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Historical Outlook on its ConstructionIn this article we showcase the
Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. This amazing dam was built in only four and
a half years by a consortium of six commercial construction companies and required
a total of 4.4 million yards of concrete in its construction.
 The
Hoover Dam was a project too big for one commmercial construction company to build.
A number of commercial construction companies were interested in the job.
After all, this was a historical project of great significance, as well as an
incredible challenge. It soon became obvious, though, that no one company would
be able to handle a project of this magnitude. Even the very biggest commercial
construction companies in that day had neither the capital nor the resources to
take on such a job. No single commercial construction company could raise the
$5 million needed to secure the performance bond. Harry Morrison, president
of Morrison-Knudson Co., approached San Francisco banker Leland Cutler to seek
financial backing for Morrison-Knudsen Co. for the Hoover Dam project. Cutler
gave Morrison the names of several other construction companies who might be interested
in a joint venture. Morrison quickly realized the only way to get the Hoover Dam
built was for several construction companies to join together, and he organized
the Six Companies consortium. The commercial construction companies included in
Six Companies, Inc. were: Morrison-Knudsen Co., Utah Construction Co., J. F. Shea
Co., Pacific Bridge Co., MacDonald & Kahn Ltd. and a joint venture of W. A.
Bechtel Co., Henry J. Kaiser, and Warren Brothers. At that time,
the leading dam builder in the United States was Frank T. Crowe, a former Department
of Reclamation superintendent. Crowe had spent twenty years working for the Department
of Reclamation, as well as private construction companies. He had helped to build
Arrowrock Dam in Idaho, the Jackson Lake Dam in Wyoming and Washington's Tieton
Dam. Crowe had also developed a cableway system of delivering concrete and moving
equipment that was far more advanced than any other system of its time. Everything
Crowe had ever done during his career helped prepare him for the building of Hoover
Dam, which would be the biggest challenge of his life. Crowe aided Reclamation
Commissioner Arthur Powell Davis in developing a cost estimate for a dam on the
lower Colorado River as early as 1919 and also helped with the preliminary design
in 1924. Prior to 1925, when the Reclamation Service (which later became
the Department of Reclamation) wanted to build a dam, the government did the project
itself. In 1925, the government began contracting such projects out. Frank Crowe
wanted very badly to work on the Hoover Dam; in fact, it had been a dream of his
for a very long time. And now that the Reclamation Service had changed its way
of doing business, Crowe had to choose between staying in his government job or
working on the Hoover Dam. To work on off the Hoover Dam project, Crowe would
be forced to leave his job and team up with a construction company. Crowe decided
to join Morrison-Knudsen Co., and was instrumental in persuading Morrison to organize
Six Companies. Since Crowe had two decades of experience and had worked
on the project's cost estimate for the government, he knew what went into the
calculations the government used to develop their estimates. Morrison gathered
together the construction companies that would make up Six Companies, made Crowe
construction superintendent and won the contract on March 4, 1931. Six Companies
bid $48.9 million for the project, a bid that was just $24,000 higher than the
Department of the Interior had budgeted for the project and $10 million lower
than the next lowest bid. At the time, this was the largest single contract the
United States government had ever awarded. In today's dollars, that bid would
be more than $577 million. Each member of the Six Companies consortium
brought a special expertise to the table. The Wattis Brothers of Utah Construction
were well known for their expertise in building the early railroads in the western
United States and Mexico. The JF Shea Company had started out as a plumbing business
and was experienced in tunnel building and other underground work. Charles Shea
knew people at the Pacific Bridge Company, and he convinced them to bring their
expertise and capital to the project. Felix Kahn of San Francisco's MacDonald
and Kahn had built a number of large buildings in San Francisco and contributed
$1 million to the project. Henry Kaiser and Warren Bechtel were experienced in
road building. Word of the Hoover Dam project spread quickly, and Six Companies
quickly received more than 2,400 job applications and over 12,000 letters of inquiry
about jobs. This was during the Depression. More than 5,000 workers flocked to
the building area from all over country. Many brought their wives and children
and lived in tents. With poor sanitation, little access to clean water, 119-degree
heat and no utilities, this tent community was a living hell. Six Companies realized
that these people would be here for years and something had to change. Along with
the Reclamation Service and under Frank Crowe's guidance, Six Companies built
Boulder City. Electricity was brought in, and a school, churches, post office,
library, newspaper and stores were built. Before construction on the dam
could start, a monumental task was at hand. The construction companies had to
divert the Colorado River away from the project's foundation site, and this could
only happen during the winter. Crowe decided this needed to be done during the
winter of 1932-33. Work on the tunnels began in May 1931. For 24 hours a day,
seven days a week four tunnels, two on each side, were built right through the
rock walls of the canyon. Each tunnel was 4,000 feet long, 56 feet in diameter,
and lined with three feet of concrete, making them the second largest tunnels
ever made.  The
diversionary tunnels had to be built in the summer in order to be ready to divert
the river in the winter. Conditions in the tunnels were brutal, with temperatures
inside reaching 140 degrees Fahrenheit. As many as four workers died from heat
prostration each week. To make matters worse, Six Companies used gasoline-powered
trucks in the tunnel, something that had never been done before in underground
mining, so carbon monoxide was added to the heat, dust, and fumes from the blasting.
Crowe was a mechanical genius, something he had proven time and time again
on his previous dam projects. He conceived of many new inventions during the course
of building Hoover Dam, one of which occurred during the building of the diversionary
tunnels. He came up with a drilling jumbo, four platforms welded to a truck that
carried 30 rock drills. This enabled construction workers to complete the tunnels
and cofferdams by April 1932, a full year ahead of schedule. Construction on the
dam base could now begin. In order for Six Companies to recover its initial
$5 million investment, it gave high prices for the work done in the diversion
phase and lower prices for subsequent work. But in order for this to work, Frank
Crowe had to place the 3.4 million cubic yards of concrete necessary to complete
the dam for only $2.70 per yard, a price that was 35% lower than the price of
the second lowest bidder. Further, Six Companies had agreed to a $3,000 per day
penalty for every day the project went over schedule, so it was imperative that
everything go according to plan. Crowe overcame these challenges magnificently.
Not only was he able to get the concrete into place at the right price, he also
did it ahead of schedule. The base of the Hoover Dam, as with any dam,
was the most important part of the structure. If the base wasn't built correctly,
to there could be numerous potential problems with the rest of the structure.
Construction workers had to use power shovels to dig through more than half-million
cubic yards of river bottom mud to reach the bedrock 40 feet below, making the
total excavation 125 feet, with grouting as deep as 150 feet. Simultaneously,
high scalers blasted the canyon walls with jackhammers to make a smooth surface
for the dam's construction. These scalers earned $5.60 a day and were some of
the highest paid workers on the job. On June 6, 1933, two years after Six
Companies won the contract, they started pouring the concrete for the dam's base.
In order to allow the concrete to dry properly and not crack during the process,
construction workers had to pour 230 individual blocks of concrete for the base.
All in all, 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete were used for the base, enough
concrete to pave a highway 16 feet wide from New York to San Francisco. The
first eight-cubic-yard bottom-dump bucket of concrete went into the dam 18 months
ahead of schedule. The dam's great mass of concrete was stripped of heat by pumping
refrigerated water through 590 miles of pipe placed in the concrete as it was
poured. The four 395-foot intake towers were taller than most buildings. The powerhouse's
two 230-foot-high wings were designed to house 17 generating units. When construction
was complete in 1935, the diversionary tunnels were closed, and the filling of
Lake Mead began.  When
it was finished, Hoover Dam stood 725 feet high, is 1244 feet wide, 660 feet thick
at the base, tapering to a thickness of 45 feet at the top. It cost a total of
$165 million to build and was completed in four and a half years. The project
was begun in March 1931 and President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated it on September
30, 1935. First power was produced in October 1936, more than two years ahead
of schedule. A total of 4.4 million yards of concrete were used in its construction.
The powerhouse used 17 generators in 10 acres of floor space to produce over 4
billion kilowatt-hours for California, Nevada, and Arizona.
The name of
the dam has changed several times. Early in the construction process, surveyors
thought the dam should be built at Boulder Canyon because of its granite floor,
and the dam was to be called Boulder Dam. It was later determined that Black Canyon
was a more suitable site since a dam in this location would not have to be quite
as high, but the name was left as Boulder Dam. During the strike-driving ceremony
on September 17, 1930, Secretary of the Interior Ray L. Wilbur named it Hoover
Dam in honor of President Herbert Hoover, which came as a great surprise to everyone.
In 1933 voters elected Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt as president, and his Secretary
of the Interior Harold Ickes changed the name back to Boulder Dam. Fourteen years
later, a joint resolution of Congress changed the name back to Hoover Dam. Six
Companies accomplished a historic feat, working together to build the Hoover Dam.
The construction companies that made up the consortium went their separate ways
after the Hoover Dam project, and accomplished a variety of successful projects
afterwards. - Morrison-Knudsen Company president Henry Morrison appeared
on the cover of Time Magazine in 1954, his company having grown to one of the
largest construction and engineering companies in the world. The company was involved
with many construction projects, including the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Morrison
died in 1971. In 1996 Morrison-Knudesen Company was acquired by Washington Group
International.
- The Utah Construction Company diversified into commercial,
residential and military construction, as well as mining, in the 1950s. The company
changed its name in 1971 to Utah International, Inc. and entered into a $2.3 billion
merger with General Electric in 1976.
- J.F. Shea helped to build the Grand
Coulee Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system
and the Washington, D.C., subway system. The company is still in business today.
It builds planned communities and is a civil engineering, electrical and construction
contractor, as well as a supplier of aggregate materials to contractors. The company
also manufactures concrete-placing equipment for civil engineering projects.
- The
Pacific Bridge Company went back to building bridges, including the Tacoma Narrows
Bridges. The company also worked with Morrison-Knudsen Company on the salvage
project after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
- Bechtel has completed more
than 22,000 projects in 140 countries, including the Channel Tunnel, Hong Kong
International Airport, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system
and the reconstruction of Kuwait's oil fields after the Gulf War.
- Henry
Kaiser worked on the Grand Coulee Dam and the San Francisco Bay Bridge. In 1939
he founded Permanente, the largest cement plant in the world and joined with Todd
Shipbuilding Co. to build ships for the Merchant Marines.
- Warren Brothers
Paving, who had built the first modern asphalt facility in 1901 went on to pave
the Columbia River highway and worked on the Walden Pond demonstration project
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