Nevada - Day 18 - Lake Mead

Las Vegas KOA at Sam's Town, Las Vegas
Monday, 18 April 2022

today's route

One of the places I wanted to visit during my month in Nevada was Hoover Dam, once the world's tallest dam (others have since beaten it out) and now not holding back much water because of drought and climate change.  But when I was planning this day trip, I found there were several reasons why I wouldn't be able to see it.

The dam, and Lake Mead which it created, straddle the border between AZ and NV.  The visitor center for the Hoover Dam is on the NV side, but there's not a lot of parking area, so they funnel all oversize vehicles (like mine) to the parking area in AZ.  That means crossing a bridge.  A very high bridge.  It's 890' above the Colorado River and 1,700' away from the dam.  I'm sure I could get a wonderful view of the dam by crossing the bridge, but the way I am with bridges, I'd be having to focus all my attention on getting across alive and sane.  Here's an online photo of it.

Hoover Dam and
Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge

I just couldn't bring myself to try to cross that bridge, and that meant I also gave up any chance of seeing the dam.  

I did make three attempts, though.  First, I tried to get to the visitor center anyway, in hopes I could figure out a way to squeeze my little RV into a parking space.  But the road was blocked by inspection officers.  I think they might have been Homeland Security.  Anyway, they wanted to inspect my RV, and wanted me to open up all those outside doors (they're all locked and I'd have to remember where I carefully stored those keys).  Instead of doing that, I just asked about parking my RV at the visitor center.  The nice guard tried to convince me that crossing that bridge was no big deal and perfectly safe and had trouble understanding that I just don't do well with either heights or bridges.

I turned back after that discussion and headed toward a Lake Mead viewing area.  But instead of going to the viewing area, I tried to turn onto a side road that Google maps showed might go to a place where I could see the dam without going to the visitor center.  That road turned out to be gated with a chain sealing it.

So then I went on to the Lake Mead viewing area, hoping I could see the dam from there, but I couldn't.  I had to give up an in-person view of the dam, but I did see Lake Mead, though.  What's left of it.  And I learned about all these landmarks.

First, Hoover Dam.  It was built over a 5-year period during the Depression by thousands of workers, more than a hundred of whom died during construction.  Congress named it Hoover Dam in honor of the previous president, but FDR's administration named it Boulder Dam.  Congress changed it back again in 1947, after FDR died.

Here's a display about the dam at the Lake Mead viewpoint.

It's a concrete arch-gravity dam, the largest concrete dam ever built at the time, and used unproven construction techniques which seem to have worked out just fine.  It used enough concrete to pave a 16'-wide road from New York to San Francisco.  It created Lake Mead, the largest reservoir by volume (when full) in the US.  Before the new bridge was built, all traffic was routed directly across the dam as part of US-93.  But that road has hairpin turns, so truck traffic couldn't safely negotiate it.  And the dam itself had weight restrictions, so even a bus couldn't travel across if fully loaded with passengers and luggage.  And then 9/11 happened, and security clamped down tight on such an important piece of infrastructure.

Next, the Hoover Dam Bypass, its original name, or as it's now known, the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge.  O'Callaghan was a governor of Nevada and the editor of the Las Vegas Sun.  Tillman is well-known (even I've heard of him) as a football player for the Arizona Cardinals, who quit to join the Army and was killed in Afghanistan in 2004.  

That arch in the bridge that you see in the photo is a 1,060', twin-rib concrete arch and the largest of its kind in North America.  The bridge is 1,900' long.  And I still think I made the sensible choice, given my phobias.

Looking at Lake Mead today is enough to make the biggest skeptic wonder if maybe climate change might not be real.  It's remarkable to me that the country's largest reservoir could be held back by that nicely arched batch of concrete.  But it doesn't look like it's the largest reservoir any more.  Here's what it looked like maybe 20 years ago.

from a slightly weathered display at the viewpoint

And these are photos I took April 18th.

All of that pale rock should be covered with water.

Compare to the first photo - only the dark tops
of those islands used to be visible.

The lake is 110' below its optimal level, and that's 50' below its maximum level.  Most of the drop has come in the last 15 years.  This lake is created by the Colorado River, which starts in Colorado's Rocky Mountains and fed primarily by streams that get much of their water from rain and snowmelt.  Neither of which the West has had much of recently.

But here's information from its earlier incarnation:

There were some interesting exhibits at the Lake Mead visitor center, one of which mentioned that this area is part of the Mojave Desert.  And the Mojave sits in between the Sonoran and the Great Basin Deserts.

That little hook below Lake Mead is where the Colorado River makes a turn,
which I think was caused by tectonic plate activity that changed the river bed.

Those deserts are created, at least to some extent, by the rain shadow they sit in.  The text was too fuzzy to show here, but it's the clearest explanation of "rain shadow" I've seen, so here's what it said: 

 Storms off the Pacific ocean are forced to rise when crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains.  As a storm rises, it cools and contracts like a sponge being squeezed, releasing either snow or rain.  When the storm reaches the other side of the mountains, little moisture remains, creating a "rain shadow" over the desert below.

So that's what all those mountains were doing that I saw in California.

Two more notes from the visitor center.  Look at this!

Remember the non-cactus called ocotillo I saw
in Arizona?  Those bundles of dried-up sticks?
Remember that I was finally able to see one with
leaves on it but it was the wrong season to see
it flowering?

I couldn't believe my eyes when the dogs and I
happened upon several of these planted at the visitor 
center.  In full bloom!

Pretty neat, huh?

And there were other real cactus just starting to bloom.

Look at all the little buds on this one.
It's about to be stunning.

On the way to and from the lake, I came across several places of note.

Boulder City sits very near Lake Mead, which makes sense when you learn that it was a planned community - the first in southern Nevada - built for workers on the Hoover Dam.  It was known as The City That Hoover Built.  It didn't allow alcohol or gambling while the dam was being built (enough workers died sober, I guess, so they didn't want to make things worse).  It's still Nevada's only incorporated city that doesn't allow gaming.

We stopped to walk in their Bicentennial Park, a nice large area of well-kept grass and trees and bushes.

Soon after I'd left town, I passed a warning sign showing a Bighorn Sheep, saying watch for the next 6 miles.  Farther on I saw another sign with no words, just the picture of a sheep, and almost as soon as I'd passed it, a Bighorn Sheep jumped uphill from right beside the road.  Pretty neat.

Coming into Las Vegas, I finally passed the first solar field I've seen in this sunshine-y state.  And though it may be the only one they've got, it was enormous.  The very biggest I've seen.  It went on for maybe miles on both sides of the interstate.

I saw 2 billboards that surprised me.  One told me that Blue Bell Ice Cream is now in local stores.  They're a long way from Brenham, TX.  The other urged me to buy "Fit Friendly" vodka.  I didn't see the brand name but online have learned that Blue Ice Vodka offers the "lowest calorie 80-proof" vodka "in the United States' marketplace."  The Blue Ice version is 52 calories per ounce, and they've got a couple other types that aren't much higher in calories.  Maybe it's for people who still like the Drinking Man's Diet.

I passed a sign saying, "Turns out, you can buy your way into Paradise."  Paradise abuts Las Vegas and is an unincorporated census-designated place.  With 235,087 residents in 2020, it's the largest census-designated place in the US.  (I think those c-dp's are places that get counted officially but aren't incorporated towns.)  Paradise is also one of the hottest places in Nevada (which is saying something), with 131 days a year when the temperature is above 90°.  It got its name more than 100 years ago due to its high water table (a plus in the middle of a desert).  I don't know if it still has that high water table, given all the entities pumping water out of the ground to satisfy huge numbers of people who insist on living in a desert.

On the way to the recycling place one more time, I passed the National Atomic Testing Museum.  It's an affiliate of the Smithsonian and chronicles the history of nuclear testing in NV.  If I were going to be here longer, I'd want to visit.