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Transcript for The Story of Hoover Dam, segment 03 of 12
Arthur Powell Davis, first Reclamation Director and chief engineer, understood their problem. For years he had traveled up and down the river surveying, studying. Build a high dam in a deep canyon upstream to control the river, he reasoned. In nineteen eighteen Davis reported his findings and proposals to Congress. Congress responded in nineteen twenty-eight, passed the Boulder Canyon Project Act authorizing construction of Hoover Dam to control and regulate the Colorado River and the All-American Canal System to deliver water to farmlands on the lower river. In nineteen thirty President Herbert Hoover, for whom the dam is named, signed the appropriation bill to begin construction. Under a contract awarded in March, nineteen thirty-one to Six Companies Incorporated, a combine of six major construction firms, men and machines went to work to build this dam of unprecedented size, this modern civil engineering wonder.