Hoover Dam: The Historic Construction (2005)

Run Time - 45 min.  |   Countries - United States  |   MPAA Rating - NR
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Synopsis by Nathan Southern

If the Hoover Dam retains an iconographic status on the American landscape, its erection -- spanning 1931-1936 -- has grown into a piece of historical myth, generating legendary, often jaw-dropping stories of workmen tunneling in the depths of the imposing Black Canyon, hanging thousands of feet above ground to clear debris from the rock walls, strategizing about the most effective engineering methods of transporting wet concrete into the monument, executing those strategies, and -- in the process -- risking life and limb to create one of the most astounding man-made monuments not only of the century, but of the millennium. The new documentary Hoover Dam: The Historic Construction intercuts the infamous and harrowing mid- to late '30s footage of the monolith's construction with contemporary sequences that carry audiences behind the dam's facade to reveal the internal mechanisms that propel it. The film showcases how today's engineers utilize cyber technologies to control the machinery implemented in the first half of the twentieth century.