Blown Away by Hoover Dam > Road To Suchness

Hoover Dam blew me away, caught me completely by surprise, left me in total awe. The massiveness of the dam and the beauty of Lake Mead behind it are reason enough to leave from your visit in quiet and inspired awe. Following are some wonders of the dam. The Colorado river before the dam was built had frequent and disastrous floods. The flooding is now controlled. The power plant provides power to three states: Arizona, Nevada and California. Lake Mead now provides water to eight million people. The cities of Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles owe their existence to the dam.

You don’t have to be an engineer to appreciate the dedication that went into the making of Hoover Dam. It is immediately palpable. Although I come from a family of engineers, my life has unfolded through design and art. It was natural for me to be immediately caught up in designs of Art Deco throughout the dam. These are the same influences that you will find in New York City and Chicago on old buildings of the same period.

But seeing them in the middle of the deserts of the Southwest! You understand that it was not only the building of the dam and the feet of engineering. It was the men who came from different parts of the our country, during the great depression. They gave everything, sometimes their lives, to the dam we still have today. The dedication of the works of art that we see today is also a song about them.

Winged Figures of the Republic

Designed by Oskar J.W. Hansen, a Norwegian immigrant who entered the design contest and won. Hansen said of the sculptures and the men and nation they represented: “In each of these monuments can be read the charactertics of these men, and on a larger scale the community of which they are a part. Thus, mankind itself is the subject of the sculpture.”