Hoover Dam Hoover Dam Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. Originally known as Boulder Dam from 1933, it was officially renamed Hoover Dam, for President Herbert Hoover, by a joint resolution of Congress in 1947. Since about 1900, the Black
Glen Canyon Dam the Colorado's major upper tributary, at Echo Park and Split Mountain. The 1956 Colorado River Storage Project Act authorized the purposes of "regulating the flow of the Colorado River, storing water for beneficial consumptive use, providing for reclamation of arid and semi-arid lands, providing flood control, and generating hydropower." The proposal for Glen Canyon Dam was most vocally supported by the state of Arizona, which wished to get Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson, located hundreds of miles away from the Colorado in the center of the state. Glen Canyon Dam would regulate river flow between Lee's Ferry and