In the early 1920s long range planners could see the potential of the American Southwest which included southern California, and the four corners region of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. The mild year round weather and the explosive rise of the new contraption called the automobile made the desert southwest a good bet for the population boom which came to pass in the last half of the twentieth century. The one problem was the keyword desert. How would water be supplied to this large population.? The brilliant solution was the Hoover Dam which when it was completed and is still today deservedly considered one of the wonders of the modern industrial world.
       The Colorado River ( see the article Herbert Hoover and the Colorado River ) which forms the boundary between California and Arizona was a wild entity whose wildly inconsistent annual flooding was dependent on the melting of the snowpack from the Rocky Mountains. One of the worst floods at the turn of the 20 th century created The Salton Sea. Man has been building dams for thousands of years to control rivers but the Hoover Dam was a quantum, quantum, quantum leap from anything that had ever been attempted. This was the first dam constructed using the full technology and materials of the industrial revolution. The size of the dam and the then staggering amounts of water dammed up for future use when needed and the hyroelectric power generated were on a scale that literally blew the minds of even the most accomplished engineers. Los Angeles, San Deigo, Pheonix, and the rest of the population boom in the American Southwest could never have happened without the Hoover Dam.
       Since the Hoover Dam was completed bigger and better dams have been constructed but the Hoover Dam was the template for these dams. The architects of the Hoover Dam created the technology which has enabled man to control all of the worlds great rivers ( with the notable exception of the Amazon ). The accomplishments of the Hoover Dam are so incredible that it will probably be an industrial icon for as long as man inhabits the Earth.