Dam of its scale had ever been attempted; on completion, it was the largest masonry dam in the world. The Hoover Dam is a massive concrete arch-gravity dam, constructed in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the US states of Arizona and Nevada between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression. In 1928, Congress authorized the project to build a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium called Six Companies, Inc. Such a large concrete structure had never been
Course of the Colorado River is removed for irrigation here. The Gila Gravity Main Canal provides water for the Gila Valley in Arizona. The All-American Canal, which runs west to the Imperial Valley of California, is the largest irrigation canal in the world, capable of carrying – the entire natural flow of the Colorado prior to damming. The canal supplies more than half a million acres (2000 km) which due to its mild climate grows most of the winter produce in the United States. Below Imperial Dam the remnants of the Colorado river lessen in gradient and in its lower course flows through the Colorado