Hoover Dam
Explore the history of Hoover Dam, constructed in the 1930s on the Colorado River, in these books at the Library.
Hoover Dam: An American Adventure
By Joseph E. Stevens
This “riveting history that reads like a novel” (Publishers Weekly) tells the complete story of the Hoover Dam construction project from its conception through its opening.
Building Hoover Dam: An Oral History of the Great Depression
By Andrew J. Dunar and Dennis McBride
Andrew J. Dunar and Dennis McBride skillfully interweave firsthand accounts of a fascinating group of eyewitnesses in this engaging oral history of the '31ers who built Hoover Dam and the women who shared their lives.
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
By Marc Reisner
This history of the struggle to discover and control water in the American West is a tale of rivers diverted and damned, political corruption and intrigue, billion-dollar battles over water rights, and economic and ecological disaster.
Big Dams and Other Dreams: The Six Companies Story
By Donald E. Wolf
In this freewheeling saga of American industrial might, civil engineer Donald E. Wolf tells how a giant combine of firms, Six Companies, built the great Hoover, Bonneville, and Grand Coulee Dams and laid the foundations for the Golden Gate and San Francisco Bay Bridges. Then, as the Second World War threatened, the Six Companies executives - in new, ever-changing combinations - undertook ever more spectacular projects. Together they were to play a major role in developing the modern American West, through the wide variety of their enterprises at home and overseas.
Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West
By Donald Worster
The American West, blessed with an abundance of earth and sky but cursed with a scarcity of life's most fundamental need, has long dreamed of harnessing all its rivers to produce unlimited wealth and power. Rivers of Empire tells the story of this dream and its outcome. Donald Worster, a professor of history at the University of Kansas, is considered one of the fathers of environmental history.
Water and the West: The Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West
By Norris Hundley, Jr.
This classic account of the numerous struggles – national, state, and local – that have occurred over western American water rights since the late 1800s also traces the continuing battles raging over the West's most valuable, and contentious, resource.
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