Welcome To The Boulder City /Hoover Dam Museum Located In The Historic Boulder Dam Hotel
	Our Vintage Photograph Collection - Workers Within days of President Coolidge signing the Boulder Canyon Project Act on December 21, 1928, headlines in the Las Vegas Age anticipated 7,000 workers would eventually be employed at Hoover Dam. By January 1929 men began drifting into Las Vegas hoping for work on the dam project, even though construction would not begin for nearly two more years. After the stock market crashed in October 1929 and the country began its long slide into the Great Depression, the few men drifting into Las Vegas became hundreds, and then thousands. Not only was Las Vegas unprepared for these unemployed men and their families, the government wasn't prepared to give them all jobs. But when Six Companies started hiring, the work force grew rapidly. In November and December 1930, more than a thousand men and women registered at the employment office for work. By April 11, 1931 there were about 800 men working around the dam site at a wage that was commonly 50¢ an hour. By May 1931, the payroll hit $5,000 a day. In June, there were 2.000 men at work; by October there were 3,000 employed on the Boulder Canyon Project, while in November that year the employment office handled more than 38,000 letters of enquiry. In November 1932, the project payroll hit $500,000 a month, and at the height of dam construction in June 1934, 5,128 men were working seven days a week in Black Canyon and elsewhere on the Boulder Canyon Project Federal Reservation.

The conditions these men put up with--even by 1930s standards--were often deadly. Summer temperatures in the canyon rose to 140°, and in winter it was so cold workers had to set fires to keep the concrete from freezing before it set. Choking clouds of carbon monoxide in the tunnels sent dozens of men to the hospital, some of whom died years later from the lung damage they suffered. For a man's family to be compensated if he died at work, he had to be killed on the spot. While the "official" death toll of 112 seems low considering the conditions and the number of men who worked on the dam from 1931 through 1935, the actual toll was probably higher. No statistics were kept on men who died later from injuries. There are also no figures for the number of men who might have been permanently disabled. An August 29, 1932 letter from the Central Labor Union of Clark County, Nevada to John Thomas, chairman of the U. S. Senate Investigating Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation outlines conditions on the job and in Boulder City faced by workers and their families:

"We believe that a great injustice is being perpetrated against the workers at Boulder Dam in the general lowering of working and living conditions on a project directly under the supervision of our Government during this time of depression and unemployment. Labor at Boulder Dam has no voice in the settling of wages, hours of labor, working conditions, safety or living conditions. Last year local Labor Unions attempted to have the Bacon-Davis prevailing wage law apply to the Boulder Canyon project and Boulder City. An investigation by the conciliation Division of the Department of Labor found that the Bacon-Davis Act did not become a law until two days after the Six Companies signed their contract. Further, that reservations were not covered by the prevailing rate of wage law and the result was a general lowering of wages and working conditions. An arbitrary scale of wage was imposed on skilled mechanics twenty-five to fifty percent lower than the prevailing scales for similar work in the territory adjacent to the project. ... From April 1, 1931, till December 9, 1931, while Nevada Mining Laws were being enforced, there were two (2) deaths from accidents, while from December 9, 1931, up to the present date, during which time State mining laws were being ignored, there have been fifteen (15) deaths from accidents. ... Rental rates charged to workers in Six Companies temporary structures are 20% higher than those charged for the permanent and strictly modern houses furnished by the Reclamation Bureau for their employees. Gas only is used as fuel, and has to be purchased from Six Companies. Water rates and garbage removal charges are exorbitant and arbitrary. Schooling facilities are sadly inadequate, the workers having to pay tuition to private schools, which has resulted in many children obtaining no schooling whatever. Workers taking their board at the Six Companies mess hall and lodging in the ... dormitory are charged $1.65 per day. For similar services the Reclamation Bureau charges $1.25 per day on the same project. The balance of mining camps in the State of Nevada average $1.00 per day for similar service. ... The Six Companies have consistently refused to meet with or discuss wages and conditions with representatives of Labor. Labor papers and pamphlets concerning organization have been barred from the so-called reservation ... . A system of espionage has been set up which curbs the freedom of speech and action."

There was one unsuccessful strike in August 1931 called by the Industrial Workers of the World [IWW] who were trying to unionize the job. While the government shut down the job for a week, the strike itself failed to bring the changes the IWW demanded: hungry workers were threatened with termination and covert Six Companies union busters made sure agitators were removed. A second IWW strike attempt in August 1933 also failed. In addition, racial discrimination prevailed through both the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations: African - Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans were nearly invisible, while there is no evidence Asians were ever employed on the project.

Nevertheless, the Boulder Canyon Project saved thousands of people from hunger during the worst years of the Great Depression, and in particular gave hundreds of young families their first start in life. As dismal as working conditions often were, many men still found dignity and self - respect at the end of their muck shovel or in the cab of their truck.

Native American workers, 1932.

Having a rest in the tool room, 1934.

Marion Allen, cement finisher, 1934.

Form stripping crew, 1933.

Joe Kine, high scaler, 1932.

Injured worker, c. 1933.

Lunch break in Boulder City, 1933.

Canvas water bags were delivered to workers around the project by water boys.

Dinky skinners helped deliver concrete buckets from the mixing plants to the canyon's edge miners digging out the adit tunnels, c. 1932.

Dinky skinners helped deliver concrete buckets from the mixing plants to the canyon's edge miners digging out the adit tunnels, c. 1932.

African-American workers were never allowed to be more than a tiny fraction of the work force - this photograph was posed by Six Companies in 1932 to give the impression they were not discriminating.

1. "The IWW and the Boulder Canyon Project: The Final Death Throes of American Syndicalism," by Guy Louis Rocha [Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Spring 1978, pp. 2-24].

2. Hoover Dam: An American Adventure, by Joe Stevens [Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988].

3. Building Hoover Dam: An Oral History of the Great Depression, by Andrew Dunar and Dennis McBride [Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2000].

4. "A Visit to the Hoover Dam Site," by Mrs. D. L. Carmody [New Reclamation Era, v. 22:8 (August 1931), 172-74]

Boulder City Museum and Historical Association
P.O. Box 60516, Boulder City, Nevada 89006-0516
Phone: (702) 294-1988 | Fax: (702) 294-4380
E-mail: info@bcmha.org



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