November 14, 2023 • 39 mins
The next time you're in Vegas, rent a car and spend a day at the Hoover Dam. This towering, larger-than-life marvel of human engineering has fundamentally shaped the United States. But building it was far from easy. In the first part of this two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max recount the guys' adventure exploring the Dam in person... and the sheer, ridiculous audacity of the thing.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Before we do our regular stuff. We
gotta tell you it is good to be back. It's
super producer Max. What's mister Noel Brown?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Dude?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I was just doing that like Chris Farley, get an
excited thing, you know where I'm like on my face,
like moving my head all around, you know, getting all
pumped up for Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
We took a little.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Bit of a micro hiatus, not what like normal people
would call an actual hiatus, but I think we took
a week of classics or we intersperse some in there
who actually knows what well Max does.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
And they called me ben Bullet.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
It is I Noel Brown, Max. What happened exactly? How
the schedule get kerfuffed?
Speaker 4 (01:08):
We we did.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
Three classics, but it has been a long time since
the three of us been. I remember we recorded something,
was it Aaron Burr?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (01:21):
And then walking away, I looked at Nola, I'm like,
hey man, it's gonna be like the last time we
were recording until November, and I.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Down we embraced It was a very tender moment and
went to a hot tub.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I'm sure so well.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
Ben looked out the window with his hand on the
window being set.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
That's very kind.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
As we all remember, it was actually my nipple that
I was putting on the glass, of course, and then
I put my.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
Clean We don't want to point out that you were,
you know, indecently, right, right, So.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I don't think a nipple is considered in it's but
it's also, let's just really quickly, sorry, gonna gonna stand
on a pedestal hill.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Shit, Why are women's nipples off off limits because of
the Puritans? That's bolt crap.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
And I'm not saying that from a perspective of horniness.
I'm saying it from a perspective of equal nippleness, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
So couldn't we say damn Puritans?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
We could say damn Puritans, And it turns out we
have a reservoir of water and damn based punge.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
I'm a big fan of pronouncing reservoir like memoir, like
like in a very like high falutin French kind of way.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Are we supposed to say reservoir?
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I mean, that's you know, maybe that's americanized I don't know,
but that's how I would typically put a hard R
on the end. But it does feel like a French
word etymologically speaking. So I think you're absolutely in the
right and I'm a big fan of it.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, I feel you, man.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
And maybe it does sound a little high falluting to
our fellow Americans. See I would say high fallutin so so, folks, Uh,
real quick, just so you know, we as you could tell, hopefully,
the energy is contagious. The enthusiasm here is real. And
sincere Noel just got back from Nashville, Max, you were
(03:10):
on a walk about through the Pacific Northwest. I was
out so far west that it's the East for a while.
And before we did any of that, we went to
Las Vegas, which we mentioned in previous episodes, and peek.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Behind the curtain. Noel, you know this well, one of.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
The We're not divas folks, by the way, in the
entirety of the network. We are so we are such
go with the flow guys that we always we always
try to make things work the weirdest thing. So it
was odd for one of us to put in a
bit of a diva esque caveat or fine print and
(03:50):
say we're only going to Vegas if you let us
rent a car to see the Hoover Dam.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Hoover Dam or bust, I believe is the way you
put it.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It was.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Yeah, But let me tell you as I think I
can speak for all of us and saying that we
had a really fun time in Vegas. I think you'd
been before, but I'd never been, and it was the
vegasness of it all was a delight. I had a
good time, won a little money, lost a little money,
saw some shows, made some friends, made some memories, you know,
(04:21):
played some slots, a little blackjack. Our hotel had been hacked,
so our lights were sort of not fully functioning. It
was a little bit of an odd time. But of
all the things that we experienced in Vegas, I would
say our trip out to the Hoover Dam, which was
the first time I'd never really driven through proper desert
desert like you know, been to Los Angeles, been to
No cow so Cal holiday inn, but had never driven
(04:45):
through the actual desert, you know, where the bodies are
buried in Casino, and that in and of itself, just
to the getting to the.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Hoover Dam was awesome.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
And then as you're grounding these like switchback kind of
corners you see in the distance, this thing that I
believe Paul we were traveling with, said something like, it's
like more real than real, Like it looks like like
a video game. It's so the way we're used to
seeing these types of grand you know, set pieces literally
(05:13):
is in games or in movies. So to see something
that's this expansive vista of this man made harnessing of nature.
I know, I sound like I'm really towing the current
line here, but it's awesome and it is like almost
this uncanny valley vibe. To see this thing in person,
it was spectacular, is what I'm getting.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I had a great time.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I yeah, I'm so glad to hear that.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
We were fortunate enough to go with, as you mentioned,
our pal super producer and stuff they'll want, you know,
Paul Decant, Matt, Frederick our Ryder Die and uh one
of our emperors of sound cues here, Max, who very
much missed. We rounded the corner just as you said, Noel,
and the sheer immensity of it one of my one
(05:58):
of my I were the diva by the way, I was, Yeah,
I was the one who said yeah, I was the
one who said, well, I told our bosses we would
only go if it was it was. Actually, it was
a very uncharacteristic move for me because I didn't check
with anyone internally, So.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
You think it was more of a gentle request and
or you didn't tell it to anybody.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
But it makes for a good story, I I texted Will.
But but the cool thing about this, oh, I've got
to say it. Uh. I think it was my dad
who told me the first time he saw the Hoover Dam,
he was struck by the sheer audacity of it. He said,
it was as though a man had spat in the
face of God. And I was like, whoa a million dude.
(06:43):
And that's what it's all about.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
It's like harnessing this natural you know feature the Colorado River,
these rushing waters and like and you know, you think
about that kind of technology and the ingenuity and ability
to you know, kind of innovate in such a way,
and all this took place and what like the.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Twenties, Yeah, like the early nineteen hundreds, and you nailed it.
Our story starts with the Colorado River. The Colorado River
is huge. It's well over fourteen hundred miles long fourteen
hundred and fifty miles long. It is the lifeline for
(07:21):
the American Southwest and the West in general, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona,
Nevada or Nevada, we know in California as well as
two states in Mexico. This is where the great the
Colorado River made the Grand Canyon.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah, and the Grand literally sliced over time through these
rocks and made this incredible feature, which really speaks to
the power and like the absolute you know, just might
of this natural resource, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, So of.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Course man is immediately not going to be satisfied with that.
We got to figure out how can we make this
thing work to our benefit, which is you know, understandable.
This is a very arid and inhospitable region.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
And also it's so people have lived in this area
for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, but due
to the exact nature of the environment what you're describing inhospitable.
Due to that, the population has always been limited because
there are only so many resources to go around. America
(08:29):
as a country takes that personally. So they were looking
at ways to enable large massive communities and agricultural interests.
And that's why right now, thanks to the Colorado River
and the Hoover Dam, this is the water source for
more than twenty five million people. It irrigates three point
(08:53):
five million acres of farmland. You can learn all about
this in an incredibly cartoonish propagandistic film they make a
watch before the tour, Noel.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Can you describe that one a little bit?
Speaker 3 (09:05):
It's just, you know, lots of buzz phrases like the
ingenuity of the human spirits, you know, and man's great
desire to tame nature, you know, stuff I'm paraphrasing, but
stuff like that black and white footage, a lot of
like ken Burns affect still, you know, kind of zoom
ins of like all these archival photos of men.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
I mean, that's just what it was.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
It was men working on this insane project, which we're
going to get into some of the particularities of the
insanity and ridiculousness. Because you're right, Ben, the word your
dad used audacity. It is like, how dare you think
that you could do this? You know, but also good
job for doing it. But then of course you got to,
(09:50):
you know, break a few eggs to make a Hoover dam.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yes, the Colorado River has a street name in the
Halls of Power. It's nicknamed the River of Law because
of all the legal disputes that have involved what happens
to the water over the decades. It is now one
(10:13):
of the most highly controlled rivers in the world. And still,
whatever the points may be about controversy and audacity, it
is true. Without the Hoover Dam, the West as we
know it, the United States, for sure, would be fundamentally different.
And they're going to use a different f word there,
right right, And it all happens because of a disaster.
(10:37):
So rewind the clock back with US folks or the VHS.
That's a very mixed turn of phrase. Anyway, go back
to the early nineteen hundreds, just as you were saying, no,
it's the turn of the twentieth century. Farmers are trying
to divert the Colorado River to these nascent and emergent
(10:57):
Southwestern communities, and at first they do it with canals,
and they totally drop the ball because the Colorado River,
like any river of its size, it's not necessarily one
hundred percent clean operation. It gathers a lot of debris
and silt and dust and animal excrement as it flows downstream.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
That's right, So that downstream exactly ben So this can
be a problem specifically involving the Imperial Alamo Canal that
is constructed. So all of this silt, which is if
you remember back to I guess physical science maybe or geology.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I took geology in college, which was fine.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
We went to Stone Mountain and looked at like rock rocks,
you know what do they call those cross sections and
things like that. So silt is literally it's kind of
just sand, but it's sand and particulate matter that is carried.
It's a load, you know, like basically it's a It
is a lot of volume of this stuff that can
be suspended in water and then it kind of gets
(11:59):
to pose. So that's also what can sometimes create like
river beds, river banks and things like that. It'll get
carried and deposited. But that can be a real problem
if you're not taking into account you know, what this
is actually doing for the flow of the river, right,
because the river, you know, some of them are wider
than others, but it's not the ocean. I mean, it
(12:20):
is a winding path and if it gets kinked up,
much like a clogged artery in the human body.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
That can cause some real problems downstream. Oh yeah, Eventually
what happens is you've no longer redirected the water. You
have built a wall to prevent the passage of that
precious resource and crops that were growing in this imperial
valley then, as now, they were very desperate for water
(12:48):
and the canal system. As this silt that you describe
adds up, it just couldn't deliver. So at first, authorities
try all sorts of things. At first they say, Okay,
here's what we're going to do. We're just going to
always clean our house on a schedule, will remove the
silt and will scour the channel. As anybody who has
(13:11):
tried to make a regular house cleaning schedule knows, it's
very difficult to do consistently.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Dude, I only just recently, and I'm not like Oula
laying myself yes, and it is a game changer because
I just don't ever have the wherewithal or the skills
frankly to do a very good job.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
It is not my wheelhouse.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
I do my best, and you know, and if you
have someone like that coming to help you with the
big picture maintenance. You can do little things along the way,
you know, that kind of help maintain the order.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
And it's not super expensive anymore.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
It's it's truly not, it's truly not, and it is
something that can really add to your quality of life
and peace of mind. And we're sponsored today by it.
No or not, it's just a thing, but this is
a very similar thing. It's all about maintaining your house,
you know, keeping things orderly and not letting things pile up.
Because it's just like the way dust bunnies can accumulate
in your house without you realizing it, this stuff can accumulate,
(14:06):
you know, in these bodies of water, and it's a system.
It is a very delicate balance system, and if things
are not happening correctly, aren't flowing correctly, it can cause
real problems. Enter something called the Saltan's Sea, which I
think we were all kind of fascinated by the sultans
Sink specifically, and then they'll get into that. So what
(14:29):
the Sultan's Sea is in a little bit, so they
kept the various authorities. We're trying to do things like, okay,
cleaning every day, the equivalent of doesn't work. They said,
let's dredge the area. No one has the money to
do it. The clock is ticking, the crops are going thirsty.
Enter the California Development Company.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
They're the ones who are supposed to get water to everybody,
So they become the scapegoat. And they know that if
they don't figure out an answer soon one they'll all
be fired to the impre valley will cease to exist.
So they still couldn't get For five years, they couldn't
figure this out, and a disaster strikes. Nineteen oh five.
(15:10):
The Colorado River breaks free of an overburdened irrigation channel
and it goes right to the place you're describing. If
floods an area called the Sultan Sink, and this is
disastrous for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
The railroad is huge.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
This is the age of Robert Barons and tycoons, and
even they are powerless in the face of nature, the flood,
the surrounding geography. There's a great line from an article
in the Los Angeles Herald on July twenty sixth, nineteen
oh five. It says the following. In the struggled fall,
supremacy between the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Sultan Sea.
(15:47):
The Watas have won.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Well done. The only way to read that it's true.
So the Mojave Desert to the north and the Sonora
to nor End Desert to the south border this sink
seventy meters below sea level at the very bottom of
what's called the Sultan Trough. And so by the time
(16:11):
the railroad had kind of gotten their ducks in a
row and done what they could to figure out how
to seal this overflow, eighteen months had passed and the
Sultan Sink was no longer just a little sink. It
was now what is referred to as the Sultan's Sea,
which in and of itself is a fascinating place. Oh,
(16:33):
there's actually a movie called The Sultan Sea with Val Kilmer.
And if you've ever played Grand Theft Auto five, I
want to say, what's the one with the weird methy
guy who lives I think that's six six maybe, so
that's five, okay, So he lives in this area that
is basically the Sultan Sea.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Right right, and exactly that's what it is.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I think there was a time where the trever n
It's all coming back to me.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Not Trevor young.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Heart producer who also lives in La But the Sultan
Sea as a community used to be I think more thriving,
like there was even like a little you know kind
of stuff, and it was for sure. But then over time,
because of what happened in this Sultan Sea drying up,
We're gonna that's a whole other story to say, it
does become this very sad, kind of like downtrodden community
(17:29):
as it is depicted in that.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Game and in the movie with Val Kilmer.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
But again because of this ecological disaster that was caused
by just not minding the ecological shop in terms of
like paying attention to Okay, we've done these things, these
man made things, and now we're seeing what God hath wrought,
you know what his his his wrath, hath brought down
upon us for daring to have the audacity once again
(17:54):
to interfere with the natural course of nature.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
And so for a time, the Sultan Sea was California's
largest lake. It was a monument to the mistake of
the canals. Thirty six miles long, twenty six miles wide,
This shock of water in in ordinarily parched, desiccated desert
it recreated this ancient lake that had disappeared two hundred
(18:22):
years prior. And now I'd love that you pointed that out.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Man.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Now, just as the ancient lake disappeared, the current one
is disappearing, and as it does, the waters are receding
back to reveal this toxic Dusty mad Max esque its landed.
You know, it's like Fury Road.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
There's actually a really good article on California dot Com
that's just what happened to the Salt and Sea, and
it's it has to do with too, like it became
very the salinity levels of it rose, so it just
it just began to cause all these like I think,
fishkill and like really bad problems and revealed, like you said,
(19:03):
all this overflow and runoff from fertilizer from neighboring area.
This is really a separate story, but honestly, I think
we should do an episode on the saltan Sea. I'm
pulling little bits that I remember, and I'm looking at
articles here and there, but I'm realizing now there is
a ton of information there and we can bring back
our conversation of g T A five and Trevor as well.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned that too, because I
just realized GTA six has not come out yet. They're
about to announce it.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I heard today that they were gonna potentially announce it,
and that's.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Why I jumped in.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Trailer.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
The trailer comes out in December, and I think we're
all do the GTA six fit GTAs going on ten
years since five. It's like when Street Fighter had to
learn to count to three, you know what I mean,
it took a while.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
And in the defense, rock Star is in that category
with like Bethesda, Sure and Naughty Dog where it's like,
take your time, take your time while you're making these games,
because when they make them, they're they're they're worth it.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
And and they still end up doing these whole crunch scenarios. Oh,
people are having to pee in bottles, and you know,
but I think I think that's become such a pr
nightmare that they're doing everything they can to prevent that,
if only for like, you know, not getting slammed in
the press, and because I think we're at a place now,
I hope largely where people are looking for that kind
(20:21):
of behavior and it's sort of not tolerated as much anymore.
Speaker 5 (20:24):
I've heard that at the major companies has gotten better.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
It's the small company.
Speaker 5 (20:28):
Sure, yeah, to be competitive the indie companies also.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Yeah, the danger is that you're you're working in a
market where it's someone's dream job. It is a dream
job to be a video game creator.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
So, man, we've been there with the podcast stuff, I mean,
through various ownerships, and you know where we are now.
I think we're probably in a pretty good work life
balance situation for the most part. But in the past,
when I first got this job and we were owned
by a company that shall not be named, I would
have done anything, you know, and I didn't even have
healthcare at the time. You know, I would have worked
whatever hours they asked me to. But we we digress
(21:07):
a little bit. But I think to things of value
and definitely let's put a pin in the sultancy episode.
But what happens now as a result of this, the
lessons learned perhaps from this ecological disaster.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, what happens now is the job of controlling the
uncontrollable Colorado River. This herculean task falls to the US
Bureau of Reclamation, and we hung out with some of
their representatives when we visited Hoover ourselves excellent tour guide
who was not just we asked ourselves or maybe I
asked the question, like, how does one become a tour
(21:39):
guide at the Hoover Dam And it's not all he does.
He was a historian who works for the Department of
Reclamation or whatever it is of our reclamation and he
studies the Hoover Dams job. We'll get to Matt at
the end. That guy is awesome. Shout out Hoover Matt.
Whope you're listening. So, feaced with this nigh impossible task,
the Bureau of Reclamation has a They have a bit
(22:03):
of what Star Trek would call this for umax, a
kobyashi maru, which means there is an unsolvable scenario and
so spoiler they captain kirk it. They said, look, if
the problem without if the problem is we understand it
is the following constraints, let's step back and let's change
(22:24):
the constraints. So let's stop trying to do individual canals.
Let's figure out something that will be to the benefit
of all. And that's where we introduce in nineteen twenty two,
the Bureau director Arthur Powell Davis.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yeah, yeah, first of all, can we just talk really quickly.
The idea of a dam is something that occurs naturally
as well. You know, beavers make them, you know, beavers.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Who famously saw water living on its own and said
fuck that, nah, exactly, we got to do something about this.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
But it's essentially just building a wall wall not not
made of water, but in the water, that separates a
body of water.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
You didn't have to but that there here a dam
is about to wait. Back beat, the beaver's about to eat.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Now he's got to let these beavers eat. That's partially
probably why they build the damp. But it's just, you know,
a thing that separates a body of water into sections,
and it raises the water level on one side and
lowers it on the other side. And then that's the
most if I'm not mistaken, the most fundamentally basic version
of what this is, and it's being it's been done,
(23:36):
you know, it's a low fi technique that has been
done for hundreds and hundreds of years, if not thousands
of years, of course, so this what we're talking about,
is the like the most extra plussed up version of that.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
So American. It's clearly from the same country that will
later go on to say, cocaine's okay, but what if
we kicked it up a notch, you know what I mean,
Like that's a crack joke, which I did not expect
in today's episode.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
You're you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Also, just to set back for a sec, Max, did
we get the Kobyashi Maru reference correct?
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Ben?
Speaker 5 (24:09):
You nailed it one hundred percent correct, even the Captain
Kirk reference about how because you know he cheats the system,
he's the only ones ever succeeded in the Kobyashi Maru
is because he changed the problem.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
Because because yeah, it's a no win situation.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
So the Kobashian Maru is there's a ship over the
border outside of the Federation space. It's like a civilian
ship being attacked by Klingons. So you can go in
and save the ship, but your ship will get blown up,
or you can leave them outside of Federation space and
they get blown up.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
You could have just said, yes, Max, nosolutely.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
We did an episode about the origins of Star Trek.
Speaker 5 (24:47):
This has been I have high I've hijacked this all right, No,
this is gonna be ridiculous Star Trek history by the end.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Nol, what do you think does that get the sound cue.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Oh yeah, I what else is it for if not
that Max with the facts.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Of phone and he drops in the knowledge.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Just for you.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
So good, there we go, So back to back to
the setup that you've been you have been attempting to
do for like five minutes. Now, our Captain Kirk here,
(25:31):
Arthur Powell Davis. He makes this audacious proposal and he says, look,
we're going to go to the Black Canyon right there
on the border of Arizona and Nevada, because we not
just geography, but politics become involved here. We need it
to be something that gives every state a stake in
(25:52):
the agreement. And so he says, we're going to build
this thing. I call it the Boulder Canyon Project, and
then he does Simpson's monoail speech. It's gonna control flooding
and irrigation. We're gonna make money by generating sully hydro
electric power.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Yeah, it sounds like a bit pie in the sky,
you know, but it's it's not.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
It wasn't.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
I mean, we'll get to that. It is definitely a
big swing. As they like to say. Some people, I
think I don't know who these people are. Some people
say these things it was a big idea, you know,
and this was the kind of the era of big ideas, right,
wasn't this sort of approaching kind of new deal type
stuff or was that later a new new.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Deal comes out in the Great Depression as a as
a move of desperation. That's right, But this is but
this is eleven years after this.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
But what I'm saying is.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
It's almost like a pre like you know, version of that,
because this is gonna create a ton of jobs. This
is gonna like you know, this is this is infrastructure city. Man.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Like, this is literally as big as it gets, right.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
Yeah, and you think about it, this is not that
far after Panama Canal, which you know has a billion
problems about it and stuff like that, but like, you know,
another massive infrastructure task the United States took on.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
So on the one hand, it's functional as hell, that's
the idea. It's technically got the ability to pay for itself,
and it represents this thing. It's like this great American
ideology kind of writ large you know in project form.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
A man a plan a Canal Panama. Right there, you go,
that's the that is that man damn a, thank you, ma'am. Yeah,
the Hoover Dam and way less Hoover Dam also way
less ethically fraud than the Panama Canal.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
It must be said so because there were political ramifications
to the Panama Canal in terms of like other countries
and partnerships and some potential shady dealings.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah again, maybe that's another I don't know if we've
done a Panama Canaler.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
I have not.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
And one of the big questions is whether that's better
as a ridiculous history or.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Episode.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
That's a good point. That's a good point. So at
this point it's just over, Oh yeah, good, okay, done right.
Un So this point it's like a twinkle in the
eye of this fellow.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Right, And he says, and they say, they say, very well, Davis,
but uh, let's talk turkey.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
What it costs?
Speaker 1 (28:16):
What well it's costs. And he says, okay, one hundred
and sixty five million dollars and he lets the silence
ride out in the boardroom. We imagine because if you
do an inflation calculator, oh boop, one hundred and sixty
five million dollars in nineteen twenty two, A.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Bee boop is drummer all look at this number. I
had a hard time even saying it out loud because
I was is that a trillion? Or I think it's
three billion, twenty two million, nine hundred and twenty seven thousand,
six hundred and seventy eight dollars and fifty seven cents.
You always got to wonder where the fifth cents comes from,
Like you think they just round it up or down
at that point, you know.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Good lord. But the thing is, this is like over time,
right and again, it's gonna pay for itself, I swear.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Plan.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
So, yeah, you're right, that's that's a tall milkshake for sure.
And lawmakers were rightly concerned about this because really what
they're talking about is paying money today, a great deal
of money, for the promise of a recouped investment in
the future. So that might only pay you next week today, Yes,
(29:34):
just so. And so there are seven states in the
overall river drainage area. Six of them Colorado, Wyoming, Utah,
New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada are worried, and they're saying
something that is still a problem today. They say, hey, guys,
(29:54):
we're top of the line politicians, so we know how
Macanese work. We're worried that most of the water here
is going to go to California, and that's a fight
that continues now in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Literally called the Golden State, you know. I mean it
feels like the favorite you know child here. It's also
quite large and quite economically important, right yeah, it's massive.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
It's almost a country unto itself in many ways.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
So the understandable and as we know, you know, we
talked about this on stuff that I want you to
know a lot, and probably on this show as well,
the idea of water wars and the idea of water
being one of the most precious life giving resources that
there is relatively a finite amount of and that you
have to divert. And now we were already talked about
(30:46):
this at the beginning of the show. This is an
area that like is this stuff is in precious little supply,
so this is a big deal. They're like, how are
we gonna make this under the control of the man
and then still expect that our community are going to
be taken care of and trust that that's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Yes, that is a perfect description, and so things kind
of get locked. Landline, he need some assurances assurances. So
fast forward. There's a guy who is famous in musicals
like Annie. He is at the time Secretary of Commerce.
His name Herbert Hoover. He is the deal maker. He's
(31:27):
the rain man for this. He's the Donald Trump, who
is actually pretty good at what he does. Yeah, he's
the rain maker. Excuse me, rain man, different movie. So
he goes to the he creates the Colorado River Compact,
and this divides the water proportionally among the seven states
with assurances for the future. Honestly, though, his solution is
(31:50):
somewhat of a long term band aid for everyone involved,
because whenever the states raise a problem, like the concern
about California mooching up all the water, he gets the
groups to agree that they're gonna consider themselves two big groups,
basically a group of states on one side of the dam,
(32:11):
a group of states on the other side of the dam.
And he says, look, guys, in the future, just sorted
out between your two groups, that'll be perfect. Uh, you know,
he's sort of like states rights stuff, right yeah, yeah,
And history would prove him woefully incorrect, if not purposely
a bit deceitful. So this legal this makes him a
(32:33):
little happier, a little closer to the finished line, but there's.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Still just like a heroic gulp of coffee. Yeah, I'm sorry,
I just had to call that. It was just like
a head back.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
He knows what the gulp?
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Yeah yeah, I'm preparing to edit this one.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
He knows what's yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
So thanks bro. So we haven't beat that much. We
beat once for a curse word that people stay in,
but I I stand by it. So. Uh, there's a
guy named President Calvin Coolidge. He is on the way out.
And as we know, when a president is on the
way out in the United States, they have they have
(33:12):
a weird redistribution of their powers. So if you're the
lame duck scenario, if you're a lame duck president, you
can lose a lot of your deal making ability in Congress,
but you gain a lot of agency because you don't
have to worry about re election.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
You could again, you can make some big swings that
you maybe would not have otherwise made for fear of
political fallouts.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
I'm gonna pardon everybody, you know what I mean. Let
me green light every project, Pitch it to me, pitch it.
It's basically the that don't give a era of a
particular president. I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
Yeah, And I just have to say this real quick. Yes,
Calvin Coolidge was awesome.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Okay, people are wondering why Max has aired this opinion
versus what is it Woodrow Wilson.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
Who is the worst? Yeah, yeah, he's the worst.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
He's like Franklin Pierce bad. But yeah, but Calvin Coolidge,
you'll see why where we'll talk a little bit more
about him in the future spoiler slash foreshadowing.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
So I actually like a Republican. It's weird.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
So calvi us the thing as in true for sure. Well,
I agree with Eisenhower on several points, especially when he
was out an outgoing president. I like ike.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yeah, well a lot of people did, unless they were
on the wrong side of war with him.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
But Calvin Coolidge, all right, so he's on the way out.
He is flipping the bird to all sorts of established things.
He is green lagging stuff left and right. It is
Coolidge who authorizes the Boulder Canyon Project in December nineteen
twenty eight. And so everybody's saying, okay, the Herbert Hoover
(35:01):
becoming president. No one knows that the Great Depression is
on the way, or we'll have the magnitude of possesses.
So Hoover still has a clean name at this point,
and the secretary of the Interior, Notorious Brown Knowser Ray L. Wilbert, says, hey,
because of what Hoover did when he was a secretary,
(35:22):
let's name the structure the Hoover Dam. And he says
this at the dedication in nineteen thirty. He just floats
it as an idea or has this like been like
fully vetted at this one? That seems like a real
overstepping if not.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
But I gotta say, I mean, maybe this is just
you know, history embedding itself in our consciousness. But like,
the Coolidge Dam doesn't nearly have the same ring to it.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
It's weird too because it doesn't. It has the same
double O. Yeah, but the g is throwing it off.
That's what it is, the Coolidge Dam. It feels wrong
Hoover Dam. The emphasis, the way the syllables play with
one another. Good branding, I would argue, I.
Speaker 5 (36:02):
Mean, Coolige, you wouldn't want anything named after himself. That's
just how Coolidge was.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Coolidge was that cool. He was really cool and he
didn't want any attention paid to him.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Ever, his autobiography is like a haikup and a drawing.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
It is the shortest autobiography any president. Of course, it
is the shortest one. I have that fact in an upcoming.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Perfect You've got me intrigued, Maxleene to find out more
about this Coolidge fellow. Uh.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
I can't wait interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
I can't wait till we get to the you Lewis
joke hold the phone or damn it ding dong?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
This is uh, this is way more ridiculous than I
think we thought. And as you can hopefully tell ridiculous historians,
the three of us are over the moon, over the
hoover to be hanging out once again.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
So uh nol.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
We talked off air, and this is going to be
a two part yes, a uh preemptive post emptive two parter.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
I don't know. We sort of had an inkling.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
But but like I say, at the end of the show,
who knew that this, this damn would yield so much
interesting conversation?
Speaker 1 (37:06):
And I think, yeah, sure we had some size. We
talked about some video games. There isn't that bad that
we're happy now? Yeah, you do want us to be happy.
We want you to be happy. Too.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Ridiculous the story, and so we're gonna give you this
in some little kind of nuggety bite sized portions.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
And to jump in here, I guess gotta get air
out of beef right here. The biggest, the biggest teas
river in this country. It is the Columbia River. You
guys know, the Columbia River.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Beefing with the river.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
Listen, listen to all right, I bet, I bet you
guys know. I love Portland. I actually did not go
to Portland this year. But Portland is the Columbia River,
and it goes out to the Pacific Ocean. It's like,
you know, even with the porter. So I'm driving from
Seattle to Spokane, Spokane with Spokane and I'm over driving
there this giant, beautiful river.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
I'm like, what is that? And it's like, wait, that's
the Columbia River. Why is it here?
Speaker 5 (37:57):
So it basically goes down at a forty five degree
from the north northwestern part of Washington down to basically
the corner of the eastern corner of Washington and Oregon.
It says, psych and just go straight back out to
the ocean. It just does not want to hang out
with us in this country. It's like, nah, I'm good
because that's a very infamous one that not infamous, but
(38:19):
very famous one that the infamous duo of Lewis and
Clark took into the ocean.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
So Max is angry at a river. That's one of
our post Montana updates.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
And we are.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
We are, as you said, we are excited to return
to the Hoover Dam later this week. I believe we'll
make it a Hoover week in the meantime. Thank you
so much the super producer, mister Max River Hater Williams.
Thank you as always to Jonathan Strickland aka the Columbia
River of Ridiculous History. Thanks to let's see who else,
(38:53):
Herbert Hoover, I guess.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
Oh boy, that guy. And Calvin Coolich, the one cool cat,
one cool press. We like him, at least Max does.
I've been tempted to look deeper into it. And also,
you know, die in a fire Woodrow.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Wilson, and thanks of course Alex Williams, who can.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
You may have died in a fire. We don't know
how how he died. He probably died cozy in a bed.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
He died, he died of the fire and his soul.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Thanks also to Alex Williams for the slap and bop
that we have loved for several years ago and now heaves.
Jeff go Christo rossi otis here in spirit, Gabelusier, our
research associates, is Jeff and doctor Z, all of the
ridiculous historians who make these shows possible, and Noel. Thanks
to you and to you as well, my friend. We'll
see you next time. Folks.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Before we do our regular stuff. We
gotta tell you it is good to be back. It's
super producer Max. What's mister Noel Brown?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Dude?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I was just doing that like Chris Farley, get an
excited thing, you know where I'm like on my face,
like moving my head all around, you know, getting all
pumped up for Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
We took a little.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Bit of a micro hiatus, not what like normal people
would call an actual hiatus, but I think we took
a week of classics or we intersperse some in there
who actually knows what well Max does.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
And they called me ben Bullet.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
It is I Noel Brown, Max. What happened exactly? How
the schedule get kerfuffed?
Speaker 4 (01:08):
We we did.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
Three classics, but it has been a long time since
the three of us been. I remember we recorded something,
was it Aaron Burr?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (01:21):
And then walking away, I looked at Nola, I'm like,
hey man, it's gonna be like the last time we
were recording until November, and I.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Down we embraced It was a very tender moment and
went to a hot tub.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I'm sure so well.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
Ben looked out the window with his hand on the
window being set.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
That's very kind.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
As we all remember, it was actually my nipple that
I was putting on the glass, of course, and then
I put my.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
Clean We don't want to point out that you were,
you know, indecently, right, right, So.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I don't think a nipple is considered in it's but
it's also, let's just really quickly, sorry, gonna gonna stand
on a pedestal hill.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Shit, Why are women's nipples off off limits because of
the Puritans? That's bolt crap.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
And I'm not saying that from a perspective of horniness.
I'm saying it from a perspective of equal nippleness, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
So couldn't we say damn Puritans?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
We could say damn Puritans, And it turns out we
have a reservoir of water and damn based punge.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
I'm a big fan of pronouncing reservoir like memoir, like
like in a very like high falutin French kind of way.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Are we supposed to say reservoir?
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I mean, that's you know, maybe that's americanized I don't know,
but that's how I would typically put a hard R
on the end. But it does feel like a French
word etymologically speaking. So I think you're absolutely in the
right and I'm a big fan of it.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, I feel you, man.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
And maybe it does sound a little high falluting to
our fellow Americans. See I would say high fallutin so so, folks, Uh,
real quick, just so you know, we as you could tell, hopefully,
the energy is contagious. The enthusiasm here is real. And
sincere Noel just got back from Nashville, Max, you were
(03:10):
on a walk about through the Pacific Northwest. I was
out so far west that it's the East for a while.
And before we did any of that, we went to
Las Vegas, which we mentioned in previous episodes, and peek.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Behind the curtain. Noel, you know this well, one of.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
The We're not divas folks, by the way, in the
entirety of the network. We are so we are such
go with the flow guys that we always we always
try to make things work the weirdest thing. So it
was odd for one of us to put in a
bit of a diva esque caveat or fine print and
(03:50):
say we're only going to Vegas if you let us
rent a car to see the Hoover Dam.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Hoover Dam or bust, I believe is the way you
put it.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It was.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Yeah, But let me tell you as I think I
can speak for all of us and saying that we
had a really fun time in Vegas. I think you'd
been before, but I'd never been, and it was the
vegasness of it all was a delight. I had a
good time, won a little money, lost a little money,
saw some shows, made some friends, made some memories, you know,
(04:21):
played some slots, a little blackjack. Our hotel had been hacked,
so our lights were sort of not fully functioning. It
was a little bit of an odd time. But of
all the things that we experienced in Vegas, I would
say our trip out to the Hoover Dam, which was
the first time I'd never really driven through proper desert
desert like you know, been to Los Angeles, been to
No cow so Cal holiday inn, but had never driven
(04:45):
through the actual desert, you know, where the bodies are
buried in Casino, and that in and of itself, just
to the getting to the.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Hoover Dam was awesome.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
And then as you're grounding these like switchback kind of
corners you see in the distance, this thing that I
believe Paul we were traveling with, said something like, it's
like more real than real, Like it looks like like
a video game. It's so the way we're used to
seeing these types of grand you know, set pieces literally
(05:13):
is in games or in movies. So to see something
that's this expansive vista of this man made harnessing of nature.
I know, I sound like I'm really towing the current
line here, but it's awesome and it is like almost
this uncanny valley vibe. To see this thing in person,
it was spectacular, is what I'm getting.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I had a great time.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I yeah, I'm so glad to hear that.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
We were fortunate enough to go with, as you mentioned,
our pal super producer and stuff they'll want, you know,
Paul Decant, Matt, Frederick our Ryder Die and uh one
of our emperors of sound cues here, Max, who very
much missed. We rounded the corner just as you said, Noel,
and the sheer immensity of it one of my one
(05:58):
of my I were the diva by the way, I was, Yeah,
I was the one who said yeah, I was the
one who said, well, I told our bosses we would
only go if it was it was. Actually, it was
a very uncharacteristic move for me because I didn't check
with anyone internally, So.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
You think it was more of a gentle request and
or you didn't tell it to anybody.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
But it makes for a good story, I I texted Will.
But but the cool thing about this, oh, I've got
to say it. Uh. I think it was my dad
who told me the first time he saw the Hoover Dam,
he was struck by the sheer audacity of it. He said,
it was as though a man had spat in the
face of God. And I was like, whoa a million dude.
(06:43):
And that's what it's all about.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
It's like harnessing this natural you know feature the Colorado River,
these rushing waters and like and you know, you think
about that kind of technology and the ingenuity and ability
to you know, kind of innovate in such a way,
and all this took place and what like the.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Twenties, Yeah, like the early nineteen hundreds, and you nailed it.
Our story starts with the Colorado River. The Colorado River
is huge. It's well over fourteen hundred miles long fourteen
hundred and fifty miles long. It is the lifeline for
(07:21):
the American Southwest and the West in general, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona,
Nevada or Nevada, we know in California as well as
two states in Mexico. This is where the great the
Colorado River made the Grand Canyon.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah, and the Grand literally sliced over time through these
rocks and made this incredible feature, which really speaks to
the power and like the absolute you know, just might
of this natural resource, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, So of.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Course man is immediately not going to be satisfied with that.
We got to figure out how can we make this
thing work to our benefit, which is you know, understandable.
This is a very arid and inhospitable region.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
And also it's so people have lived in this area
for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, but due
to the exact nature of the environment what you're describing inhospitable.
Due to that, the population has always been limited because
there are only so many resources to go around. America
(08:29):
as a country takes that personally. So they were looking
at ways to enable large massive communities and agricultural interests.
And that's why right now, thanks to the Colorado River
and the Hoover Dam, this is the water source for
more than twenty five million people. It irrigates three point
(08:53):
five million acres of farmland. You can learn all about
this in an incredibly cartoonish propagandistic film they make a
watch before the tour, Noel.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Can you describe that one a little bit?
Speaker 3 (09:05):
It's just, you know, lots of buzz phrases like the
ingenuity of the human spirits, you know, and man's great
desire to tame nature, you know, stuff I'm paraphrasing, but
stuff like that black and white footage, a lot of
like ken Burns affect still, you know, kind of zoom
ins of like all these archival photos of men.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
I mean, that's just what it was.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
It was men working on this insane project, which we're
going to get into some of the particularities of the
insanity and ridiculousness. Because you're right, Ben, the word your
dad used audacity. It is like, how dare you think
that you could do this? You know, but also good
job for doing it. But then of course you got to,
(09:50):
you know, break a few eggs to make a Hoover dam.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yes, the Colorado River has a street name in the
Halls of Power. It's nicknamed the River of Law because
of all the legal disputes that have involved what happens
to the water over the decades. It is now one
(10:13):
of the most highly controlled rivers in the world. And still,
whatever the points may be about controversy and audacity, it
is true. Without the Hoover Dam, the West as we
know it, the United States, for sure, would be fundamentally different.
And they're going to use a different f word there,
right right, And it all happens because of a disaster.
(10:37):
So rewind the clock back with US folks or the VHS.
That's a very mixed turn of phrase. Anyway, go back
to the early nineteen hundreds, just as you were saying, no,
it's the turn of the twentieth century. Farmers are trying
to divert the Colorado River to these nascent and emergent
(10:57):
Southwestern communities, and at first they do it with canals,
and they totally drop the ball because the Colorado River,
like any river of its size, it's not necessarily one
hundred percent clean operation. It gathers a lot of debris
and silt and dust and animal excrement as it flows downstream.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
That's right, So that downstream exactly ben So this can
be a problem specifically involving the Imperial Alamo Canal that
is constructed. So all of this silt, which is if
you remember back to I guess physical science maybe or geology.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I took geology in college, which was fine.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
We went to Stone Mountain and looked at like rock rocks,
you know what do they call those cross sections and
things like that. So silt is literally it's kind of
just sand, but it's sand and particulate matter that is carried.
It's a load, you know, like basically it's a It
is a lot of volume of this stuff that can
be suspended in water and then it kind of gets
(11:59):
to pose. So that's also what can sometimes create like
river beds, river banks and things like that. It'll get
carried and deposited. But that can be a real problem
if you're not taking into account you know, what this
is actually doing for the flow of the river, right,
because the river, you know, some of them are wider
than others, but it's not the ocean. I mean, it
(12:20):
is a winding path and if it gets kinked up,
much like a clogged artery in the human body.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
That can cause some real problems downstream. Oh yeah, Eventually
what happens is you've no longer redirected the water. You
have built a wall to prevent the passage of that
precious resource and crops that were growing in this imperial
valley then, as now, they were very desperate for water
(12:48):
and the canal system. As this silt that you describe
adds up, it just couldn't deliver. So at first, authorities
try all sorts of things. At first they say, Okay,
here's what we're going to do. We're just going to
always clean our house on a schedule, will remove the
silt and will scour the channel. As anybody who has
(13:11):
tried to make a regular house cleaning schedule knows, it's
very difficult to do consistently.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Dude, I only just recently, and I'm not like Oula
laying myself yes, and it is a game changer because
I just don't ever have the wherewithal or the skills
frankly to do a very good job.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
It is not my wheelhouse.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
I do my best, and you know, and if you
have someone like that coming to help you with the
big picture maintenance. You can do little things along the way,
you know, that kind of help maintain the order.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
And it's not super expensive anymore.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
It's it's truly not, it's truly not, and it is
something that can really add to your quality of life
and peace of mind. And we're sponsored today by it.
No or not, it's just a thing, but this is
a very similar thing. It's all about maintaining your house,
you know, keeping things orderly and not letting things pile up.
Because it's just like the way dust bunnies can accumulate
in your house without you realizing it, this stuff can accumulate,
(14:06):
you know, in these bodies of water, and it's a system.
It is a very delicate balance system, and if things
are not happening correctly, aren't flowing correctly, it can cause
real problems. Enter something called the Saltan's Sea, which I
think we were all kind of fascinated by the sultans
Sink specifically, and then they'll get into that. So what
(14:29):
the Sultan's Sea is in a little bit, so they
kept the various authorities. We're trying to do things like, okay,
cleaning every day, the equivalent of doesn't work. They said,
let's dredge the area. No one has the money to
do it. The clock is ticking, the crops are going thirsty.
Enter the California Development Company.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
They're the ones who are supposed to get water to everybody,
So they become the scapegoat. And they know that if
they don't figure out an answer soon one they'll all
be fired to the impre valley will cease to exist.
So they still couldn't get For five years, they couldn't
figure this out, and a disaster strikes. Nineteen oh five.
(15:10):
The Colorado River breaks free of an overburdened irrigation channel
and it goes right to the place you're describing. If
floods an area called the Sultan Sink, and this is
disastrous for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
The railroad is huge.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
This is the age of Robert Barons and tycoons, and
even they are powerless in the face of nature, the flood,
the surrounding geography. There's a great line from an article
in the Los Angeles Herald on July twenty sixth, nineteen
oh five. It says the following. In the struggled fall,
supremacy between the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Sultan Sea.
(15:47):
The Watas have won.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Well done. The only way to read that it's true.
So the Mojave Desert to the north and the Sonora
to nor End Desert to the south border this sink
seventy meters below sea level at the very bottom of
what's called the Sultan Trough. And so by the time
(16:11):
the railroad had kind of gotten their ducks in a
row and done what they could to figure out how
to seal this overflow, eighteen months had passed and the
Sultan Sink was no longer just a little sink. It
was now what is referred to as the Sultan's Sea,
which in and of itself is a fascinating place. Oh,
(16:33):
there's actually a movie called The Sultan Sea with Val Kilmer.
And if you've ever played Grand Theft Auto five, I
want to say, what's the one with the weird methy
guy who lives I think that's six six maybe, so
that's five, okay, So he lives in this area that
is basically the Sultan Sea.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Right right, and exactly that's what it is.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I think there was a time where the trever n
It's all coming back to me.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Not Trevor young.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Heart producer who also lives in La But the Sultan
Sea as a community used to be I think more thriving,
like there was even like a little you know kind
of stuff, and it was for sure. But then over time,
because of what happened in this Sultan Sea drying up,
We're gonna that's a whole other story to say, it
does become this very sad, kind of like downtrodden community
(17:29):
as it is depicted in that.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Game and in the movie with Val Kilmer.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
But again because of this ecological disaster that was caused
by just not minding the ecological shop in terms of
like paying attention to Okay, we've done these things, these
man made things, and now we're seeing what God hath wrought,
you know what his his his wrath, hath brought down
upon us for daring to have the audacity once again
(17:54):
to interfere with the natural course of nature.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
And so for a time, the Sultan Sea was California's
largest lake. It was a monument to the mistake of
the canals. Thirty six miles long, twenty six miles wide,
This shock of water in in ordinarily parched, desiccated desert
it recreated this ancient lake that had disappeared two hundred
(18:22):
years prior. And now I'd love that you pointed that out.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Man.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Now, just as the ancient lake disappeared, the current one
is disappearing, and as it does, the waters are receding
back to reveal this toxic Dusty mad Max esque its landed.
You know, it's like Fury Road.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
There's actually a really good article on California dot Com
that's just what happened to the Salt and Sea, and
it's it has to do with too, like it became
very the salinity levels of it rose, so it just
it just began to cause all these like I think,
fishkill and like really bad problems and revealed, like you said,
(19:03):
all this overflow and runoff from fertilizer from neighboring area.
This is really a separate story, but honestly, I think
we should do an episode on the saltan Sea. I'm
pulling little bits that I remember, and I'm looking at
articles here and there, but I'm realizing now there is
a ton of information there and we can bring back
our conversation of g T A five and Trevor as well.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned that too, because I
just realized GTA six has not come out yet. They're
about to announce it.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I heard today that they were gonna potentially announce it,
and that's.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Why I jumped in.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Trailer.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
The trailer comes out in December, and I think we're
all do the GTA six fit GTAs going on ten
years since five. It's like when Street Fighter had to
learn to count to three, you know what I mean,
it took a while.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
And in the defense, rock Star is in that category
with like Bethesda, Sure and Naughty Dog where it's like,
take your time, take your time while you're making these games,
because when they make them, they're they're they're worth it.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
And and they still end up doing these whole crunch scenarios. Oh,
people are having to pee in bottles, and you know,
but I think I think that's become such a pr
nightmare that they're doing everything they can to prevent that,
if only for like, you know, not getting slammed in
the press, and because I think we're at a place now,
I hope largely where people are looking for that kind
(20:21):
of behavior and it's sort of not tolerated as much anymore.
Speaker 5 (20:24):
I've heard that at the major companies has gotten better.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
It's the small company.
Speaker 5 (20:28):
Sure, yeah, to be competitive the indie companies also.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Yeah, the danger is that you're you're working in a
market where it's someone's dream job. It is a dream
job to be a video game creator.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
So, man, we've been there with the podcast stuff, I mean,
through various ownerships, and you know where we are now.
I think we're probably in a pretty good work life
balance situation for the most part. But in the past,
when I first got this job and we were owned
by a company that shall not be named, I would
have done anything, you know, and I didn't even have
healthcare at the time. You know, I would have worked
whatever hours they asked me to. But we we digress
(21:07):
a little bit. But I think to things of value
and definitely let's put a pin in the sultancy episode.
But what happens now as a result of this, the
lessons learned perhaps from this ecological disaster.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, what happens now is the job of controlling the
uncontrollable Colorado River. This herculean task falls to the US
Bureau of Reclamation, and we hung out with some of
their representatives when we visited Hoover ourselves excellent tour guide
who was not just we asked ourselves or maybe I
asked the question, like, how does one become a tour
(21:39):
guide at the Hoover Dam And it's not all he does.
He was a historian who works for the Department of
Reclamation or whatever it is of our reclamation and he
studies the Hoover Dams job. We'll get to Matt at
the end. That guy is awesome. Shout out Hoover Matt.
Whope you're listening. So, feaced with this nigh impossible task,
the Bureau of Reclamation has a They have a bit
(22:03):
of what Star Trek would call this for umax, a
kobyashi maru, which means there is an unsolvable scenario and
so spoiler they captain kirk it. They said, look, if
the problem without if the problem is we understand it
is the following constraints, let's step back and let's change
(22:24):
the constraints. So let's stop trying to do individual canals.
Let's figure out something that will be to the benefit
of all. And that's where we introduce in nineteen twenty two,
the Bureau director Arthur Powell Davis.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yeah, yeah, first of all, can we just talk really quickly.
The idea of a dam is something that occurs naturally
as well. You know, beavers make them, you know, beavers.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Who famously saw water living on its own and said
fuck that, nah, exactly, we got to do something about this.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
But it's essentially just building a wall wall not not
made of water, but in the water, that separates a
body of water.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
You didn't have to but that there here a dam
is about to wait. Back beat, the beaver's about to eat.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Now he's got to let these beavers eat. That's partially
probably why they build the damp. But it's just, you know,
a thing that separates a body of water into sections,
and it raises the water level on one side and
lowers it on the other side. And then that's the
most if I'm not mistaken, the most fundamentally basic version
of what this is, and it's being it's been done,
(23:36):
you know, it's a low fi technique that has been
done for hundreds and hundreds of years, if not thousands
of years, of course, so this what we're talking about,
is the like the most extra plussed up version of that.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
So American. It's clearly from the same country that will
later go on to say, cocaine's okay, but what if
we kicked it up a notch, you know what I mean,
Like that's a crack joke, which I did not expect
in today's episode.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
You're you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Also, just to set back for a sec, Max, did
we get the Kobyashi Maru reference correct?
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Ben?
Speaker 5 (24:09):
You nailed it one hundred percent correct, even the Captain
Kirk reference about how because you know he cheats the system,
he's the only ones ever succeeded in the Kobyashi Maru
is because he changed the problem.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
Because because yeah, it's a no win situation.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
So the Kobashian Maru is there's a ship over the
border outside of the Federation space. It's like a civilian
ship being attacked by Klingons. So you can go in
and save the ship, but your ship will get blown up,
or you can leave them outside of Federation space and
they get blown up.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
You could have just said, yes, Max, nosolutely.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
We did an episode about the origins of Star Trek.
Speaker 5 (24:47):
This has been I have high I've hijacked this all right, No,
this is gonna be ridiculous Star Trek history by the end.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Nol, what do you think does that get the sound cue.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Oh yeah, I what else is it for if not
that Max with the facts.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Of phone and he drops in the knowledge.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Just for you.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
So good, there we go, So back to back to
the setup that you've been you have been attempting to
do for like five minutes. Now, our Captain Kirk here,
(25:31):
Arthur Powell Davis. He makes this audacious proposal and he says, look,
we're going to go to the Black Canyon right there
on the border of Arizona and Nevada, because we not
just geography, but politics become involved here. We need it
to be something that gives every state a stake in
(25:52):
the agreement. And so he says, we're going to build
this thing. I call it the Boulder Canyon Project, and
then he does Simpson's monoail speech. It's gonna control flooding
and irrigation. We're gonna make money by generating sully hydro
electric power.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Yeah, it sounds like a bit pie in the sky,
you know, but it's it's not.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
It wasn't.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
I mean, we'll get to that. It is definitely a
big swing. As they like to say. Some people, I
think I don't know who these people are. Some people
say these things it was a big idea, you know,
and this was the kind of the era of big ideas, right,
wasn't this sort of approaching kind of new deal type
stuff or was that later a new new.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Deal comes out in the Great Depression as a as
a move of desperation. That's right, But this is but
this is eleven years after this.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
But what I'm saying is.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
It's almost like a pre like you know, version of that,
because this is gonna create a ton of jobs. This
is gonna like you know, this is this is infrastructure city. Man.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Like, this is literally as big as it gets, right.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
Yeah, and you think about it, this is not that
far after Panama Canal, which you know has a billion
problems about it and stuff like that, but like, you know,
another massive infrastructure task the United States took on.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
So on the one hand, it's functional as hell, that's
the idea. It's technically got the ability to pay for itself,
and it represents this thing. It's like this great American
ideology kind of writ large you know in project form.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
A man a plan a Canal Panama. Right there, you go,
that's the that is that man damn a, thank you, ma'am. Yeah,
the Hoover Dam and way less Hoover Dam also way
less ethically fraud than the Panama Canal.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
It must be said so because there were political ramifications
to the Panama Canal in terms of like other countries
and partnerships and some potential shady dealings.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah again, maybe that's another I don't know if we've
done a Panama Canaler.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
I have not.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
And one of the big questions is whether that's better
as a ridiculous history or.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Episode.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
That's a good point. That's a good point. So at
this point it's just over, Oh yeah, good, okay, done right.
Un So this point it's like a twinkle in the
eye of this fellow.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Right, And he says, and they say, they say, very well, Davis,
but uh, let's talk turkey.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
What it costs?
Speaker 1 (28:16):
What well it's costs. And he says, okay, one hundred
and sixty five million dollars and he lets the silence
ride out in the boardroom. We imagine because if you
do an inflation calculator, oh boop, one hundred and sixty
five million dollars in nineteen twenty two, A.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Bee boop is drummer all look at this number. I
had a hard time even saying it out loud because
I was is that a trillion? Or I think it's
three billion, twenty two million, nine hundred and twenty seven thousand,
six hundred and seventy eight dollars and fifty seven cents.
You always got to wonder where the fifth cents comes from,
Like you think they just round it up or down
at that point, you know.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Good lord. But the thing is, this is like over time,
right and again, it's gonna pay for itself, I swear.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Plan.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
So, yeah, you're right, that's that's a tall milkshake for sure.
And lawmakers were rightly concerned about this because really what
they're talking about is paying money today, a great deal
of money, for the promise of a recouped investment in
the future. So that might only pay you next week today, Yes,
(29:34):
just so. And so there are seven states in the
overall river drainage area. Six of them Colorado, Wyoming, Utah,
New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada are worried, and they're saying
something that is still a problem today. They say, hey, guys,
(29:54):
we're top of the line politicians, so we know how
Macanese work. We're worried that most of the water here
is going to go to California, and that's a fight
that continues now in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Literally called the Golden State, you know. I mean it
feels like the favorite you know child here. It's also
quite large and quite economically important, right yeah, it's massive.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
It's almost a country unto itself in many ways.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
So the understandable and as we know, you know, we
talked about this on stuff that I want you to
know a lot, and probably on this show as well,
the idea of water wars and the idea of water
being one of the most precious life giving resources that
there is relatively a finite amount of and that you
have to divert. And now we were already talked about
(30:46):
this at the beginning of the show. This is an
area that like is this stuff is in precious little supply,
so this is a big deal. They're like, how are
we gonna make this under the control of the man
and then still expect that our community are going to
be taken care of and trust that that's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Yes, that is a perfect description, and so things kind
of get locked. Landline, he need some assurances assurances. So
fast forward. There's a guy who is famous in musicals
like Annie. He is at the time Secretary of Commerce.
His name Herbert Hoover. He is the deal maker. He's
(31:27):
the rain man for this. He's the Donald Trump, who
is actually pretty good at what he does. Yeah, he's
the rain maker. Excuse me, rain man, different movie. So
he goes to the he creates the Colorado River Compact,
and this divides the water proportionally among the seven states
with assurances for the future. Honestly, though, his solution is
(31:50):
somewhat of a long term band aid for everyone involved,
because whenever the states raise a problem, like the concern
about California mooching up all the water, he gets the
groups to agree that they're gonna consider themselves two big groups,
basically a group of states on one side of the dam,
(32:11):
a group of states on the other side of the dam.
And he says, look, guys, in the future, just sorted
out between your two groups, that'll be perfect. Uh, you know,
he's sort of like states rights stuff, right yeah, yeah,
And history would prove him woefully incorrect, if not purposely
a bit deceitful. So this legal this makes him a
(32:33):
little happier, a little closer to the finished line, but there's.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Still just like a heroic gulp of coffee. Yeah, I'm sorry,
I just had to call that. It was just like
a head back.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
He knows what the gulp?
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Yeah yeah, I'm preparing to edit this one.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
He knows what's yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
So thanks bro. So we haven't beat that much. We
beat once for a curse word that people stay in,
but I I stand by it. So. Uh, there's a
guy named President Calvin Coolidge. He is on the way out.
And as we know, when a president is on the
way out in the United States, they have they have
(33:12):
a weird redistribution of their powers. So if you're the
lame duck scenario, if you're a lame duck president, you
can lose a lot of your deal making ability in Congress,
but you gain a lot of agency because you don't
have to worry about re election.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
You could again, you can make some big swings that
you maybe would not have otherwise made for fear of
political fallouts.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
I'm gonna pardon everybody, you know what I mean. Let
me green light every project, Pitch it to me, pitch it.
It's basically the that don't give a era of a
particular president. I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
Yeah, And I just have to say this real quick. Yes,
Calvin Coolidge was awesome.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Okay, people are wondering why Max has aired this opinion
versus what is it Woodrow Wilson.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
Who is the worst? Yeah, yeah, he's the worst.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
He's like Franklin Pierce bad. But yeah, but Calvin Coolidge,
you'll see why where we'll talk a little bit more
about him in the future spoiler slash foreshadowing.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
So I actually like a Republican. It's weird.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
So calvi us the thing as in true for sure. Well,
I agree with Eisenhower on several points, especially when he
was out an outgoing president. I like ike.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yeah, well a lot of people did, unless they were
on the wrong side of war with him.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
But Calvin Coolidge, all right, so he's on the way out.
He is flipping the bird to all sorts of established things.
He is green lagging stuff left and right. It is
Coolidge who authorizes the Boulder Canyon Project in December nineteen
twenty eight. And so everybody's saying, okay, the Herbert Hoover
(35:01):
becoming president. No one knows that the Great Depression is
on the way, or we'll have the magnitude of possesses.
So Hoover still has a clean name at this point,
and the secretary of the Interior, Notorious Brown Knowser Ray L. Wilbert, says, hey,
because of what Hoover did when he was a secretary,
(35:22):
let's name the structure the Hoover Dam. And he says
this at the dedication in nineteen thirty. He just floats
it as an idea or has this like been like
fully vetted at this one? That seems like a real
overstepping if not.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
But I gotta say, I mean, maybe this is just
you know, history embedding itself in our consciousness. But like,
the Coolidge Dam doesn't nearly have the same ring to it.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
It's weird too because it doesn't. It has the same
double O. Yeah, but the g is throwing it off.
That's what it is, the Coolidge Dam. It feels wrong
Hoover Dam. The emphasis, the way the syllables play with
one another. Good branding, I would argue, I.
Speaker 5 (36:02):
Mean, Coolige, you wouldn't want anything named after himself. That's
just how Coolidge was.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Coolidge was that cool. He was really cool and he
didn't want any attention paid to him.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Ever, his autobiography is like a haikup and a drawing.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
It is the shortest autobiography any president. Of course, it
is the shortest one. I have that fact in an upcoming.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Perfect You've got me intrigued, Maxleene to find out more
about this Coolidge fellow. Uh.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
I can't wait interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
I can't wait till we get to the you Lewis
joke hold the phone or damn it ding dong?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
This is uh, this is way more ridiculous than I
think we thought. And as you can hopefully tell ridiculous historians,
the three of us are over the moon, over the
hoover to be hanging out once again.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
So uh nol.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
We talked off air, and this is going to be
a two part yes, a uh preemptive post emptive two parter.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
I don't know. We sort of had an inkling.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
But but like I say, at the end of the show,
who knew that this, this damn would yield so much
interesting conversation?
Speaker 1 (37:06):
And I think, yeah, sure we had some size. We
talked about some video games. There isn't that bad that
we're happy now? Yeah, you do want us to be happy.
We want you to be happy. Too.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Ridiculous the story, and so we're gonna give you this
in some little kind of nuggety bite sized portions.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
And to jump in here, I guess gotta get air
out of beef right here. The biggest, the biggest teas
river in this country. It is the Columbia River. You
guys know, the Columbia River.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Beefing with the river.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
Listen, listen to all right, I bet, I bet you
guys know. I love Portland. I actually did not go
to Portland this year. But Portland is the Columbia River,
and it goes out to the Pacific Ocean. It's like,
you know, even with the porter. So I'm driving from
Seattle to Spokane, Spokane with Spokane and I'm over driving
there this giant, beautiful river.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
I'm like, what is that? And it's like, wait, that's
the Columbia River. Why is it here?
Speaker 5 (37:57):
So it basically goes down at a forty five degree
from the north northwestern part of Washington down to basically
the corner of the eastern corner of Washington and Oregon.
It says, psych and just go straight back out to
the ocean. It just does not want to hang out
with us in this country. It's like, nah, I'm good
because that's a very infamous one that not infamous, but
(38:19):
very famous one that the infamous duo of Lewis and
Clark took into the ocean.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
So Max is angry at a river. That's one of
our post Montana updates.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
And we are.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
We are, as you said, we are excited to return
to the Hoover Dam later this week. I believe we'll
make it a Hoover week in the meantime. Thank you
so much the super producer, mister Max River Hater Williams.
Thank you as always to Jonathan Strickland aka the Columbia
River of Ridiculous History. Thanks to let's see who else,
(38:53):
Herbert Hoover, I guess.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
Oh boy, that guy. And Calvin Coolich, the one cool cat,
one cool press. We like him, at least Max does.
I've been tempted to look deeper into it. And also,
you know, die in a fire Woodrow.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Wilson, and thanks of course Alex Williams, who can.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
You may have died in a fire. We don't know
how how he died. He probably died cozy in a bed.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
He died, he died of the fire and his soul.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Thanks also to Alex Williams for the slap and bop
that we have loved for several years ago and now heaves.
Jeff go Christo rossi otis here in spirit, Gabelusier, our
research associates, is Jeff and doctor Z, all of the
ridiculous historians who make these shows possible, and Noel. Thanks
to you and to you as well, my friend. We'll
see you next time. Folks.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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