Hoover Dam & Lake Mead, Nevada, 11/24/2021
Hoover Dam is a concrete-gravity dam at Colorado River, located on the border between Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 ( same age as my mom) and was an American Icon of challenging the impossible. It was designated a National Historic Landmark for its engineering innovations.
From Google Earth, I happen to see an image of a Giant at the bottom of upstream river over while the Hoover Dam is located right at the throat of the Giant.
The Colorado River had experienced natural flood before the construction of the Hoover Dam. The dam eliminated the natural flood. Just like the Earth image shows, human conquered the devil by cutting his throat and redirecting the flow. More surprisingly, when I walked along the Memorial Bridge to observe Hoover Dam I found a breathtaking view of a Concrete Giant created by human:
The Dam makes up the upper body of the Concrete Giant, the upper water wired with electricity lines makes up the Giant's head and the lower parts of concrete make up the two legs. More over, looking at the right-lower part of the above picture, you can see another Giant's head leaning next to the left leg of the Concrete Giant.
From there, I examined the standing rocks around the Dam and the Memorial Bridge. Without surprise, many giant Rock Heads stand out and make me feel like walking through an art gallery with great rock sculptures.
Because of my interest in rocks and boulders, I noticed some interesting names here. Hoover Dam was used to be named as Boulder Dam because it is near Boulder Canyon. and the town near Hoover Dam was named as Boulder City. There are two islands in the middle of Lake Mead which is formed by Hoover Dam, one is called Big Boulder Island and the other is Little Boulder Island ( as shown in above picture. Boulder always reminds me of Asteroids flying down to the Earth from space. This make more sense why we chose this location to build the important dam as early as 1900. It seems to me not a decision from our minds, but a natural selection from collective unconscious.
I also noticed that the Lake Mead parking lot was decorated by Rock Heads as I saw in many other parks in Arizona.
My last note to this visit is the walls around the parking lot. They are constructed by the same rocks used for the Desert Watchtower in Grand Canyon. They are also the same rocks structure as found in Native Indian's historic architecture.
Each time like this, I feel deeply touched by nature as being said: " People Change, Things go wrong, just remember life goes on..."
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