The Hoover Dam has been called the Eighth Wonder of the World, comparable to the Great Pyramids of Egypt, and “a vision in the desert.” In the 1940s, the Hoover Powerplant was the largest hydroelectric installation in the world.
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Hoover Dam is as tall as a 60-story building. It was the highest dam in the world when it was completed in 1935. Its base is as thick as two football fields are long. Each spillway, designed to let floodwaters pass without harming the dam itself, can handle the volume of water that flows over Niagara Falls.
Today, the Hoover Dam is the second highest dam in the country and the 18th highest in the world. It generates more than four billion kilowatt-hours a year -- that's enough to serve 1.3 million people! Here's how this dam stacks up against some of the biggest dams in the world.
One of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Grand Canyon is an unbelievable spectacle of nature. It is a great, huge slash in the surface of the earth - 217 miles long, 4 to 18 miles wide and a mile deep, with the Colorado River flowing at the bottom.
World's Tallest DamToday, Hoover Dam still ranks in the top 20 of the tallest dams in the world, but only in the concrete gravity and arch categories. Many other rock and earthfill dams have surpassed Hoover in height.
There were also significant downsides to the project: Over 100 construction workers were killed, and the Dam had a large impact on the Colorado River, flooding wildlife habitats and changing its natural flow of the Colorado. Stevens notes this would not pass today's environmental impact assessments.
If the Hoover Dam ever breaks, the entire region downriver would suffer from immense flooding, a loss of available water for consumption and irrigation would create a humanitarian crisis, and the region would lose access to some power in the short term.
At the top of the dam, try pouring a bottle of water over the edge. What happens next will amaze. Due to the strong updraft at the bottom of the dam, the water actually flows upward. We can actually see this phenomenon occur in a recent video shared on YouTube.
The Seven Wonders of the World are a group of places around the globe that are considered to be of great importance. These are: The Colosseum in Italy, Petra in Jordan, Chichén Itzá in Mexico, Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, Machu Picchu in Peru, Taj Mahal in India and The Great Wall of China.
Mount RushmoreThis isn't on the official list, but we think it's a modern wonder. The massive faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln make up Mount Rushmore. It's a feat of engineering as each face is about 60 feet high.
While there is no 'official' seven wonders of the world list, Niagara Falls is commonly listed amongst various lists as a seventh wonder, as a candidate for the 'natural wonders of the world', or as an honorary 8th wonder of the world.
The oldest operational dam in the world, the Lake Homs Dam in Syria, was built around 1300. The masonry gravity dam is over one mile long, 23 feet high, and creates Lake Homs, which still supplies water to the people of Homs today.
The main difference between the Grand Coulee Dam and the Hoover Dam is their size. The Hoover Dam is 726.4 feet (221.4 meters) tall and 1,244 ft (379 m) wide.The Grand Coulee Dam is 550 ft (168 m) tall and a whopping 5,223 ft (1592 m) wide!