Las Vegas—Boulder City—Boulder Dam; 32 m. US 93-466.

Paved roadbed throughout.

Accommodations at Las Vegas and Boulder City.

US 93-466 runs southeast from LAS VEGAS, 0 m. (see Tour 3), which is on US 91 (see Tour 3). It is united with US 95 as it leaves the rapidly expanding city through a fringe of tourist camps and passes into a dry valley with the Black Mountains, a volcanic

formation that truly deserves its name, ahead on the rim of the Colorado River. In this seemingly arid area numerous wild flowers are seen in May and June, particularly brilliant after a winter with considerable rain or snow. A yellow poppy similar to the California is prominent. Among the blooms is one so rare and lovely that botanists refuse to point out its habitat lest collectors, eager to build up their herbariums by exchange, exterminate it in making up their collections. This delicate flower is the hairy white poppy, which sways lightly in the breeze. The hairs on the stem and leaves are Nature's protection against unnecessary evaporation in this land of little water. At 18.5 m. is the southern junction with US 95 (see Tour 5^?). US 93-466 begins its short climb into the Black Mountains to the divide, where sits BOULDER CITY (R), 23 m. (2,500 alt., 2,500 est. pop.).

Accommodations: Hotel, camps.

Transportation facilities: Union Pacific Railroad branch line from point 7 m. south of Las Vegas; also interstate busses, taxi service to Las Vegas, and planes for air trips.

Sightseeing and information services: Boulder Dam Service Bureau, in Boulder Theater, provides full information on construction, administration, places where Park Service guide and naturalist services are available, and shows free motion-pictures of area and construction; Grand Canyon-Boulder Dam Tours, concessionaire of the government in the Boulder Dam National Recreational Area, also has offices in Boulder Theater and conducts all-expense tours on Lake Mead and up the Colorado River, rents motor and sailboats for private use, and operates other recreational facilities such as bathhouses by the lake, lunchrooms, a camp at Pierce's Ferry Landing—end of two-day all-expense trip up Colorado—and so on. Rates for trips vary from approximately $4 for four hours—morning, afternoon, or evening—to aproximately $25 for two-day trip, It is well to make arrangements a day in advance for longer trips though near by trips can be made on short notice; some types of trips are conducted only three or four times a week.

BOULDER CITY—Was built by the Government in 1932 as construction headquarters during work on Boulder Dam and also as permanent administrative headquarters for the Reclamation and National Park Service forces in charge of operations in the area; it is as spick and span as though it were in charge of Dutch housewives. Above the wide streets, which follow the curves of the hills, are houses of varying designs on delightfully landscaped terraces. The whole city was planned in advance of construction with the idea of making it a pleasant dwelling place as well as a point from which the area and its man-made facilities could be administered efficiently. While Las Vegas residents readily acknoweldged the need for a town for people employed at the new powerhouse and dam they were bitterly opposed to its development as a recreational center as well. Their answer has been to develop their own city and points of interest near it as a counter attraction. To the present the new city has cost about two million dollars; there is no private ownership and property leases can not be taken for more than ten years, A city-manager is in charge

of dvjc administration. No gambling permits have as yet (1940) been issued.

The temperature at Boulder City has an annual range between 20 degrees above zero and 120, with a mean temperature of 45 degrees in January and 92 in July. The average summer temperature is only slightly cooler than at Las Vegas, but is 7 degrees cooler than by Lake Mead. There is a marked drop in temperature after sundown.

US 93-466 skirts the northwestern edge of the new town and starts a circuitous descent through black canyons to the river. Great long- legged steel towers are everywhere, carrying power up from ^the generating station below Boulder Dam. At 24 m. is the junction with another paved road.

Left here 5.5 m. to broad HEMENWAY WASH (bathhouses, wharves, boats, surfboards, campgrounds), chief sports center on LAKE MEAD, which was named for Elwood Mead, chief of the Reclamation Service when the project was put forward. The indigo-blue waters of the wide man-made lake, extending more than a hundred miles upstream and spreading into several canyons, are surrounded on all sides by steep rocky cliffs and ranges, some of them brilliantly streaked with red, green, yellow, and blue.

The main highway continues its curving course, descending more than a thousand feet in the few miles to BOULDER DAM (1,23* alt. at road level), 32 m.t braced across one of the narrowest parts of Black Canyon.

Close to the Nevada end of the dam is the BOULDER DAM MEMORIAL, two stylized seated figures with tall upraised wings on i large slightly raised platform with terazzo paving. Set in the pavement is a bronze diagram of the stars and planets and their courses, the positions of the stars and planets being as they were at the time the dam was dedicated.

The road crosses the top of the dam into Arizona at a point 70.6 miles northwest of Kingman, Arizona. Upstream is Lake Mead with only the tops of four round white intake towers showing above the waters. These towers, 375 feet high and 75 feet in diameter, are deceptively small when seen from the dam, to which they are connected by narrow concrete roadways. On the brink of the downstream side of the dam are four small towers providing access to the powcrplants below, where the gigantic turbines are at work.

The immensity of the dam and of the powerhouses at the base of its slanting concave apron cannot be appreciated from the roadway. Seen from above, the powerplants look like stores in a toy village though one alone is nearly a third of a mile long. The interiors of the powerhouses and their approaches have carefully worked out decorations in color. Both color and designs are of southwestern inspiration; the stylized Indian patterns have been admirably adapted.

Construction of the project, which was approved by President Coolidge on December 21, 1928, had long been promoted by southwestern interests, particularly by manufacturers wanting cheap power in the Los Angeles area, and by farm corporations as well as private

ranchers interested in Imperial Valley and surrounding areas. It was first proposed to build the dam several miles upstream in Boulder Canyon but the present site was decided on after extensive exploration. The first appropriation for construction was made in 1930 and for a time the structure was called Hoover Dam for President Herbert Hoover, in office at the time. Total cost of the whole project, including the All-American Canal to carry water into the California deserts, will probably approach $200,000,000. The power is being divided between Arizona, Nevada, and California, with the first two being permitted slightly more than a third and California nearly two thirds. Most of the drinking and irrigation water also goes to southern California. At one time there were plans for settling migrants on small ranches in the irrigated district, but this plan has been abandoned because of the size of the tracts and the capital needed for efficient farming. So far navigation, one of the objects written into the Swing- Johnson Bill under which work was authorized, has been developed only to a limited extent; this may increase if the volume of products of the district along the river make it desirable. A major industry resulting from the construction, though not seriously considered when the project was proposed, is catering to tourists and vacationists. This business is being administered by the National Park Service in an area extending eastward toward Grand Canyon National Park; the two sections together form one of the largest publicly controlled playgrounds in the world.

The first contracts on the project were signed in 1930, the first concrete for the dam was poured on June 6, 1933, and the last on May 29, 1935. The gates in the diversion tunnels were closed on February i, 1935 and the lake rose quickly to its permanent level. The first generator was placed in operation in September, 1936, and the fourth a few months later; the present units have a generative capacity of 515,000 horsepower.

The Colorado River and its deep canyons have long been a land of mystery. The upper river was first known to white men in 1540 or 1541 when Garcia Lopez de Gardenas with twelve other Spaniards made their way to the brink of the Grand Canyon and gazed awe- stricken into that abyss. They had come from Zuni in New Mexico, where the Indians told them of the canyon's wonders.

Major John W. Powell in 1869 with a party of five men underwent tremendous hardships in making the descent of the Colorado. So terrifying was the trip that three of his men deseited at Separation Canyon, on the north rim in Arizona, and attempted to scale the canyon walls. They did get out of the canyon, but on the great mesa above Indians killed them. Powell with two other men successfully navigated the remainder of the river.

In 1857, before Major Powell made his expedition, boats ascended the river for 500 miles under command of Lieutenant J. Cf Ives. Ives' steamer reached Black Canyon, where the boat almost foundered on hidden rocfct.

About 1859 Mormons of the Moapa Valley established a landing on the river, some 20 miles north of Black Canyon, under direction of Anson Call. For several years, Fort Callville, now submerged, was a loading station for boats carrying on trade with San Francisco. Samuel Adams did a regular business between these points in the Esmeralda, a boat 125 feet long. In 1868 Adams reported to the Secretary of War: "Three years ago two steamers could do the trade of the Colorado, now, seven are employed and are insufficient. Thirty- seven ships and one ocean steamer have gone to the mouth of the river within the last six months while the trade with San Francisco has increased in that same time to over $1,500,000. These are but a few of the results following the enterprise of navigating the Colorado."

The harnessing of this long, turbulent stream in its extraordinary bed has stirred imaginations everywhere. Anyone can now travel northeastward through the chasm that until 1936 had been traversed by little more than a handful of very adventurous men.