The Hoover Dam: Built into the heart of American Indian country

From the first surveyors, to the inauguration of the dam by President Roosevelt, fourteen years went by and when all was said and done, the future had arrived in Nevada's deep south.

Quintus Hopper of Nevada, published in January 2022, is a historical novel that follows the epic and peculiar life of a frontier newspaper typesetter. As part of my research I made extensive use of newspaper archives and, in this series, I’ll share some of my often surprising findings. Here are history, commentaries and contemporary newspaper articles as they relate to the novel. Quintus Hopper had been there at the start of Nevada up in the north, and was there in the deep south of the state during times of quiet and desolation and murder and posses and the rise of Las Vegas … and still there when the Hoover Dam (at first named the Boulder Dam) was built.

Suspected serial murderer Queho, hunted and never caught for decades and curiously connected with Quintus - had, in fact, a part to play in the raising of the dam … he remained feared, as a deadly specter and as a curse put on the builders. (check below previous stories about the elusive renegade).

Every posse, on the hunt for Queho for decades, had returned in defeat. And yet Queho occasionally showed his face – but those were his mountains, and no one ever came close to capturing him. By 1921 something entirely new was happening in southern Nevada. The Bureau of Reclamation surveyed possible sites for a dam.

Men in boats went up and down the river, investigating various places. By 1922 the dam project, named ‘Boulder Canyon,’ had found a location considered more ideal compared to the initial choice of Boulder Canyon itself. While the original name was kept, the focus shifted twenty miles further south to Black Canyon, there the Boulder Dam – later renamed Hoover Dam – was to be constructed. This was in the very heart of Queho country.

It would take another six years for the staggeringly costly project to be approved by then President Calvin Coolidge, and another three for building to begin. By 1931, construction was underway and the world rushed in. Las Vegas had lobbied long and hard to become the headquarters for the dam’s construction and to house the thousands of workers. To the town’s dismay it was decided instead to construct a whole new town, closer to the construction site – and soon the town that would become Boulder City was born.

While the building of the dam required, at times, more than five thousand workers, that number was dwarfed by close to 20’000 unemployed men and their families descending on Las Vegas in the hopes of finding work in the wake of the Great Depression. By the time Boulder Dam was completed, more than one hundred men had lost their lives by drowning, falling off walls, getting smashed and buried by rocks and slides, by machine accidents, carbon monoxide poisonings and sheer exhaustion due to the sustained labor in extreme heat.

The following article, printed in the Las Vegas Age, details the visit of President and Mrs. Roosevelt on the occasion of the dam’s completion. It marked the beginning of a new wave of progress for southern Nevada.

October 04, 1935

Las Vegas Age, Las Vegas

THE PRESIDENT

The visit of President and Mrs. Roosevelt, to Boulder City, the dam, Las Vegas and the mountain area, was a noteworthy event, it being the second time in the history of Clark County that a President of the United States has visited it.

The event passed pleasantly and without and disturbing incident. The President seemed pleased with the warmth of his reception and the “wild-west” atmosphere he found here. To all appearances, both President and Mrs. Roosevelt enjoyed every minute of the visit just as thoroughly as did we who were privileged to act as hosts.

The dedication of the dam reminds the world that soon the greatest power plant in the world will be producing hundreds of thousands of horse power of cheap electrical energy. Already plans are well advanced by capital to take advantage of the opportunity offered by this power, by locating plants and industries in this region. The completion of the dam structure, and its dedication by the President, reminds the world that in a few months now, the waters of the mighty Colorado will be rushing through the penstocks to produce the cheapest electrical power known.

The occasion reminds us, also, that Las Vegas has by no means fulfilled her destiny with the completion of the dam construction, but that, on the contrary, we are just about to enter upon the period of our greatest activity and prosperity.

Just as the ceremony of driving a silver spike at the beginning of construction of the Union Pacific branch to Boulder City marked the beginning of the era of construction, so the dedication of the dam marks the beginning of the industrial or development era for this region, with the establishment of great and permanent payrolls and the creation of wealth which will inevitably make Southern Nevada the most important and most populous region of Nevada.

Check out the previous Queho stories: