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The Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum has an extensive collection of historic written and photographic material, as well as items of interest. Stop by to see our collection or click on the subject title below for more information.

Originally, Hoover Dam was going to be built in Boulder Canyon, about forty miles up the Colorado River from Black Canyon. All through the 1920s as the Boulder Canyon Project Act, was argued in Congress, the media routinely referred to the proposed dam as the Boulder Canyon Dam or Boulder Dam.

At Right: Clark County Review, October 14, 1921

At midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam in San Francisquito Canyon above Los Angeles collapsed, killing more than 500 people as floodwaters roared across the Santa Clara Valley to the Pacific Ocean.

At Right: Saint Francis Dam in ruins, 1928

Meanwhile, Republican Herbert Hoover was elected president and took office on March 4, 1929. Just two months later, on May 27, 1929, a Democratic Congressman from Colorado named Ed Taylor introduced a bill to name the dam after the new president, but his effort failed. Through the following 16 months in legal opinions issued from the Department of Justice, and in power and water contracts being negotiated by the government, the dam was referred to as either Boulder Dam or the Boulder Canyon Dam. Even the order Secretary Wilbur issued to Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Elwood Mead on July 7, 1930 to begin construction on the Boulder Canyon Project mentioned Boulder Dam four times.

At Right: Sibert Board at Black Canyon, 1928

But after Wilbur's announcement at the Silver Spike Ceremony on September 17, 1930, all the references changed. Where the water and power contracts negotiated in 1930 originally noted Boulder Dam, the name was changed to Hoover Dam as the contracts were amended and published. During Congressional hearings on December 12, 1930 for the dam's first appropriation, Congressman Ed Taylor, by now the ranking Democratic member of the Interior Department Subcommittee on Appropriations, made a florid speech justifying his committee's "officially" noting the dam as Hoover in the appropriations bill before them:

"There is another feature of this... bill under consideration that I feel ought not to be passed over in silence. I refer to the three words in the second line, "The Hoover Dam." " This is the first time that name has ever appeared in any bill or official act of Congress. This... Committee thought that following the precedents of the naming of the Roosevelt Dam during [his] administration, and the Wilson Dam during [his] administration, and the Coolidge Dam during his administration, that President Hoover was very justly entitled to the same distinction, so we unanimously and very gladly wrote into this action those words... so that the dam is now officially named by both the Secretary of the Interior and by Congress."

On February 22, 1932, more than 800 Elks Club members from throughout the West trekked down to Black Canyon to dedicate a flagpole on a promontory overlooking the dam construction site. The event was intended to honor the 200th birthday of George Washington, but it also served to physically attach President Herbert Hoover's name to the project for the first time. On the concrete base of the flagpole were set several copper plaques, including one with an inscription written by Hoover which read, "Here man builds his vision into stone that generations to come may be blessed!" and included his signature.

At Right: Elks Club members from throughout the West

When Hoover stopped in Boulder City the evening of November 12, 1932 on his way back to Washington from California, he visited the mess hall where workers booed him. He also visited the dam site and made a short speech referring to the construction project by no name at all:

At Right: Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal, November 14, 1932

Democrat Franklin Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, and he brought Republican Chicago lawyer Harold Ickes with him to replace Ray Lyman Wilbur, Sr. as Secretary of the Interior. Neither administration respected the other, and Ickes wasted no time removing Hoover's name from the Boulder Canyon

At Right: Project.Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal, May 13, 1933

According to a wire service article which appeared in the May 13, 1933 issue of the Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal, Ickes issued an order changing the name of Hoover Dam back to Boulder Dam. But Ickes wrote in his diary on May 17, 1933 that he issued no such order:

Ickes' claim that Hoover had nothing to do with the construction of Hoover Dam was wrong: Hoover had been directly involved since at least 1921. In fact, what Ickes issued on May 8, 1933 was a memorandum:

Memorandum for Commissioner Mead, Bureau of Reclamation
I have your reference to the text for the pamphlet descriptive of the Boulder Canyon Project for use at the Century of Progress Exposition. I would be glad if you will refer to the dam as "Boulder Dam" in this pamphlet as well as in correspondence and other references to the dam as you may have occasion to make in the future.

While it's true Ickes didn't issue an "official order," but only a memorandum, the effect was the same: all reference to "Hoover" Dam vanished in favor of "Boulder" Dam. Official sources, as well as tourist and other promotional material now read Boulder Dam. On September 30, 1935 Roosevelt and Ickes came to Black Canyon for the dam's dedication. On that day the Boulder City post office issued a commemorative stamp. Ickes wrote in his diary:

Boulder City post office on Boulder Dam dedication day, September 30, 1935

And in the rousing conclusion to his dedication speech, President Roosevelt hammered it home:

"Today marks the official completion and dedication of Boulder Dam ... . This is an engineering victory of the first order--another great achievement of American resourcefulness, skill, and determination. That is why I have the right once more to congratulate you who have builded Boulder Dam and on behalf of the nation to say to you, Well done."

At Right: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the dedication of Boulder Dam

Boulder Dam it remained for the next 12 years. Roosevelt died in 1945 and Harold Ickes retired in 1946. On March 4, 1947 California Congressman Jack Anderson submitted House Resolution 140 to "restore" the name Hoover Dam. Anderson's resolution passed the House on March 6; a companion resolution passed the Senate on April 23, and on April 30, 1947, President Harry Truman signed Public Law 43 which read:

At the time of the name change, Herbert Hoover wrote a letter to Congressman Anderson thanking him for his Resolution:

"Confidentially, after having had streets, parks, school houses, hills, valleys, and dams named for one as is done to all presidents, I have not thought they were of great importance in the life of a nation. But when a President of the United States tears one's name down, that is a public defamation and an insult. Therefore I am grateful to you for removing it."

Even today, though, there are remnants of the Boulder Dam name still around: there's Boulder City, of course, and U. S. Highway 93/95 through the Las Vegas Valley is known as the Boulder Highway. The Boulder Dam Credit Union in Boulder City, established in 1940, has kept its original name, and so has the Boulder Dam Area Council of Boy Scouts.