Life and Death at Hoover Dam
It’s 1931 and men are desperate for jobs.
A lucky few will get to work in the searing heat of the Nevada desert on the massive Hoover Dam, the single largest public works project in history. Their goal is to tame the mighty Colorado River with a dam that towers sixty stories high from the base of the canyon to the crest of the dam. In doing so they will create the largest man-made lake in the world. Nothing like it has ever been built.
Life and Death at Hoover Dam tells the story of a handful of these men and the sacrifices they endured. From choking on gasoline fumes in 120-degree heat inside the five-stories-tall diversion tunnels to dangling by slender cables from the thousand-foot walls of Black Canyon, they will put their lives at risk. In the end, these men and the 20,000 others who worked on the dam will build a monument that makes possible the palm trees of Los Angeles and the desert oasis of Phoenix. This is the story of their lives—the men who built the matchless Hoover Dam.