ..................................................................................... 216
J. David Rogers
75 Years of Hydraulic Investigations—Hoover Dam ....................................................... 249
Philip H. Burgi
v
Performance of Spillway Structures Using Hoover Dam Spillways
As a Benchmark .................................................................................................................. 267
William R. Fiedler
Seismic Evaluation of Hoover Dam Powerplant .............................................................. 288
Adam Toothman, David Gold, Tim Brown, and Mary Beth Schuetz
Civil Engineers, Architecture, and Construction
Frank Crowe: General Superintendent of the Six Companies, Inc. Hoover
Dam Project ......................................................................................................................... 307
Philip Dunn, Jr.
Engineering and the Sculptural Program of Hoover Dam .............................................. 318
Alfred Willis
Megaproject Success: Hoover Dam Construction and Pre-Construction
Management Ingenuity ....................................................................................................... 329
John Walewski and Hessam Sadatsafavi
Construction Management of a Mega Project .................................................................. 340
Charles R. Parrish
The Construction of Hoover Dam: A Case Study from a Builder’s Perspective ........... 346
Tamiko Powell-Melhado, Michael Hein, and Linda Cain Ruth
Building Hoover Dam (Men, Machines, and Methods) ................................................... 360
Raymond Paul Giroux
Indexes
Author Index ......................................................................................................................... 411
Subject Index ....................................................................................................................... 413

vi
Politics and Dam Safety:
The St. Francis Dam Disaster and the Boulder Canyon Project Act

Donald C. Jackson1, Ph.D.

1Professor of History, Lafayette College, Easton, PA, 18042, [email protected]

ABSTRACT: In March 1928, the U.S. Congress was poised to approve the Boulder
Canyon Project Act (BCPA) and authorize federal support for building what would
become Hoover Dam. California Congressman Phil Swing and Senator Hiram
Johnson had championed the BCPA since the early 1920s and now – despite continued
opposition from private power interests and Arizona politicians – their politicking
appeared ready to bear fruit. But minutes before midnight on March 12th the St.
Francis Dam gave way, releasing a deadly torrent down the Santa Clara Valley in
Southern California and killing more than 400 people. This paper examines the
relationship of Los Angeles (and St. Francis Dam designer William Mulholland) to the
BCPA, and considers how a key investigation of the disaster was tied to the proposed
Hoover/Boulder Dam. While assessing the technology of concrete curved gravity dam
design in the 1920s, it also considers how the disaster prompted authorization of a
special Colorado River Board and delayed congressional passage of the BCPA until
December 1928. It concludes with consideration of how the disaster spurred revision
of California’s dam safety regulations and professional concerns this initiative
engendered among members of the ASCE.

INTRODUCTION

Shortly before midnight on March 12, 1928, the 205-foot high St. Francis Dam
collapsed and during the early morning hours of March 13th, 38,000 acre-feet of water
surged from the reservoir. Wreaking havoc through San Francisquito Canyon and
Southern California’s Santa Clara Valley, by the time the flood washed into the
Pacific Ocean (some fifty-five miles downriver), over 400 people lay dead.
Considered one of the greatest civil-engineering disasters in United States history, the
St. Francis Dam tragedy generated intense interest not only because of the deaths and
destruction it caused, but also because it involved the failure of a concrete curved
gravity dam, the design type then planned for the massive Hoover/Boulder Dam on the
Colorado River.1 The disaster emboldened critics of the Boulder Canyon Project, in no
small part because William Mulholland, longtime head of Los Angeles's Bureau of
Water Works and Supply (BWWS) and the official in charge of the failed dam’s
design and construction, had been prominently involved in advocating the Boulder
1
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2 HOOVER DAM 75TH ANNIVERSARY HISTORY SYMPOSIUM
Canyon Project Act (BCPA, popularly known as the Swing/Johnson Act in
recognition of its primary supporters, California Congressman Phil Swing and
California Senator Hiram Johnson). This paper is not intended to tell the full story of
either the St. Francis tragedy or the complex political interactions that underlay federal
approval of the BCPA, but it does bring to the forefront an appreciation of how the St.
Francis Dam collapse – and the subsequent engineering investigation authorized by
California Governor C. C. Young – were tied to the BCPA. And it serves as a
reminder that politics and safety, particularly as they involve large public works
projects, are not always easily separated.2

ORIGINS OF HOOVER/BOULDER DAM

Hoover/Boulder Dam is rooted in a privately-financed project to irrigate Southern
California’s Imperial Valley. Starting in 1900 the Colorado Development Company
diverted water from the Colorado River to nourish a huge tract of desert land just north
of the California/Mexico border.3 Soon thousands of acres of in the Imperial Valley
were “under the ditch” and the company’s prospects appeared bright. However, the
company’s canal connecting to the Colorado River kept clogging with silt.4 Because
silt accumulation was worst in the section of the canal closest to the river – and
because the company sought to move the headgates beyond U.S. jurisdiction in order
to more readily irrigate land in Mexican territory – in 1904 the company excavated a
more direct opening at a site a few miles south of the California/Mexico border.5
To the company’s misfortune, in June 1905 heavy storms washed away the new
headgates and soon the entire flow of the river was pouring into the Imperial Valley
and the Salton Sink. Eventually, the flooding was brought under control by the
Southern Pacific Railway Company but it took almost two years to close the breach.
In the meantime, thousands of acres of low lying land were inundated under what is
now known as the Salton Sea.6 By 1909, the California Development Company had
transferred most of its assets to the Southern Pacific and, in 1916, the recently formed
Imperial Irrigation District purchased the water supply system from the railroad.7
Once the flooding had stopped, agricultural production resumed. Nonetheless, fear
that a devastating uncontrolled “break” might recur was never far from the minds of
valley residents and investors alike. Soon the district began clamoring for federally-
supported flood protection.
Although the federal government had refrained from fighting the floods of 1905-07,
the lower Colorado River had not been ignored by the Reclamation Service. As early
as 1902, Arthur Powell Davis (at that time Assistant Chief Engineer of the Service)
had considered development of the basin.8 For many years the issue of a major
storage dam across the lower Colorado River was overshadowed by other Reclamation
Service projects, but by the end of World War I the Service was seeking new venues
for its dam-building skills. In 1915 Davis became Director of the Reclamation Service
and he appreciated that controlling the lower Colorado could involve construction of
one of the largest dams in the world. At the urging of the Imperial Irrigation District,
in May 1920 Congress authorized the Reclamation Service to develop preliminary
plans for a Colorado River storage dam.
HOOVER DAM 75TH ANNIVERSARY HISTORY SYMPOSIUM 3
In 1922, these plans spawned the “Fall/Davis Report” a major study prepared under
the auspices of Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall and Reclamation Service Director
Davis. In the report, Davis advocated hydroelectric power development because only
power revenues could repay construction costs with any degree of certainty. From a
practical point-of-view, the development of hydroelectricity made sense as a dam over
500 feet high and impounding more than 20 million acre-feet of water could generate
many millions of kilowatt hours per year. But from a political perspective, the use of
power revenues to finance the dam invited controversy. Privately-financed companies
controlled America’s electric power grid in the 1920s and they viewed askance any
legislation that would authorize a huge federal dam financed by hydroelectric power.9
As historian Paul Kleinsorge later noted:

“The controversy over the power aspects of the [Boulder Canyon] project…
[involved] a clamorous argument that took on the aspects of a nation-wide
debate, chiefly because it involved the whole question of whether or not the
federal government should enter large-scale power production activities . . .”10

In the face of opposition from private power interests, the Fall/Davis Report
nonetheless advocated construction of a high dam and hydroelectric powerplant in the
vicinity of Boulder Canyon. [Note: both Boulder Canyon and Black Canyon (lying
about twenty miles downstream) feature dramatic, narrow gorges with steep granite
walls extending upwards for several hundred feet. While initial investigations focused
on Boulder Canyon, by at least 1924 Service engineers recognized that the Black
Canyon dam site was preferable and – despite retention of the name Boulder or
Boulder Canyon Dam – this became the site where the dam was built.11]

LOS ANGELES AND THE METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT OF
SOUHERN CALIFORNIA (MWD)

Between the initiation of the project in the early 1920s and congressional
authorization in December 1928, the City of Los Angeles and other southern
California communities assumed an essential role in promoting the Boulder Canyon
Project. As early as July 1921 Los Angeles had expressed interest in helping build
Boulder Canyon Dam in return for control over the hydroelectric power plant.12 And
by 1924 this interest had expanded into a formal water claim filed on the city’s behalf
for 1,”500 cubic feet per second of Colorado River flow.13 With this claim, the City of
Los Angeles served as the catalyst for the Colorado River Aqueduct and for what
evolved into the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). Most
importantly in terms of Congressional approval for the Boulder Canyon Project, the
MWD would comprise the most important customer for hydropower. As noted in the
MWD’s first annual report:

“It was early recognized that to secure favorable [congressional]
consideration [the BCP] must be self-supporting and that the power to
be generated from any development… must find a market which would
eventually return all costs of the entire project to the Government. As