Michael Hitlzik's sweeping, romantic telling of the creation of the behemoth of the Boulder (Hoover) Dam, Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century, begins with the moment FDR dedicated the damn's opening in 1935 but then encloses all the dreams were first came to Black Canyon and dreamed the dream of diverting the silty Colorado River to the Colorado Desert. A genius rascal named Charles Rockwood (proto John Galt) schemed to divert the Colorado (right) at the turn of the 20th Century, and to bring out settlers from LA by advertising that he could make the desert bloom.  Rockwood knew that advertising $.25 an acre for the Colorado Desert would not work, so he invented the location as "the Imperial Valley." The silt clogged the cuts and channels, and Rockwood failed, but the scheme lived on. TR boosted it, but it wasn't until POTUS Harding tasked Herbert Hoover that the Federal government managed the solution. The dispute between seven states -- Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming in the Upper Basin; Arizona, Nevada and California in the Lower Basin -- was resolved with a formula for who gets how much water, a squabble that continued until the Supreme Court settled it in the later 20th century. The conditions in the construction were Gulag Lite bad and cruel - camp followers assembled in a shantytown called "Ragtown;" and the desperate-for-work men lived in 130 degree heat with non-potable river water for drinking at a place called "River Camp" --  with men and children dying of heat and lack of medical attention the first Spring and Summer. The 1930s were the age of electrification and dams, and the Hoover Dam in the legendary Black Canyon (the third or fourth choice, because the other sites were earthquake fault crisscrossed) was the first of several hydroelectric reservoir systems to transform the Colorado into a power and water source for the Lower Basin.  (Of note, the Hoover Dam was built and the water rights were allocated on the basis of the average of twenty years in the early 20th century.  It turned out later that this was a swollen wet climate period, and the river is now and again in drought conditions - an example of how you may be unwise to make policy based upon any particular climate result, and two decade measure  of rain and snowfall.)  A bad flood in 1983 revealed that the Colorado was not tamed; and the system of dams and reservoirs requires constant attention. A choice comment from one of the engineers on the works in 1931 when asked, Who built the Hoover dam?  It was built by a man in a "tin hat," came the answer, and he is about 31 years old, and you can find him at the dining hall. Wages were $3.50 a day for a mucker; $6.00 a day for a trucker. Of the Six Companies that knitted together to do the construction, only one lives independently today, the global Bechtel Corporation.  Without the Hoover Dam and the subsequent dams and reservoirs, there would have been no California miracle of sixty million people in the region by century's end.  And now?  The Colorado has reached a natural limit.  Perhaps Southern California has long since topped out.  Unknown.  Right now, there is not enough water for both California and Arizona to sustain the growth of the last decades.

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