9337

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9337
• Author: Colorado River Water Users Association.
• Title: The Colorado River of Many Returns.
• USFW Year: 2001.
• USFW - Doc Type: Coachella, California.
• Copyright Material: NO

NEVADA
were given impetus in June 1935, when a $60,000 fish hatchery was built
in Las Vegas to provide for planting in the new lake. Not willing to await
the growth of fingerlings from the new hatchery, some sports-minded Las
Vegans were able to persuade the federal government to ship 30,000 fish
from a New Mexico hatchery to plant in the rising waters of the lake. It
was announced that fishing would be closed at the lake for two years to
allow the fish to gain sufficient size.
The last bucket of concrete was poured at the dam on May 29,
1935, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated it on September 30,
proclaiming its official name as Boulder Dam, dropping the previously
planned designation Hoover Dam. In the seesaw process of naming the
dam, which caused nationwide confusion, the name was changed back to
Hoover Dam by an act of Congress in 1947.
The Six Companies Inc. officially turned over control of the dam
to the Bureau of Reclamation on February 29, 1936, thus ending the
construction phase, with only cleanup of the site remaining. About 500
Six Companies employees were transferred to the Bureau of Reclamation
to be added to the existing engineering and operational crews employed by
the federal government.
Utilizing some 5,000 men, Six Companies had completed
construction of the dam and power houses two years ahead of contract.
The dam rose 726.4 feet above bedrock and contained 3,250,335 cubic
yards of concrete weighing 6,900,000 tons. Comparable to a 60-story
skyscraper, the dam was the highest in the world and called a thing of
beauty and majesty while being the greatest man-made river barrier ever
constructed at the time.
Upon the death of Dr. Elwood Mead, who had served as director
of the Bureau of Reclamation during the dam construction period, on
January 27, 1936, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes named the lake
behind the dam Lake Mead.
In 1944, after numerous conflicts over the Colorado River
Compact, Arizona Governor Sidney P. Osborn signed a legislative bill
accepting 2.8 million acre-feet for his state. This move was hailed in
Nevada as a harbinger of further development along the river. That same
year, the Las Vegas Land and Water Company's stranglehold on the
burgeoning city of Las Vegas was nearing its end. Facing a declining water
table, growing public hostility and an absolute refusal to consider
development of a system to bring water in from Lake Mead, the water
company soon indicated its willingness to sell its production and
distribution facilities.
On November 3, 1944, representatives of the state of Nevada,
Clark County, city of Las Vegas, Union Pacific Railroad and Las Vegas
Land and Water
Company and 75
chamber of commerce
leaders gathered to
discuss the
fundamental problem
confronting Las Vegas
- water."
History has a
wonderful way of
repeating itself, and
similar groups with the
same theme often
would rally the
community during the
next 50 years.
IN 1954, 18 YEARS PRIOR TO COLORADO RIVER Indicative of its
WATER BEING PIPED TO LAS VEGAS, WATER WAS A tumultuous relationship
MAJOR NEWSMAKER IN THE SOUTHERN NEVADA with the community
PRESS - JUST AS TODAY. for more than 40 years
- even after the
Nevada Legislature created the Las Vegas Valley Water District in 1947 -
the Las Vegas Land and Water Company did not finalize its sale until 1954.
The Las Vegas Valley Water District was created to avert a threatened
crisis of depleting the Las Vegas groundwater basin and to support a system
to bring Colorado River water from Lake Mead into the valley. This
system became the Southern Nevada Water Project.
Several different options for bringing water from Lake Mead into
the Las Vegas Valley had been considered by the Bureau of Reclamation
since 1932. Following completion of 1963 and 1965 feasibility reports, the
Bureau of Reclamation recommended authorization and construction of a
project to deliver municipal water to the valley. In the midst of planning
for the Southern Nevada Water Project, Secretary of Interior Stewart
Udall introduced an idea for a multibillion-dollar project for the entire
Southwest.
Immediate concern was raised over the Nevada project being
"bundled" in such a complex effort. It was not until January 1965 that
Nevada Senators Alan Bible and Howard Cannon introduced legislation
authorizing the Southern Nevada Water Project, which President Lyndon
B. Johnson signed into law on October 23 of that year. In November 1968,
using federal funding, the Bureau of Reclamation began constructing the
project's water delivery system, while the state of Nevada built the Alfred
Merritt Smith water treatment plant.
By the end of 1970, most major water projects of Southern
Nevada water purveyors were completed in preparation for receiving and
distributing water from the Southern Nevada Water Project. Water
officials' biggest challenge was keeping facilities even with, or ahead of, the
community's growth, a challenge that has remained with them for the
ensuing 25 years. On June 2, 1971, the first stage of the Southern Nevada
Water Project was dedicated commencing a new era of "water resources,"
driven by the Colorado River with a legacy unsurpassed in this country.
Construction of the second stage of the project, aimed at increasing area
water purveyors' ability to use their full 299,000 acre-foot allocation of
Colorado River water, was initiated in 1977 and completed in 1983.
In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law the
Reclamation Act, which authorized the Bureau of Reclamation to work
with local citizens and state entities to develop water resource projects.
Since then, the Colorado River has written its own history from
Washington, D.C., to the Rocky Mountains, across interstate and
international borders into Mexico.
20
MOTORISTS IN 1910 COULD SAVE MONEY BY LOADING UP ON WATER DURING CERTAIN
HOURS, ACCORDING TO THE SIGN ON THIS CONVERTED RAIL CAR.