Welcome To The Boulder City / Hoover Dam Museum
Boulder City Museum and Historical Association


Located In The Historic Boulder Dam Hotel
10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Monday - Saturday, Closed Sunday
Closed: New Year's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas

The Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum, Boulder Dam Hotel and Restaurant are operated under the direction of the board of directors of the Boulder City Museum & Historical Association. 

Our Archives

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.


How Hoover Dam Got Its Dam Name
Sun Dial Park
Boulder City Naval Base
Boulder City Community Garden
Boulder City Golf
The Terminal Building
Water, Water Everywhere...
Odd Associations or Strange Postscripts
Naming Public Projects
Boulder City Airport
Eldorado Valley Development
Boulder City Auto Court
Farming in Boulder City
Long Tailed Apus
Building History #1: 421 Avenue I
Boulder City Photographers #1 - George Roy Nock
Boulder City Hospital Auxiliary Art In The Park - 1963

It's Alive
Boulder City's Links to the Colorado River
Eldorado Valley's Kesterson Ranch
The Rest of the Story: Gail Chase
Boulder City School for Vocational Education
Camp Williston Racism
Babcock and Wilcox Company Houses
Boulder City's Rock Houses
Disease
Old 8810
Boulder City's Demountable Houses
Hoover Dam Advertising
Boulder City Libraries
Big Fires
Dead Cows On Sale There
Four Little Desert Gardens
Arches and Arcades
Dam Poetry
Elks Point
Gordon B. Kaufmann
Henry and Ocie Bradley
Miss Vegas
Grace 3737
Linking Boulder City
The Terminal Building
If The Walls Of The Hotel Could Talk
No Gambling In Boulder City?

Feeding The Dam Workers
The Winged Figures of the Republic
Where Do We Go From Here?
The Historic Boulder Theatre
Unsung Heroes: Walnut Queen
Where History Comes Alive
Th
e Race That Wasn't
Cultural and Historical Considerations For The Bypass
The Old Spanish Trail
This Place Matters
The New Deal
Glass Ceilings
History For Sale Again
Daniel Bonelli
Native American Petroglyphs
If The Walls Of The Hotel Could Talk
Cliff Segerblom
Boulder Dam Service Bureau
Boulder City Man's Quest for Adventure
Hard Boiled Hats
And The Beat Goes On
Hard Boiled Cop
31'ers Educational Outreach
Boulder City's First Post Office
The Look of Hoover Dam
Central Market Beginning
Monument to Boulder Dam Hotel
Hoover Dam Construction
Hoover Dam Construction II
Administration of Boulder City
The Art of Hoover Dam
First Weddings
Boulder City 80th Anniversary
Green Boulder City
Water Sports
Boulder City Libraries
From the Archives...
Hoover Dam in the Movies
The Desert Tortoise
Laura Bell
BCMHA
The Art of Hoover Dam
Boulder City Schools


How Hoover Dam Got Its Dam Name

The Dam with Two Many Names

On September 17, 1930, Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur, Sr. paid a visit to Las Vegas, Nevada where he presided over the Silver Spike Ceremony, an event opening construction of the Union Pacific Railroad's branch line from Las Vegas to the Boulder City town site. Surrounded by several hundred spectators and a handful of pickpockets, Wilbur announced that the dam about to be built in Black Canyon would be named for President Herbert Hoover:

" "Today, as Secretary of the Interior and acting in accordance with many requests I have the honor and privilege of giving a name to this new structure. I choose that of the great engineer whose vision and persistence... has done much to make it possible and declare that the dam to be built... under the Boulder Canyon Project Act shall be called the Hoover Dam." [Las Vegas Age, September 18, 1930, pp. 1 and 6]

Did Wilbur know when he uttered these words how much confusion and animosity his decision would
inspire?

At Right: Ray Lyman Wilbur, Secretary of the Interior, September 17, 1930


Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal, September 17, 1930

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


Even though as early as 1923 some favored Black Canyon as the dam's site, debate over the two canyons went back and forth with Boulder Canyon the favorite choice. But a1928 disaster in southern California started the confusion over the dam's name which was compounded in 1930 by Secretary Wilbur's announcement.

At Left: Clark County Review, December 23, 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


Many in congress who were opposed to the construction of Hoover Dam seized this disaster as their argument: what would happen on the Colorado River if the Boulder Canyon Dam collapsed like the St. Francis had? On May 29, 1928 Congress passed a joint resolution ordering the Secretary of the Interior to appoint a board of engineers to study the two Colorado River canyons and recommend one for construction. Known as the Sibert Board after chairman William L. Sibert, the report they issued on December 3, 1928 after on-site investigations recommended Black Canyon over Boulder Canyon. The dam site changed, but the name didn't: even though Hoover Dam was built in Black Canyon, the Act which authorized it, passed by Congress and signed by President Calvin Coolidge on December 21, 1928, was still called the Boulder Canyon Project Act.

At Left: Las Vegas Review, December 3, 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."


The appropriation passed on February 14, 1931, and in the following four appropriation acts passed by Congress in 1932-33, it was Hoover Dam. For the remainder of Hoover's administration all official references to the dam, as well as tourist and other promotional material issued during this period called it Hoover Dam.

Promotional material issued during this period called it Hoover Dam.

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


The stock market crashed in 1929, and by the election year of 1932, Herbert Hoover was not a popular man. The thousands of homeless and jobless men and women who poured into southern Nevada to work on the Boulder Canyon Project blamed Hoover for the Depression, and the dam rising in Black Canyon had always been Boulder Dam to them despite government efforts to name it Hoover.

At Left: Elks Club members

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



"This is not the first time I have visited the site of this great dam. And it gives me extraordinary pleasure to see the great dream I have long held taking form in stone and cement... This dam is the greatest engineering work of its character ever attempted at the hand of man... The waters of this great river, instead of being wasted in the sea, will now be brought into use by man".

At Left: Herbert Hoover [center]

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:



"A number of insulting letters... have been coming in attacking me for changing the name of Hoover Dam to Boulder Dam. Some time ago Dr. [Elwood] Mead, Commissioner of Reclamation, asked me how I wanted this project designated, and I said that I wanted it called Boulder Dam. On Saturday [May 13, 1933] when I went out of Washington somebody apparently gave a story to the Associated Press that I had issued an order changing the name. The story carried a quotation from me which I never gave and which was very unconvincing. This is what started the criticism. As a matter of fact, I have never issued any official order. I have always called this Boulder Dam myself, as do many people, and I have continued that usage since I came to Washington. I consider it very unfair to call it Hoover Dam. Hoover had very little to do with the dam and in fact was supposed to be opposed to it. To call it Hoover Dam is to give him credit for something for which he is not entitled to credit, and ignore those who dreamed of this proposition and brought it to a successful conclusion after years of effort. The dam never was officially named Hoover. My predecessor [Ray Lyman Wilbur, Sr.] ordered it named Hoover Dam, but my understanding is that when a bill was introduced in Congress to name it Hoover Dam, the bill could not pass and the proposition was dropped until Wilbur, an appointee of Hoover's, named it after Hoover.

At Left: Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes

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


"A Boulder Dam memorial stamp was on sale here today for the first time. I have been anxious to have such a stamp issued because it seemed to me that it would also have the effect of fixing the name."



Boulder Dam dedicaton day stamp.

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:



"Resolved... that the name of Hoover Dam is hereby restored to the dam on the Colorado River in Black Canyon constructed under the authority of the Boulder Canyon Project Act... . Any law, regulation, document, or record of the United States in which such dam is designated or referred to under the name of Boulder Dam shall be held to refer to such dam under and by the name of Hoover Dam.

At Left: President Harry Truman


Boulder City News, April 30, 1947

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."


For several years after 1947 tourist and promotional material was issued as "Hoover (Boulder) Dam" until confusion over the name passed.

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.



Hoogivza Dam

In the end, after all the personal and political brouhaha, the public's attitude toward the dam's name changes was probably best summed up in a letter to the editor from Frank Romano, Sr. noted in the May 10, 1947 issue of the Las Vegas Review-Journal: Romano wrote, "Let's call it Hoogivza Dam, Hoo for Hoover, Givza for me and you. Now let's hear no more about it."




Boulder City / Hoover Dam Museum
Located in the Boulder Dam Hotel
1305 Arizona Street, Boulder City, Nevada 89005
Phone: (702) 294-1988 | Fax: (702) 294-4380
E-mail: info@bcmha.org



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