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Transcript for Hoover Dam Construction, segment 15 of 17
While work on the appurtenant features of the Boulder Canyon Project was in progress, an uninterrupted stream of concrete had been pouring into the forms of the dam from both mixing plants. Progress was curtailed only by the limitations of sound engineering and construction practice. Day by day, week after week, the top workings of the structure approached its full height of seven hundred and thirty feet, far above the crest of any other dam yet built by man or likely to be built for years to come. Schedules established at the outset of the work were left far behind as the concrete of the dam narrowed toward its crest and the structure widened between its abutments approaching the very top rims of the canyon wall.
In June, nineteen thirty-five, the dam structure itself stood completed, two and one half years in advance of the time originally designated. In September of the same year, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, voicing high praise for both designers and builders, dedicated Boulder Dam to the progress of the nation.
As final construction work was completed, the impressive beauty of the structure became apparent. The roadway traversing its thirteen hundred foot crest forms a magnificent link in a transcontinental highway. The reservoir filling behind the dam was named Lake Mead in memory of Doctor Elwood Mead, late Commissioner of Reclamation, whose life work culminated in the building of Boulder Dam. The largest artificial body of water in the world, it extends upstream a hundred and fifteen miles into the lower reaches of the Grand Canyon with a shoreline of five hundred and fifty miles, opening upon vistas unglimpsed by man until invaded by the gradually rising waters of the reservoir.