November 16, 2023 • 32 mins
As the railroads tried and failed to control flooding in the Salton Sink, state and federal leaders realized America needed a bigger solution. With the Great Depression in full swing, workers from across the country traveled to Vegas in hopes of working on the Hoover Dam. In the second part of this week's two-part episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore the construction of this modern marvel -- and bust some of the most popular Hoover myths along the way.
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Episode Transcript
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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. This is part two of the Hoover Damn.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Damn, Damn, Damn. I wish I was your love? Remember
that song Sophie? Was that Sophie B. Hawkins? Jam? I
think it is? It is.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
She's in an episode of Community.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Uh huh, she's just good, that's right.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
M h.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
It's the gas leak season though, so that's why none
of us were remembering it fair enough.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Speaking, remember it, I forgot the shout out. I'm the
research associate for this and so, as always, send your
complaints to our complaint department, Jonathan Strickland at iHeartRadio dot com.
Let's do the damn thing, all right. The Great Depression
is a thing. It does happen, it unfolds, and this
is terrible for the United States. This is also terrible
(01:18):
for the Western world in general, if we're being honest.
But it is a silver lining for what we call
the Hoover dam because hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
people looking for work, the Great Age of the Hobo,
they descend on the Las Vegas area because they hear
(01:39):
the government is hiring and they're going to pay you
an honest wage. Not enough to become a millionaire or
a robber baron yourself, but enough to have a place
to live and make sure you and your family don't starve.
And of course a lot of them don't get hired.
When these guys get hired, they are moved out, unmassed
to a place called Boulder City, intentionally built community six
(02:03):
miles from the work side of the dam, which we visited.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And that's also definitely in Fallout New Vegas. Right, this
is in Boulder City like a place where you hang out.
I feel like it has to be, even if it
wasn't real. That's such a Fallout thing. It's like Rivet
City in Fallout four or no, sorry, Fallout three. And
then in New Vegas, I swear there was like Boulder City.
There's like there's a there's a sheriff kind of deal.
(02:27):
I'm almost positive, but I could be mistaken. But that's
another thing about that that film that we watched, you know,
the before very Fallout vibes very like raw, raw America
kind of stuff. But then also fall Out beautifully filters
all of that kind of flag waving sentiment through this
dystopian lens and just make ah, they're so good. I'm
(02:51):
bummed that people say Starfield sucks, but I don't know.
I think you like it, but I have I'm a
little thrown because a couple of these reviewers that I
really did are just really dumping.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Dog it on it.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
It's a it's a matter of expectations and also, uh,
to a point Max made in a previous episode, it
is a bethesta game, which means, in my opinion, it
is a crock pot game. You can eat it right
when uh right, right when the schedule says it's ready,
but it gets really good as time goes on. And
(03:24):
that's you gotta like, Nol, I know you had a
little bit of candidly put a little bit of fomo
about not being on day.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, I've never not loved one.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
You're you're You're totally in the cappird seat on it
because weight I would say, wait like a year and
then a lot of the basic fixes will come out,
which always happens with this.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I'm just heard even the story set up is a
little silly, like it's like like it's like you're a
dirt farmer and then all of a sudden you get
picked up by the spaceship and now all of a
sudden you're an explorer or whatever.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I mean. I'm just gonna say the worst part about it,
and it's that, uh my Microsoft and needs get out
of their own damn way and let it be on
PS five. Question, it's not that's so that's so ridiculous
because it was always said the entire these are long
development cycles, that it's always going to be on PS five.
Now you got me scare that Elder Scroll six is
not going to be in there because I'm not going
to get an Xbox.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I was thinking about it, but then after hearing what
I was hearing, I decided to pull back and just
play more. No Man's Sky, which is also another game
that is finally at like its peak, coming after being
out there for several years without some of the things
that were promised. But see, speaking of what was promised, now,
we promised you an episode about the Hubert, so not
a commentary on Bethesda. Right.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
So, Boulder City, if you want to go, we recommend
visiting a restaurant called the Dillinger, which was definitely an
aesthetic choice, good burgers, cool little antique store next door
that it was awesome and had all kinds of crazy stuff.
But it's the kind of place that if you look
closely enough, you'll see some problematic little black face figurines
(04:58):
and things like that. Like Nevada in California are very
interesting places because you've got your liberal hubs and then
you got your like, for lack of a better term,
more like I guess, redneck y kind of rural communities,
and there's all kinds of weird shit going on in
those pockets.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
You know, if you guys don't mind if I jump,
and I promise this is my last side. But when
I was in Montana, you know, I was stopping to
get gas. It's like you're driving through Montana. You get
gas when gas is available. Right one to its placed
in this town called Big Timber, no joke, Big Timber, Montana,
and it was a gas station, Uh you know, a
(05:38):
gift shop, a package store. The package store is mixed
with gas stations and guns. Actually it was fifty percent
guns and it's just like salt rifles sitting right everything.
You guys, You guys know me. How I my relationship
with guns. So I was very uncomfortable walking through that side,
but thankfully I found out the restroom was in the
gift shop park.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Of course, exit through the gift shop exit. Evacuate your bounce.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
That we we've got to stay there too. On a
side because just just to illustrate the way, uh, these
cultural differences can hit and we're not judging here.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
I think it was surprising for those of us in Vegas.
It was surprising for all of us. We went to
this big festival and there were a lot of big
names there TLC Sheryl Crow, et cetera, et cetera, and
I think it was Ryan Seacrest the radio host, was
one of the big MC's and he mentioned the Maderna vaccine,
(06:38):
which was the manufacturer. Maderna is a partial sponsor that festival.
And this crowd irupted in booze. They turned and we
we definitely I think all had a wake up moment there.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Oh one last side. Did you guys know Ryan Seacrest
is the most famous alum of my high school?
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (06:57):
We did, yeah about that. He's probably bragging about you
right now.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
His football jersey was up in the waylifting is that.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
When they like retire it because you're such a big deal. Well,
he's a good looking man and I'm sure it was
a fine football player and his ex talk, but what
does he know about the Hoover Dam? Not as much
as you. When we finally do this episode, it does
appear that way. But much like a lot of like
Los Alamos, you know, for example, sure they tested the
atomic bomb. Some of these long term projects, they these
(07:28):
cities like little you know, build these communities are built
around it to house and feed the workers, and it
does become almost like a barracks type situation. But Boulder
City was very much that thing, you know, and all
of these folks that were hired and took up residence
in Boulder City set to work building this dam. After
(07:51):
the government found this contractor for the what was described
as a sixty story arch style dam. Yes, and the
contract is a ordered in nineteen thirty one March of
nineteen thirty one to six different companies. And then they
actually have a believe a five million dollar performance bond,
(08:12):
which is what like that's like when you say you're
bonded for you know, doing home repairs or whatever. That's
what this is. But this is a bit heavier burden
to the point where that's why all of these firms
had to kind of pool their resources in order to
meet that benchmark for this project.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, exactly, they had to. They had to put up
the money to show that they were serious. Is really
what this means, and that is a steep amount. You know,
the first step of construction, after you get through all
the wheeling and dealing and talk in Turkey, the first
real step is blasting out those canyon walls. They have
to make four diversion tunnels for the water. We've been
(08:53):
describing dams as walls. I'm thinking now perhaps it's more
accurate to describe a dam something that turns a river
into a gated community. There are different redundancies you have
to build in in case the water rises above the
level of the dam, in case you need to bleed
off the supply in different ways. So they have to
(09:15):
build out these diversion tunnels. And the entire time they're
building this thing, this enormous, audacious, ridiculous structure, they are
facing very strict, very unsafe deadlines. We're talking stuff OSHA
(09:36):
would not approve of today. One hundred and forty degree
tunnels that's how hot they are, carbon monoxide poisoning, which
definitely got covered up by the way. Eventually this all
leads the employees to go on strike for more than
a week in what was it, August nineteen thirty one.
So it was so bad that these people who had
traveled with no other hope of employment, even they were saying, Okay,
(10:01):
we're not working until we know we're not going to die,
or at least not.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
All of us.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Oh yeah, And like we said at the top of
the show, in order to to do to mount an
audacious project of this scale, you know, there's gonna be
some literal human capital involved. And that was one of
the questions that we asked our tour guide whose name
you keep, you give him a great nickname, whover Matt.
(10:26):
We asked, you know, roughly how many how many lives
were lost in the execution of this project, And I
think it was something like only a couple of hundred
on paper, but like probably more like five or six hundred,
because some of them were very suspiciously attributed to natural causes.
(10:47):
But it may have been natural causes brought on by
perhaps the inhalation of some of these this debris and
you know, the gases and whatever. And I know we
heard one story about someone who may have been like,
you know, Edgar Allen Poe style in case alive, you know,
in concrete.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Well yeah, yeah, that's a good tease because we'll get
to that cask of a Mantilado story. Yeah, but you're right.
And also, you know, the government is being a bit
cold here. They're saying, just as we said at the top,
they're saying, well, you got to break a few eggs,
and if those eggs are human lives, we better make
(11:27):
sure this is a hell of an omelet. At the end,
like in their rationale, they could say natural causes, because
asphyxiation is the natural result of being exposed to too
much carbon monoxide. Kind of evil stuff. And they so
they complete two of the tunnels, and they use the
rock that they have taken out of the canyon to
(11:50):
form a temporary dam, like a placeholder dam, to rechannel
the path of the river in November nineteen thirty two,
and then they start clearing out the walls that are
going to be the containers of the dam, like where
the dam is anchored. So these guys are one hundred
(12:10):
feet above the canyon floor just suspended for anybody with
fear of heights cough cough, max picture that feel one
hundred eight.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Hundred, you said at you said, one hundred.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Oh, let's keep it in eight even worse.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it reminds me of those images
of folks building the skyscrapers in New York, like eating
their lunch pails, like sitting on these crazy beams. You know,
I mean like these are jobs that require bravery, you know,
absolute ability, you know, courage under fire, under under pressure,
and also you know, that's the kind of stuff that
can often be taken advantage of. And I believe there
(12:45):
were a few strikes that took place, you know, when
the when the powers that be that were in charge
of this project weren't listening to the demands of workers
and were forcing them into very very unsafe circumstances in
order to get this thing done at budget or under
budget and on time.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
I will say, the only thing crazier than those photos
of people eating on those beams is the fact that
there were allowed to bring lunch pails up there.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Yes, if that thing falls from that high.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
These are heavy, like ten lunch pails.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah, yeah, you guys, it's going to kill us one.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
You guys, you guys are catastrophizing. No, it did happen.
You're right, You're absolutely right. Lunchbox deaths were a thing
that might be an episode, that might be something we
mentioned skyscraper construction in the past. So in addition to
be one hundred day hundred feet above the canyon floor,
these guys were carrying jackhammers that weighed forty four pounds.
(13:39):
They were carrying metal poles to knock stuff loose, and
there were a lot of falling workers who died. There
was a lot of equipment that fell on people who
later tally lunch pails potentially lunch pails, excuse me, and
also a lot of rocks that fell and killed people.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
And meanwhile, as they.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Built Coffer Dam and they're building up the actual facts dam,
shout out to our power lare and vocal bomb. The
riverbed is dried on one side and this allows them
to start building the power plant and the four intake
towers and the rest of the permanent dam. They mix
cement on site. They hoisted across the canyon on these
(14:21):
twenty ton cable ways, and they give I think when
they're all rolling and they're firing on all pistons, so
to speak. A fresh bucket of concrete reaches the crews
every seventy eight seconds and they have to they have
(14:41):
to fight the heat now because concrete is putting off
heat as it cools, and it will take decades and
decades for this concrete to completely cure.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
That part was super interesting to me in our Hoover
Dam tour. What they had to do to exactly to
mitigate like you know, the just raw heat of the sun,
you know, beating down on this concrete as it dried,
because it's putting out all this energy and they had
to I think, yeah, like you said, like pump water
through it.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
That was just specifically to keep it cool.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yeah, And that was that was a whole other Yeah,
that was a whole other thing to solve a problem
that had nothing to do with like you know, ultimately
the endgame of the project.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
You know, luck, it's genius who came up with that,
who figured that out?
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Like I mean, you know, I know that a lot
of this stuff is just based on mathematics and and
you know, calculations that have been around for a long time,
and we know vast structures were you know, built much
further back in history than this.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
But I still feel like this is very, very impressive.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Again, not making excuses for how the human capital element
in this, you know, panned out. Not great, but ultimately
not awful considering what the project was, the scope of it,
and you know, ultimately the fact that it has stood
the test of time, you know, to this day.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah, and they were and also to the point about
genius and invention, sure, yes, they were using established techniques
from other projects, other engineering marvels. However, I would argue
that the scale becomes a kind of genius all its own.
That's that pipe system that we're talking about, fellow ridiculous historians.
(16:23):
That's six hundred miles of pipe just to circulate water
through the concrete blocks.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
And this is a temporary thing. And this isn't like
even necessary once the thing has cured.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Right, They built a circulatory system, is what they did
for the day on.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
It's crazy. It becomes like a living thing. And yeah,
and there's so there's an architect named Gordon Kaufman who
has made a lot of the visual renderings. Of course,
Gordon is not going to be laying concrete himself, but
he says, yeah, let's emphasize how ridiculously big this thing is.
(16:59):
So all his renderings kind of showcase the mass of
the structure. And that's why you can see that whole
curved face of the dam and there's not a decoration
on it. It's just block after a cyclopean block of concrete.
And the power plant has horizontal aluminum thins for windows,
(17:22):
which is very you know, futuristic at the time, very
space age, though they wouldn't have used the word. And
there there is one thing we have to note. Then
you'll see it anytime you take a tour.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
The interior has some esthetic touches that are meant to
pay homage to Native American cultures. I say homage, is
that like oh.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
No, no, no, no, I would home.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
No one would ever say anything other than homage.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
In my opinion, I've never heard anybody if someone said homage,
I would I would look at them Sideways'd be like
saying vague instead of exactly, or like a salve instead
of salv Oh. Yeah, I think I think I can
go either way too. But I have been been mocked
for saying south. But I believe again Hoover Matt when
(18:08):
he was giving us a tour of the power plant.
There were two specifically mentioned, a Native American kind of
like tile pieces on the floor that that were, you know,
very much a nod to to the you know, the
indigenous people of this part of the country, and also
I believe we're kind of a nod to the grandiosity of.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
The project as well.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I can't quite remember what was depicted, but there were
two big mosaic floor tile pieces right around those.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
They're not reactors, those turbines.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, power.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah, you're absolutely right, And there's a little bit of
a I mean not a little bit. I think there's
quite a bit of irony or paradox to those homages
because the you know, these designs are put in place
almost like lip service, while at the same time the
federal government is taking traditional sources of water from indigenous communities.
(19:05):
It's like, I don't know, it's sticky, it's a sticky wicket.
But yeah, to your point, Noel, they were adaptations of
pima ocamma and members patterns, motifs from pottery baskets and
sand paintings from people traditionally living in the Colorado Watershed
(19:28):
and Now what we see is the formation of another lake.
It is like the younger, less evil brother of the
Salt and Sea, Lake Mead. Lake Mead is starting to form.
And by the time and the vital block of concrete
(19:48):
is laid in nineteen thirty five. Now the dam is
seven hundred and twenty six feet above the canyon. September thirtieth,
twenty thousand people get together. There's another guy who's president.
His name Franklin Roosevelt. They're commemorating the completion of the dam.
We're talking five million barrels of cement, forty five million
(20:10):
pounds of steel, rebar reinforcement steel. Excuse me. And at
this point this thing has six point six million tons
of concrete. It is the tallest dam in the world.
If you took yeah, if you took the same amount
of concrete, you could pave a road from San Francisco
all the way to the Big app.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
It's incredible. And I guess, I mean, you know, just
this is the the reveal of it. Driving up, not
to mention, once you get up on that observation deck.
I mean, it's like the world's largest, most insane skateboard.
You know, you know, but just like the arch of
it all, and just like the way it's drilled into
the rocks, the surrounding rocks. It almost it's it's like,
(20:58):
I think, what I really like about David lynch movies,
you know, where it's this pairing of sort of the
natural world with this industrial stuff. And I think Lynch
isn't always even doing that as like a negative commentary
on industrialization. I think he genuinely finds that hybrid kind
of form to be beautiful. And I think it can be,
you know, not only because of what it represents in
(21:21):
terms of, like, you know, the ability to harness this
stuff and the whole very grand notion of playing god,
but it looks cool and it does have these brutalists
kind of touches, you know, with the curves of it
all and the way it was designed. Yeah, it's crazy.
The Hoover Dam will leave you wordless when you see
(21:42):
it for the first time.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
I think that's fair to say.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Even just that massive love crafty andesque bridge spanning the
canyon directly after the damn, even that just boggles the
mind and leaves us in articulate. Right now, the Hoover
Dam saved the Southwest The Hoover Dam is the reason
(22:05):
cities like La Las Vegas and Phoenix are as big
as they are. It irrigates two million acres. Those turbines
you mentioned, no, there's seventeen of them. They generate just
those seventeen enough electricity to power one point three million
individual homes. It is one of America's seven modern civil
(22:26):
engineering wonders. As of nineteen ninety four, seven million people
visit it annually. Lake Mead is the world's largest wait
for it, reservoir, and ten million people visit there just
to hang out every year.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, let's say, you know, water sports and really right, right, family,
as the video shows you, it sure does. Yeah that
was part of the pitch too, right, like really the
whole like, yeah, it's all this stuff living and harmony,
you know, with nature. I think it's super cool. I
think my first awareness of the Hoover Dam outside of
like maybe a very early civics class, like an elementary school,
(23:01):
was in the movie Beavis and butt Head Do America,
where they go and visit the Hoover Dam. And of
course I think Beavis goes, is it a goddamn right,
you know? And I couldn't not think about that, But
it makes sense that they featured it because if you're
in that part of the world, Vegas, Los Angeles, this
is part of kind of southern California and that you know,
(23:24):
that stretch, it's a big deal. It's a big deal.
This thing exists and allows all of these other things
to exist. And it's all because someone kind of did
the low tech version of this, screwed the pooch, and
then we've had to figure out how to do it
right and make it last long term. And yes, labor
(23:46):
laws were a real issue back in these days, and
it was certainly was capitalizing on people's desperation, you know
who needed work. But then it did lead to I
think what you could argue were some more equitable situations
under you know, the New Deal type programs, which also
(24:07):
created like our highway systems and you know a lot
of the things that we still you know, depend on
and rely upon today. And they created a lot of jobs. Yeah,
and some people today would call socialist, which I think
is hilarious and absurd.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Well, it did save the country, regardless of people's flavor
of ideology. That fact is inescapable without the New Deal,
without those huge public works the United States would not exist.
And you know, some people don't like that, but some
people might not like gravity. It does not make gravity untrue.
(24:42):
We know we've been going long. Thanks for the smirk there, Max.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
We know we've been going long.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
This may or may not end up being a two
parter once we get to the edit. There is one tangent.
We wanted to end on the myths about the Hoover Dam,
which Noli so beautifully set up earlier in our exploration.
All right, Yes, just like Lake Linear here in the
Atlanta metro area, there was a town on the site
(25:10):
of what is now Lake Mead, The city of Saint Thomas,
Nevada was Nevada was flooded when Lake Mead was filled
and because of severe drought. You can see the ruins
of the town again. It was a Mormon or LDS
settlement on the Arrowhead Trail between Salt Lake City and
la The residents were forced out by the government during
(25:32):
an imminent domain pool in nineteen thirty five. But the
big question you're probably wondering, the big myth that we're
gonna bust with the help from our pals, superhero Hoover.
Matt the historian Hoover. Hoover, Matt's fine. All sorts of people,
as you mentioned, have claimed Hoover Dam is secretly a graveyard.
(25:52):
The idea is that construction was so phrenetic and hurried
the safety concerns were thrown out the window. That part
is true, but they'll say that people fell from the heights,
they got crushed beneath concrete or rocks, and they got ignored.
Authorities gave their family flimsy cover stories about workplace accidents,
and they said the river took the bodies. So we,
(26:13):
like you said, we quartered this incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly nice
tour guide that we're calling Hoover Matt. We asked them
all about this. Matt, if you're listening, thank you, because
we know that the four of us basically gathered in
a semi circle around you and sort it kind of
tricked you into doing an unrecorded podcast with us.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
What did Matt tell us about the Hoover Dam.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Well, I believe I alluded to it earlier, and I
hope I didn't spoil it too much, but there, you know,
the whole disparity about the reports of deaths and what
they were attributed to. I think that's something that we
could go into a little deeper here that you know,
I believe you know, what was it, something like one
hundred and fifty two hundred. You know, it seems like
really really great people were killed, you know, in reported
(27:01):
work site accidents out Again, I'm not again not trying
to every life is important, but that's pretty damn good God.
But off the record, I guess or other deaths that
were attributed to things like natural causes, perhaps you know,
heart attacks, whatever, those things could very well have been
(27:23):
brought on by some of these less than optimal working conditions.
And then I believe you asked directly if there was
any if any like urban myths or urban legends kind
of and he mentioned this kind of cask of a
Mantiado story that we mentioned alluded to earlier. You want
(27:43):
to give us a little bit more of the skinny
on that one.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah, So there it turns out that, yes, there are
inevitable fatalities during the construction. Those are almost certainly chalked
up to this, chalked up to the speed of the build.
But the as far as we can tell, we're pretty
much retrieved in every case, and experts can point to
(28:07):
most real causes of death. The biggest sticky one is
again carbon monoxide poisoning, which the government covered up. However,
the legend about Hoover Dam is a mass grave, has
an origin point. And here's how Hoover Matt puts it.
He says, all right, look, these workers were in dirty, slippery,
dangerous conditions, often at the mercy of the weather, and
(28:29):
sometimes they would take off their boots during certain activities,
air their feed out. Maybe just try to knock some
of the debris off those construction boots. One day, the
story goes and there's a photograph to prove this. Apparently
a worker's boots dropped from a platform from a great height,
just like that EMO song to land upside down in
(28:51):
newly laid concrete. So if you just look at it,
it looks like a dude was buried face down in
the concrete. The workers at the time knew no one
was dead. They thought it was a cool joke, and
so they left it there a little bit longer. It's
like cool for morale. But over time this joke without
a context, became treated as fact. And that's why you
(29:13):
hear people say Hoover Dam is like this mass grave,
a ghoulish testament to the necessity of workers' rights.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
That is not true.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
However, there is a mass grave right next to Hoover Dam,
that one we talked about and Hoover Matt confirmed it. Right, Noel,
you know I'm thinking about I.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Don't think so. No Lake Mead rights that that it's
it's more of a that is sketchier than the damn itself,
like in terms of bodies. Yeah, that's sorry where the
bodies are buried.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, we're and you pointed out, I think in an
off air conversation a while back, you were like, it's
you told me.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
I think it was doing.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
When I was still doing car stuff, we did something
on Lake Mead or underwater burials, and I think it
as you who said, oh, yeah, totally the mob. The
mob is killing people and putting them in Lake Mead.
It turns out you you were very correct on that
one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah. And also, you know, if we've seen the movie Casino,
you know they describe the desert surrounding Las Vegas as
being full of holes.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
So yeah, that's another part of it.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
But yeah, man, this is I don't know who knew
that this would be as interesting a topic as I mean,
maybe I hope, I hope. I'm not speaking for our
listeners and saying that I hope you found it interesting,
but I know the three of us did, and it was,
you know, an excellent thing to visit and also really
really pretty pretty epic to talk about.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
And Max, you've got to go with us next time,
you know, it is a great ambition of ours to
have the three of us get back on the road.
So who knows, folks, maybe maybe in twenty twenty four
we will be seeing you in person. Hope springs like
the Colorado River eternal. So thank you, as always for
(31:02):
tuning in. Big big thanks to our super producer, mister
Max big Sky Williams. Big big thanks of course to
Jonathan Strickland, ak the Quist, who else who else?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Who will oh geez, Alex Williams who composed our theme,
Christoph Frasciotis and Eves Chef Coats here in spirit. Yeah,
all the hits I think I think they've had about
covers us Edgar Jay, Edgar Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Edgar Allan Poe,
Woodrow Wilson kissed our collective grits. Yeah, yeah, EAP. That's
(31:36):
how we're for Edgar Allan Poe FDR shout out follow
the House of Usher, by the way, I know we're
past spooky season, but I.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
Just enjoyed the hell out of that.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I think it's the best thing that Mike flan again
has done, and it's a really cool reimagining of a
lot of that Poe lore. And highly recommend it if
anyone is looking for a little bit of a spook fest.
You know I always have your back on that.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
No, I believe it is always Halloween in America and
in our hearts.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
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. This is part two of the Hoover Damn.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Damn, Damn, Damn. I wish I was your love? Remember
that song Sophie? Was that Sophie B. Hawkins? Jam? I
think it is? It is.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
She's in an episode of Community.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Uh huh, she's just good, that's right.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
M h.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
It's the gas leak season though, so that's why none
of us were remembering it fair enough.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Speaking, remember it, I forgot the shout out. I'm the
research associate for this and so, as always, send your
complaints to our complaint department, Jonathan Strickland at iHeartRadio dot com.
Let's do the damn thing, all right. The Great Depression
is a thing. It does happen, it unfolds, and this
is terrible for the United States. This is also terrible
(01:18):
for the Western world in general, if we're being honest.
But it is a silver lining for what we call
the Hoover dam because hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
people looking for work, the Great Age of the Hobo,
they descend on the Las Vegas area because they hear
(01:39):
the government is hiring and they're going to pay you
an honest wage. Not enough to become a millionaire or
a robber baron yourself, but enough to have a place
to live and make sure you and your family don't starve.
And of course a lot of them don't get hired.
When these guys get hired, they are moved out, unmassed
to a place called Boulder City, intentionally built community six
(02:03):
miles from the work side of the dam, which we visited.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And that's also definitely in Fallout New Vegas. Right, this
is in Boulder City like a place where you hang out.
I feel like it has to be, even if it
wasn't real. That's such a Fallout thing. It's like Rivet
City in Fallout four or no, sorry, Fallout three. And
then in New Vegas, I swear there was like Boulder City.
There's like there's a there's a sheriff kind of deal.
(02:27):
I'm almost positive, but I could be mistaken. But that's
another thing about that that film that we watched, you know,
the before very Fallout vibes very like raw, raw America
kind of stuff. But then also fall Out beautifully filters
all of that kind of flag waving sentiment through this
dystopian lens and just make ah, they're so good. I'm
(02:51):
bummed that people say Starfield sucks, but I don't know.
I think you like it, but I have I'm a
little thrown because a couple of these reviewers that I
really did are just really dumping.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Dog it on it.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
It's a it's a matter of expectations and also, uh,
to a point Max made in a previous episode, it
is a bethesta game, which means, in my opinion, it
is a crock pot game. You can eat it right
when uh right, right when the schedule says it's ready,
but it gets really good as time goes on. And
(03:24):
that's you gotta like, Nol, I know you had a
little bit of candidly put a little bit of fomo
about not being on day.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, I've never not loved one.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
You're you're You're totally in the cappird seat on it
because weight I would say, wait like a year and
then a lot of the basic fixes will come out,
which always happens with this.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I'm just heard even the story set up is a
little silly, like it's like like it's like you're a
dirt farmer and then all of a sudden you get
picked up by the spaceship and now all of a
sudden you're an explorer or whatever.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I mean. I'm just gonna say the worst part about it,
and it's that, uh my Microsoft and needs get out
of their own damn way and let it be on
PS five. Question, it's not that's so that's so ridiculous
because it was always said the entire these are long
development cycles, that it's always going to be on PS five.
Now you got me scare that Elder Scroll six is
not going to be in there because I'm not going
to get an Xbox.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I was thinking about it, but then after hearing what
I was hearing, I decided to pull back and just
play more. No Man's Sky, which is also another game
that is finally at like its peak, coming after being
out there for several years without some of the things
that were promised. But see, speaking of what was promised, now,
we promised you an episode about the Hubert, so not
a commentary on Bethesda. Right.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
So, Boulder City, if you want to go, we recommend
visiting a restaurant called the Dillinger, which was definitely an
aesthetic choice, good burgers, cool little antique store next door
that it was awesome and had all kinds of crazy stuff.
But it's the kind of place that if you look
closely enough, you'll see some problematic little black face figurines
(04:58):
and things like that. Like Nevada in California are very
interesting places because you've got your liberal hubs and then
you got your like, for lack of a better term,
more like I guess, redneck y kind of rural communities,
and there's all kinds of weird shit going on in
those pockets.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
You know, if you guys don't mind if I jump,
and I promise this is my last side. But when
I was in Montana, you know, I was stopping to
get gas. It's like you're driving through Montana. You get
gas when gas is available. Right one to its placed
in this town called Big Timber, no joke, Big Timber, Montana,
and it was a gas station, Uh you know, a
(05:38):
gift shop, a package store. The package store is mixed
with gas stations and guns. Actually it was fifty percent
guns and it's just like salt rifles sitting right everything.
You guys, You guys know me. How I my relationship
with guns. So I was very uncomfortable walking through that side,
but thankfully I found out the restroom was in the
gift shop park.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Of course, exit through the gift shop exit. Evacuate your bounce.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
That we we've got to stay there too. On a
side because just just to illustrate the way, uh, these
cultural differences can hit and we're not judging here.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
I think it was surprising for those of us in Vegas.
It was surprising for all of us. We went to
this big festival and there were a lot of big
names there TLC Sheryl Crow, et cetera, et cetera, and
I think it was Ryan Seacrest the radio host, was
one of the big MC's and he mentioned the Maderna vaccine,
(06:38):
which was the manufacturer. Maderna is a partial sponsor that festival.
And this crowd irupted in booze. They turned and we
we definitely I think all had a wake up moment there.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Oh one last side. Did you guys know Ryan Seacrest
is the most famous alum of my high school?
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (06:57):
We did, yeah about that. He's probably bragging about you
right now.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
His football jersey was up in the waylifting is that.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
When they like retire it because you're such a big deal. Well,
he's a good looking man and I'm sure it was
a fine football player and his ex talk, but what
does he know about the Hoover Dam? Not as much
as you. When we finally do this episode, it does
appear that way. But much like a lot of like
Los Alamos, you know, for example, sure they tested the
atomic bomb. Some of these long term projects, they these
(07:28):
cities like little you know, build these communities are built
around it to house and feed the workers, and it
does become almost like a barracks type situation. But Boulder
City was very much that thing, you know, and all
of these folks that were hired and took up residence
in Boulder City set to work building this dam. After
(07:51):
the government found this contractor for the what was described
as a sixty story arch style dam. Yes, and the
contract is a ordered in nineteen thirty one March of
nineteen thirty one to six different companies. And then they
actually have a believe a five million dollar performance bond,
(08:12):
which is what like that's like when you say you're
bonded for you know, doing home repairs or whatever. That's
what this is. But this is a bit heavier burden
to the point where that's why all of these firms
had to kind of pool their resources in order to
meet that benchmark for this project.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, exactly, they had to. They had to put up
the money to show that they were serious. Is really
what this means, and that is a steep amount. You know,
the first step of construction, after you get through all
the wheeling and dealing and talk in Turkey, the first
real step is blasting out those canyon walls. They have
to make four diversion tunnels for the water. We've been
(08:53):
describing dams as walls. I'm thinking now perhaps it's more
accurate to describe a dam something that turns a river
into a gated community. There are different redundancies you have
to build in in case the water rises above the
level of the dam, in case you need to bleed
off the supply in different ways. So they have to
(09:15):
build out these diversion tunnels. And the entire time they're
building this thing, this enormous, audacious, ridiculous structure, they are
facing very strict, very unsafe deadlines. We're talking stuff OSHA
(09:36):
would not approve of today. One hundred and forty degree
tunnels that's how hot they are, carbon monoxide poisoning, which
definitely got covered up by the way. Eventually this all
leads the employees to go on strike for more than
a week in what was it, August nineteen thirty one.
So it was so bad that these people who had
traveled with no other hope of employment, even they were saying, Okay,
(10:01):
we're not working until we know we're not going to die,
or at least not.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
All of us.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Oh yeah, And like we said at the top of
the show, in order to to do to mount an
audacious project of this scale, you know, there's gonna be
some literal human capital involved. And that was one of
the questions that we asked our tour guide whose name
you keep, you give him a great nickname, whover Matt.
(10:26):
We asked, you know, roughly how many how many lives
were lost in the execution of this project, And I
think it was something like only a couple of hundred
on paper, but like probably more like five or six hundred,
because some of them were very suspiciously attributed to natural causes.
(10:47):
But it may have been natural causes brought on by
perhaps the inhalation of some of these this debris and
you know, the gases and whatever. And I know we
heard one story about someone who may have been like,
you know, Edgar Allen Poe style in case alive, you know,
in concrete.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Well yeah, yeah, that's a good tease because we'll get
to that cask of a Mantilado story. Yeah, but you're right.
And also, you know, the government is being a bit
cold here. They're saying, just as we said at the top,
they're saying, well, you got to break a few eggs,
and if those eggs are human lives, we better make
(11:27):
sure this is a hell of an omelet. At the end,
like in their rationale, they could say natural causes, because
asphyxiation is the natural result of being exposed to too
much carbon monoxide. Kind of evil stuff. And they so
they complete two of the tunnels, and they use the
rock that they have taken out of the canyon to
(11:50):
form a temporary dam, like a placeholder dam, to rechannel
the path of the river in November nineteen thirty two,
and then they start clearing out the walls that are
going to be the containers of the dam, like where
the dam is anchored. So these guys are one hundred
(12:10):
feet above the canyon floor just suspended for anybody with
fear of heights cough cough, max picture that feel one
hundred eight.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Hundred, you said at you said, one hundred.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Oh, let's keep it in eight even worse.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it reminds me of those images
of folks building the skyscrapers in New York, like eating
their lunch pails, like sitting on these crazy beams. You know,
I mean like these are jobs that require bravery, you know,
absolute ability, you know, courage under fire, under under pressure,
and also you know, that's the kind of stuff that
can often be taken advantage of. And I believe there
(12:45):
were a few strikes that took place, you know, when
the when the powers that be that were in charge
of this project weren't listening to the demands of workers
and were forcing them into very very unsafe circumstances in
order to get this thing done at budget or under
budget and on time.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
I will say, the only thing crazier than those photos
of people eating on those beams is the fact that
there were allowed to bring lunch pails up there.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Yes, if that thing falls from that high.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
These are heavy, like ten lunch pails.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah, yeah, you guys, it's going to kill us one.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
You guys, you guys are catastrophizing. No, it did happen.
You're right, You're absolutely right. Lunchbox deaths were a thing
that might be an episode, that might be something we
mentioned skyscraper construction in the past. So in addition to
be one hundred day hundred feet above the canyon floor,
these guys were carrying jackhammers that weighed forty four pounds.
(13:39):
They were carrying metal poles to knock stuff loose, and
there were a lot of falling workers who died. There
was a lot of equipment that fell on people who
later tally lunch pails potentially lunch pails, excuse me, and
also a lot of rocks that fell and killed people.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
And meanwhile, as they.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Built Coffer Dam and they're building up the actual facts dam,
shout out to our power lare and vocal bomb. The
riverbed is dried on one side and this allows them
to start building the power plant and the four intake
towers and the rest of the permanent dam. They mix
cement on site. They hoisted across the canyon on these
(14:21):
twenty ton cable ways, and they give I think when
they're all rolling and they're firing on all pistons, so
to speak. A fresh bucket of concrete reaches the crews
every seventy eight seconds and they have to they have
(14:41):
to fight the heat now because concrete is putting off
heat as it cools, and it will take decades and
decades for this concrete to completely cure.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
That part was super interesting to me in our Hoover
Dam tour. What they had to do to exactly to
mitigate like you know, the just raw heat of the sun,
you know, beating down on this concrete as it dried,
because it's putting out all this energy and they had
to I think, yeah, like you said, like pump water
through it.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
That was just specifically to keep it cool.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yeah, And that was that was a whole other Yeah,
that was a whole other thing to solve a problem
that had nothing to do with like you know, ultimately
the endgame of the project.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
You know, luck, it's genius who came up with that,
who figured that out?
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Like I mean, you know, I know that a lot
of this stuff is just based on mathematics and and
you know, calculations that have been around for a long time,
and we know vast structures were you know, built much
further back in history than this.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
But I still feel like this is very, very impressive.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Again, not making excuses for how the human capital element
in this, you know, panned out. Not great, but ultimately
not awful considering what the project was, the scope of it,
and you know, ultimately the fact that it has stood
the test of time, you know, to this day.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah, and they were and also to the point about
genius and invention, sure, yes, they were using established techniques
from other projects, other engineering marvels. However, I would argue
that the scale becomes a kind of genius all its own.
That's that pipe system that we're talking about, fellow ridiculous historians.
(16:23):
That's six hundred miles of pipe just to circulate water
through the concrete blocks.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
And this is a temporary thing. And this isn't like
even necessary once the thing has cured.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Right, They built a circulatory system, is what they did
for the day on.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
It's crazy. It becomes like a living thing. And yeah,
and there's so there's an architect named Gordon Kaufman who
has made a lot of the visual renderings. Of course,
Gordon is not going to be laying concrete himself, but
he says, yeah, let's emphasize how ridiculously big this thing is.
(16:59):
So all his renderings kind of showcase the mass of
the structure. And that's why you can see that whole
curved face of the dam and there's not a decoration
on it. It's just block after a cyclopean block of concrete.
And the power plant has horizontal aluminum thins for windows,
(17:22):
which is very you know, futuristic at the time, very
space age, though they wouldn't have used the word. And
there there is one thing we have to note. Then
you'll see it anytime you take a tour.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
The interior has some esthetic touches that are meant to
pay homage to Native American cultures. I say homage, is
that like oh.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
No, no, no, no, I would home.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
No one would ever say anything other than homage.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
In my opinion, I've never heard anybody if someone said homage,
I would I would look at them Sideways'd be like
saying vague instead of exactly, or like a salve instead
of salv Oh. Yeah, I think I think I can
go either way too. But I have been been mocked
for saying south. But I believe again Hoover Matt when
(18:08):
he was giving us a tour of the power plant.
There were two specifically mentioned, a Native American kind of
like tile pieces on the floor that that were, you know,
very much a nod to to the you know, the
indigenous people of this part of the country, and also
I believe we're kind of a nod to the grandiosity of.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
The project as well.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I can't quite remember what was depicted, but there were
two big mosaic floor tile pieces right around those.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
They're not reactors, those turbines.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, power.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah, you're absolutely right, And there's a little bit of
a I mean not a little bit. I think there's
quite a bit of irony or paradox to those homages
because the you know, these designs are put in place
almost like lip service, while at the same time the
federal government is taking traditional sources of water from indigenous communities.
(19:05):
It's like, I don't know, it's sticky, it's a sticky wicket.
But yeah, to your point, Noel, they were adaptations of
pima ocamma and members patterns, motifs from pottery baskets and
sand paintings from people traditionally living in the Colorado Watershed
(19:28):
and Now what we see is the formation of another lake.
It is like the younger, less evil brother of the
Salt and Sea, Lake Mead. Lake Mead is starting to form.
And by the time and the vital block of concrete
(19:48):
is laid in nineteen thirty five. Now the dam is
seven hundred and twenty six feet above the canyon. September thirtieth,
twenty thousand people get together. There's another guy who's president.
His name Franklin Roosevelt. They're commemorating the completion of the dam.
We're talking five million barrels of cement, forty five million
(20:10):
pounds of steel, rebar reinforcement steel. Excuse me. And at
this point this thing has six point six million tons
of concrete. It is the tallest dam in the world.
If you took yeah, if you took the same amount
of concrete, you could pave a road from San Francisco
all the way to the Big app.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
It's incredible. And I guess, I mean, you know, just
this is the the reveal of it. Driving up, not
to mention, once you get up on that observation deck.
I mean, it's like the world's largest, most insane skateboard.
You know, you know, but just like the arch of
it all, and just like the way it's drilled into
the rocks, the surrounding rocks. It almost it's it's like,
(20:58):
I think, what I really like about David lynch movies,
you know, where it's this pairing of sort of the
natural world with this industrial stuff. And I think Lynch
isn't always even doing that as like a negative commentary
on industrialization. I think he genuinely finds that hybrid kind
of form to be beautiful. And I think it can be,
you know, not only because of what it represents in
(21:21):
terms of, like, you know, the ability to harness this
stuff and the whole very grand notion of playing god,
but it looks cool and it does have these brutalists
kind of touches, you know, with the curves of it
all and the way it was designed. Yeah, it's crazy.
The Hoover Dam will leave you wordless when you see
(21:42):
it for the first time.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
I think that's fair to say.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Even just that massive love crafty andesque bridge spanning the
canyon directly after the damn, even that just boggles the
mind and leaves us in articulate. Right now, the Hoover
Dam saved the Southwest The Hoover Dam is the reason
(22:05):
cities like La Las Vegas and Phoenix are as big
as they are. It irrigates two million acres. Those turbines
you mentioned, no, there's seventeen of them. They generate just
those seventeen enough electricity to power one point three million
individual homes. It is one of America's seven modern civil
(22:26):
engineering wonders. As of nineteen ninety four, seven million people
visit it annually. Lake Mead is the world's largest wait
for it, reservoir, and ten million people visit there just
to hang out every year.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, let's say, you know, water sports and really right, right, family,
as the video shows you, it sure does. Yeah that
was part of the pitch too, right, like really the
whole like, yeah, it's all this stuff living and harmony,
you know, with nature. I think it's super cool. I
think my first awareness of the Hoover Dam outside of
like maybe a very early civics class, like an elementary school,
(23:01):
was in the movie Beavis and butt Head Do America,
where they go and visit the Hoover Dam. And of
course I think Beavis goes, is it a goddamn right,
you know? And I couldn't not think about that, But
it makes sense that they featured it because if you're
in that part of the world, Vegas, Los Angeles, this
is part of kind of southern California and that you know,
(23:24):
that stretch, it's a big deal. It's a big deal.
This thing exists and allows all of these other things
to exist. And it's all because someone kind of did
the low tech version of this, screwed the pooch, and
then we've had to figure out how to do it
right and make it last long term. And yes, labor
(23:46):
laws were a real issue back in these days, and
it was certainly was capitalizing on people's desperation, you know
who needed work. But then it did lead to I
think what you could argue were some more equitable situations
under you know, the New Deal type programs, which also
(24:07):
created like our highway systems and you know a lot
of the things that we still you know, depend on
and rely upon today. And they created a lot of jobs. Yeah,
and some people today would call socialist, which I think
is hilarious and absurd.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Well, it did save the country, regardless of people's flavor
of ideology. That fact is inescapable without the New Deal,
without those huge public works the United States would not exist.
And you know, some people don't like that, but some
people might not like gravity. It does not make gravity untrue.
(24:42):
We know we've been going long. Thanks for the smirk there, Max.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
We know we've been going long.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
This may or may not end up being a two
parter once we get to the edit. There is one tangent.
We wanted to end on the myths about the Hoover Dam,
which Noli so beautifully set up earlier in our exploration.
All right, Yes, just like Lake Linear here in the
Atlanta metro area, there was a town on the site
(25:10):
of what is now Lake Mead, The city of Saint Thomas,
Nevada was Nevada was flooded when Lake Mead was filled
and because of severe drought. You can see the ruins
of the town again. It was a Mormon or LDS
settlement on the Arrowhead Trail between Salt Lake City and
la The residents were forced out by the government during
(25:32):
an imminent domain pool in nineteen thirty five. But the
big question you're probably wondering, the big myth that we're
gonna bust with the help from our pals, superhero Hoover.
Matt the historian Hoover. Hoover, Matt's fine. All sorts of people,
as you mentioned, have claimed Hoover Dam is secretly a graveyard.
(25:52):
The idea is that construction was so phrenetic and hurried
the safety concerns were thrown out the window. That part
is true, but they'll say that people fell from the heights,
they got crushed beneath concrete or rocks, and they got ignored.
Authorities gave their family flimsy cover stories about workplace accidents,
and they said the river took the bodies. So we,
(26:13):
like you said, we quartered this incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly nice
tour guide that we're calling Hoover Matt. We asked them
all about this. Matt, if you're listening, thank you, because
we know that the four of us basically gathered in
a semi circle around you and sort it kind of
tricked you into doing an unrecorded podcast with us.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
What did Matt tell us about the Hoover Dam.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Well, I believe I alluded to it earlier, and I
hope I didn't spoil it too much, but there, you know,
the whole disparity about the reports of deaths and what
they were attributed to. I think that's something that we
could go into a little deeper here that you know,
I believe you know, what was it, something like one
hundred and fifty two hundred. You know, it seems like
really really great people were killed, you know, in reported
(27:01):
work site accidents out Again, I'm not again not trying
to every life is important, but that's pretty damn good God.
But off the record, I guess or other deaths that
were attributed to things like natural causes, perhaps you know,
heart attacks, whatever, those things could very well have been
(27:23):
brought on by some of these less than optimal working conditions.
And then I believe you asked directly if there was
any if any like urban myths or urban legends kind
of and he mentioned this kind of cask of a
Mantiado story that we mentioned alluded to earlier. You want
(27:43):
to give us a little bit more of the skinny
on that one.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah, So there it turns out that, yes, there are
inevitable fatalities during the construction. Those are almost certainly chalked
up to this, chalked up to the speed of the build.
But the as far as we can tell, we're pretty
much retrieved in every case, and experts can point to
(28:07):
most real causes of death. The biggest sticky one is
again carbon monoxide poisoning, which the government covered up. However,
the legend about Hoover Dam is a mass grave, has
an origin point. And here's how Hoover Matt puts it.
He says, all right, look, these workers were in dirty, slippery,
dangerous conditions, often at the mercy of the weather, and
(28:29):
sometimes they would take off their boots during certain activities,
air their feed out. Maybe just try to knock some
of the debris off those construction boots. One day, the
story goes and there's a photograph to prove this. Apparently
a worker's boots dropped from a platform from a great height,
just like that EMO song to land upside down in
(28:51):
newly laid concrete. So if you just look at it,
it looks like a dude was buried face down in
the concrete. The workers at the time knew no one
was dead. They thought it was a cool joke, and
so they left it there a little bit longer. It's
like cool for morale. But over time this joke without
a context, became treated as fact. And that's why you
(29:13):
hear people say Hoover Dam is like this mass grave,
a ghoulish testament to the necessity of workers' rights.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
That is not true.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
However, there is a mass grave right next to Hoover Dam,
that one we talked about and Hoover Matt confirmed it. Right, Noel,
you know I'm thinking about I.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Don't think so. No Lake Mead rights that that it's
it's more of a that is sketchier than the damn itself,
like in terms of bodies. Yeah, that's sorry where the
bodies are buried.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, we're and you pointed out, I think in an
off air conversation a while back, you were like, it's
you told me.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
I think it was doing.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
When I was still doing car stuff, we did something
on Lake Mead or underwater burials, and I think it
as you who said, oh, yeah, totally the mob. The
mob is killing people and putting them in Lake Mead.
It turns out you you were very correct on that
one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah. And also, you know, if we've seen the movie Casino,
you know they describe the desert surrounding Las Vegas as
being full of holes.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
So yeah, that's another part of it.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
But yeah, man, this is I don't know who knew
that this would be as interesting a topic as I mean,
maybe I hope, I hope. I'm not speaking for our
listeners and saying that I hope you found it interesting,
but I know the three of us did, and it was,
you know, an excellent thing to visit and also really
really pretty pretty epic to talk about.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
And Max, you've got to go with us next time,
you know, it is a great ambition of ours to
have the three of us get back on the road.
So who knows, folks, maybe maybe in twenty twenty four
we will be seeing you in person. Hope springs like
the Colorado River eternal. So thank you, as always for
(31:02):
tuning in. Big big thanks to our super producer, mister
Max big Sky Williams. Big big thanks of course to
Jonathan Strickland, ak the Quist, who else who else?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Who will oh geez, Alex Williams who composed our theme,
Christoph Frasciotis and Eves Chef Coats here in spirit. Yeah,
all the hits I think I think they've had about
covers us Edgar Jay, Edgar Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Edgar Allan Poe,
Woodrow Wilson kissed our collective grits. Yeah, yeah, EAP. That's
(31:36):
how we're for Edgar Allan Poe FDR shout out follow
the House of Usher, by the way, I know we're
past spooky season, but I.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
Just enjoyed the hell out of that.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I think it's the best thing that Mike flan again
has done, and it's a really cool reimagining of a
lot of that Poe lore. And highly recommend it if
anyone is looking for a little bit of a spook fest.
You know I always have your back on that.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
No, I believe it is always Halloween in America and
in our hearts.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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