Why is the Hoover Dam so famous?

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.



People Also Ask

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.

MORE DETAILS

Think of it as a giant Lego set, with over 200 blocks fitted together to stand 726 feet tall. 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.”

MORE DETAILS

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.

MORE DETAILS

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.

MORE DETAILS

Parker Dam is a concrete arch structure commonly called the 'deepest dam in the world'.

MORE DETAILS