The Value of a Dam.

On 17 September 1930 U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur formally launched construction of the Boulder Dam at a site in the Black Canyon on the Colorado River, some hundred miles upstream from Needles, California, and 440 miles from the entrance of the Colorado River into the Gulf of California. The dam's location affected the water supply of six states: Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Hence each of the concerned states wanted to obtain electricity from the dam project.

Planning.

Following a federal government decision in 1922, the Colorado River Compact was created. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover? also a respected engineer, not only ushered the projected dam through Congress but drafted solutions for an equitable distribution of the electricity produced by the dam. The projected cost of the construction was $165 million, which the federal...