Hoover Dam History: How It Got Its Name
It should have been easy enough: in September of 1930, as Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur formally initiated construction on a major Colorado River dam, he proclaimed the following: “I have the honor to name this dam after a great engineer, who really started this greatest project of all time—the Hoover Dam!”
Except that, officially, the dam wasn’t actually named for the president. Tradition at the time called for naming a project for the law that made it possible, which meant that America’s most impressive feat of engineering was called the Boulder Dam, after the Boulder Canyon Project Act.
[Read More]