Today on Outdoor Nevada, we explore Heritage Trails in Laughlin and how the Bureau of Reclamation, along with the dams, keep the Southwest going.

Then I get a personal tour of an American engineering marvel: The Hoover Dam.

♪♪♪ Nevada.

It's an adventure waiting to happen.

Waiting for you.

What do you say, you ready?

Because I am.

♪♪♪ (John Burke) Laughlin, Nevada is well known for its many outdoor activities, most of which you probably already know about, but there's one you may not.

I just learned about it myself, and it's perfect for all abilities and all ages.

Welcome to Heritage Trails.

After walking along the river on one of the Heritage Trails, I met up with Bill Martin, retired outdoor resource management planner from the Bureau of Reclamation.

He's also one of the people responsible for this hidden gem.

Now, here in the shadow of the Davis Dam, we have Heritage Park, right?

Tell me, how did this place come into being?

(Bill Martin) Heritage Park was an opportunity that just happened.

Certain things all came together, and numerous partners stepped up to work together to make it happen.

It was pretty much an alignment of several things that would not normally happen.

Bullhead City hired a contractor that pulled the communities on both sides of the river together to do a report in 2005 on the possibility of doing trails on both sides of the Colorado River.

They also gave them zones.

This zone, due to its historic nature of Native Americans, building the dam and construction housing on both sides of the river was called the Heritage zone.

A couple years later my agency decided to do a study of this area since we did not want to give it up, but we knew there were opportunities that with the development of recreation on the river that we could provide some opportunities here.

So we worked with the Park Service, Clark County, Bullhead City, Mohave County and Native American groups and looked at some options.

-Why is it called Heritage Trail?

-If you look around this area, we have like across the river here, we have a mountain just back over there that's actually very important to the five Native American communities in the area.

It has about 111 petroglyphs on it.

Because when-- so we're told that when they couldn't get to Spirit Mountain, their medicine men and elders would hold ceremonies there.

It's also when we first went to build the dam up here, there was no power grid, there were no roads, so we had to build everything to build the dam.

We built housing for the reclamation staff on the Arizona side, and our contractor built housing on the Nevada side for the construction crews, and we had like five bridges across the river during that period.

So there was also mining in this area, and of course long before us, there were Native Americans farming and living in this area.

So it was one of the more earliest-developed areas along the Colorado River.

In fact, there was a big fishing camp at what was called Big Bend just downriver from us that is now-- was the start of Bullhead City.

And then Laughlin was actually part of the Fort Mohave Land Act.

The Bureau of Reclamation sold to the state of Nevada up to 15,000 acres to create what is now Laughlin.

-So Heritage basically is a name that implies there was a lot of history here.

-A lot of history, heritage of both Anglos and also Native Americans.

-So tell me, how many paths are here, and are there plans for more?

-There are in the master plan; it's not built out.

You know, the county figured as demand grew, they would be able to add.

For example, you look around in this area, there are some areas where nothing's at yet.

There were plans for 15 picnic shelters in this area, and there's like eight at this moment.

-But there's a lot going on here, like how many miles of paths are there for starters?

-The greater Heritage Trail area, which includes both sides of the river, has about 45 miles of trails.

There's seven miles of the paved 12-foot-wide trails, but there's also other biking/hiking trails that go out through sections 10 and 11 and give people the opportunity that want to run and bicycle on those terrains that don't want to do it on a hardened surface.

-Now, when you say people, this seems like an area that's good for entire families.

Anybody can come out here at any level.

-That was one of the things that both the County, Reclamation and Park Service all agreed on, that we wanted this to be something for the community as well as tourists, that the families could come out here, enjoy, spend the day, have a picnic, play in the waterpark, play on the equipment, and you also had the river.

Remember that in Laughlin, they only have one other park, so this is important for the community as well as the tourism.

-And do you think it's done that?

I mean, what does this mean for the people of Laughlin?

-Well, it's funny because I was involved in the original studies, the funding, the design, the construction and then now the use before I retired, and I still come down here.

People have taken a lot of ownership, like sometimes when I'd come down here in a federal vehicle before I retired doing my annual inspections, I'd be in a federal vehicle, people would come over and knock on my window and say you're not supposed to be driving here.

(laughter) Because they've taken ownership.

They like the trail.

It's an opportunity to come out, has great views of the river.

There's potable water, there's restrooms, it's safe and part of it is lighted so sections can be walked at nighttime.

You know, a lot of thought by a lot of people went into designing and building and now operating this facility.

-And I wonder, how does that feel?

-It really makes your heart feel great when you see people using it.

You can do studies and plans all your life, but what really makes me tick and why I stayed working so long was seeing people use projects.

-Why is that so important?

-Because I feel that you should always leave an area better than you found it and that you should always try to find ways to make it better for the resource management and the people that use the area.

-You know, your legacy is all over this place, and I really-- someday I want to have a legacy like yours.

I look at this beautiful spot, I'm looking at the beautiful river.

I feel the peace it feels, and someday I hope to have a legacy like yours.

Thanks for all that you've done.

-Numerous things came together to make this opportunity happen, and I've just been fortunate that I could help facilitate this one, the Historic Railroad Trail, Rear Mountain Loop Trail, Sacramento River Trail, some of the things that I enjoy doing, and more, enjoy seeing people use them.

-You know, walking the Heritage Trails along the Colorado River really gives you a sense of calm, of peace, of timelessness.

But it's also an invitation, an invitation to you to take part in this beautiful legacy.

Your only job is to say yes.

♪♪♪ We see them, we visit them, but do we really know what they do?

I'm talking about dams.

Today we met Doug Hendrix from the Bureau of Reclamation.

We talked about the system of dams along the Colorado and the importance of the bureau.

(Doug Hendrix) Reclamation was created in 1902 initially as a reclamation service.

What we do is we provide water and generate hydroelectricity.

We're the largest provider of irrigation and municipal water in the West, essentially the 17 states west of the Mississippi.

We're the second-largest producer of hydropower out West.

We were created to help more or less harness or tame the rivers in the West.

A lot of the rivers in the West went through periods of either flood or drought, and as the West grew, they needed stable sources of water and hydropower; hence, Reclamation was created to meet those needs.

Well, the whole Colorado River system, essentially it's the lifeblood of the Southwest.

If not for Hoover Dam, Davis Dam, Parker Dam and Imperial Dam, you wouldn't have these large cities, this large agricultural production in this area.

We're able to have carryover storage for use for municipal and agricultural purposes.

The creation of these large reservoirs, these large dams, provide certainty.

It provides certainty that you're going to have water in drought years such as we've experienced, you know, for essentially the last two decades.

By being able to harness the river and provide that, certainly the Southwest has thrived because of that and is, you know, one of the most popular places in the United States to live, and that gives me great pride.

When I go around to these facilities and meet the people that work around these facilities, our staff that works at these facilities, they share that pride.

When you go into like Hoover Dam or Davis Dam, they're spotless when you go inside.

They keep these places almost in brand-new condition.

It's just they share a lot of pride.

We get a lot of former military, you know, men and women that come to work for us after they've served, and it's that same esprit de corps when they come and work at these facilities.

They're very happy to do what they're doing, and they're very happy how it contributes to the overall U.S. economy.

♪♪♪ It is an engineering feat like nothing else on the planet.

It's an American icon.

It is the Hoover Dam.

And you know what?

It's so special Ansel Adams actually stood right here to take his famous picture of it.

Nothing but the best for you.

And here to tell us more about it is special events coordinator Alexandra Rothermel.

Alexandra, how are you?

-Hi, I'm good.

How are you doing?

-So this is your office?

I mean, this isn't a bad place to work, right?

-Yes, right back there.

-Not bad, right?

Hey, does it still take your breath away every time you see it?

Because it does me.

-Yes, it's a really cool office to have and a really neat place to come to when I get to work.

-A lot happened before the dam was built.

Tell me about the process to get to that.

(Alexandra Rothermel) Right.

So there was actually a lot of things that led up to the dam being built; there was a whole pathway that had to be paved.

So in 1902, that was the first thing that happened, and the Reclamation Service was founded.

Now we're known as the Bureau of Reclamation, but its first point was to help settlement and agriculture in the West.

-Interesting.

And there had to be an agreement between certain entities, right?

-Yes, it's actually about the Colorado River right below us.

So there are seven basin states or seven states that are along the Colorado River, and they had to agree on what their water allocation would be and how they were going to manage the river water.

So in 1922 they drafted what's called the Colorado River Compact, and that eventually became the law of the river.

-So a lot happened before they even started breaking ground, didn't it?

-Oh, absolutely, and a lot of things legally and in the law and through Congress to actually make sure this could happen, like the Boulder Canyon Project Act.

So that was in 1928, and that's what actually authorized us to be able to build Hoover Dam.

-And what year did they finally start breaking ground?

-It started in 1931.

But before we talk about that, you want to move up to Monument Plaza and we can go check that out?

-Oh, yeah.

Let's go take a closer look.

-Yeah, let's go.

♪♪♪ Okay.

So here's a question you've never heard before.

Why is it called the Hoover Dam?

-Well, we were originally called the Boulder Dam and our authorizing legislation was actually the Boulder Canyon Project Act, and that passed in 1928.

So we were called the Boulder Canyon Project and the Boulder Dam for a really long time, and the name kind of went between Boulder Dam and Hoover Dam until in the 1940s they actually passed it, and it became Hoover Dam officially.

-So they really got cranking around the time of the Great Depression.

-Oh yes.

It was actually just a few months after they authorized the dam to be built that the stock market crashed and the Great Depression came around, so this inadvertently kind of became like a big Depression-era thing and a really good relief for jobs.

People flocked to the site in 1929 before they even started building, before the contract for the dam even got let.

So people didn't know.

There was so much uncertainty, but this was such a great symbol of hope at the time that people could maybe come here and get employment or something like that.

-And they did.

They came from all over, and it really did employ a lot of people.

-Yes.

There was about 21,000 men who actually ended up working through this site, 5,000 at its peak, and they came from every state.

-So the actual construction finished a little early, didn't it?

It took from 1931 to when?

-1935.

So the years were 1931 to 1935, and it finished two years ahead of schedule.

-How much did it cost?

-It cost about $49 million, which is $800 million-some today.

-Unbelievable.

Where are we standing right now?

What is this spot?

-So this is Monument Plaza, and at Monument Plaza, this is actually a star map below our feet to the day that they dedicated the dam in February of 1935.

-So you look up at the sky, and this is what you would see, these stars.

-Exactly.

Of course today, because of the way the Earth moves, this isn't at all what you would see.

But if you look down, you can see what you would have seen above.

-That is phenomenal.

How many people come here a year?

-We get somewhere between 5 and 6 million visitors per year, and about 800,000 to a million people take a tour.

-Everybody should see this.

-It's pretty cool.

-It's really cool, and it's really important.

So can I see the guts?

You know, I want to see the inside of the dam.

-Yes.

I'm going to take you to Shawn, and he's going to give you a tour inside the dam.

Ready to go?

-I knew I could count on you.

-Let's go.

Heading down into the dam is an experience, and if you thought the dam was big from the outside, the inside is massive.

This is incredible.

-Isn't it?

It never gets old.

-Does this room have a name?

(Shawn Head) Yes.

So we are in the Nevada Powerhouse, and there is 10 acres of space you're looking at, covered space, and eight generators that are sending power to the grid to our power customers all across the West.

-So those are generators.

-Yes.

-A phenomenal sight.

Roughly speaking, how far down from the top of the dam are we?

-Well, as you know, the dam is something like 726 feet high, and right now where we're at at this level of elevation, it's about 50 stories or so that we've come down.

-And is there a lot more beneath us right now?

-Yes, there is.

When they were building the dam, they had to excavate down into the riverbed 120 feet to find that solid anchor in the bedrock.

So there's quite a bit still below us.

-The more you talk, the more amazing this becomes.

What am I looking at here?

These look like generators to me.

-Yes.

So we are in the Nevada Powerhouse, and there are these generators on this side and they have a similar number on the Arizona side, and they are being fed from water through the penstock from the lake and then sending power out to the grid to our power customers.

-And does each generator have a specific region or place that it sends it to?

-Originally, that's how they did it but nowadays, since everything is digitized and on computers, it's a lot easier to manage so there's not a specific one that goes to a specific location.

It's based really on what needs-- what is being made at that time and to send it out to who needs it or what customer needs it.

-Give me some general numbers about power outage and where it goes.

-So 55% of our power goes to the state of California and different entities mostly in Southern California; 20% goes Arizona, and 25% stays in Nevada.

Now, of that 25%, people often think oh, you know, Hoover Dam powers the Las Vegas Strip, but that is not the case.

Zero, if any, actually goes to the Strip because the Strip didn't exist when the dam was built and went online with our customers.

-Unbelievable.

What about maintenance on these things?

-Yes.

They go through scheduled maintenance every few years, and it's usually in our season when our water demands are a little bit lower so they can take one offline and do needed repairs.

But they run incredibly efficient, and they've had some modern upgrades through the years but for the most part, they go through the scheduled maintenance, which is on a calendar year basis, so they stay ahead of everything so something doesn't, you know, break in the process.

-What exactly though am I looking at?

Because I know magnets are involved.

-Yes.

So these are generators, and you're only seeing the top piece of it.

They go down some 70 feet below to where the turbine is fed from water from the lake.

And up here is where the power is generated and sent out onto the grid.

So we're just looking at the very top part of the entire system of the generator and turbine.

-It's so clean, so pristine.

We got to go down and take a closer look.

-Yes, let's go look.

-All right.

Okay.

So now we're getting a little deeper into the guts so we got our hardhats on.

That's safety of course, but the Hoover Dam had something to do with the hardhat, didn't it?

-Yes.

Initially they came up with a version of their own hardhat which was kind of like if you would have an old pith helmet and it was boiled in like an oil to make it hard, and that was like one of the very first hardhats.

-Tell me about the floor, and I know that Art Deco design is incorporated all the way into the guts of this place, but specifically the floor.

-Yes.

I think they realized pretty early on that there would be a ton of people that would visit this, and they wanted it to be a showplace of, you know, American might and ingenuity and what we can do so they spared no expense literally, especially when you look at this 10 acres, and this is all terrazzo.

This might be something you'd see in an expensive hotel.

They did the generator floor in terrazzo.

That's just unreal.

-Do you think they did that in part to lift the spirits of the nation during the Great Depression, build something really special?

-Absolutely, and you can tell that this was a good morale booster for all Americans.

The country was going through a difficult time, but this is something that everybody could be proud of and could be proud of for a long time to come.

-Yes, they nailed it.

We moved from hallway to hallway past turbines and other massive machines, along the way always noticing the attention to the design and architectural details.

Classic Art Deco-- beautiful.

As we moved further down, the look turned from classic to cavernous.

This is where the true power of the dam could literally be felt through your core.

I feel the awesome power of nature around me.

Tell me where we are right now.

-So we are in one of the diversion tunnels and we are on top of a penstock pipe, and that is a 30-foot-diameter pipe that is taking water from Lake Mead, bringing it down into the tunnels and then distributing it through laterals into generators as needed to produce power.

-30-foot diameter-- that's a lot of water.

How much water are we talking about?

-That is 96,000 gallons a second.

-Put that in layman's terms.

What would that do, 96,000?

-So that could fill our brand-new football stadium in Las Vegas in 2-1/2 minutes.

-And there's two of these.

-There's two of these.

There's one on the Arizona side and the Nevada side.

-It's a little unnerving standing in this room, but it's really awesome, isn't it?

-Yes.

You can just feel that low, deep rumble, and it just shows you the force of that water that's moving through here and how much power it does have.

-What powers Hoover Dam, the dam itself?

-Yes.

We actually have generators in-house that provide all of the power that is needed for anything we need and tied to the dam, the lights, everything we need.

We produce our own power for that because when it was built, we were out in the middle of nowhere, and there was no connection to much of anything.

-So how did they get power back then?

-So at the time of construction, they had to bring it in all the way from San Bernardino in California and run lines here to provide power for the construction.

-Is this spot right here part of a public tour?

Because everybody should see this.

-This is a part of the public tour.

It is included with both of our tours that operate at the dam, so the public can see and feel this really awesome spot.

-Has it ever gotten clogged?

Do you ever need to get a plunger down there?

-They go through certain maintenance cycles where they do cleaning of it.

But no, it doesn't.

-All right.

Let's head that way because I have another question for you.

-Okay.

♪♪♪ Okay, let's talk concrete.

There's a lot of it; tell me about it.

-There is 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete in the dam.

-I heard that it's still drying.

-That's partly true, but for the most part, they figured out that if they were able to-- they ran tests in the '20s leading up to it and figured out how they could draw some of the heat out because as concrete cures, it creates heat.

So what they ended up doing is creating this giant refrigeration plant.

They ran 592 miles of one-inch pipe and ran cool water through it, and you can see there's a slot right up the middle of the dam that was left open to run those pipes through.

And they were able to draw off 159 billion BTUs of heat, which is the same amount as 159 billion matches.

-And that enabled it to cool a lot and strengthen a lot quicker, and that's one of the reasons why they finished ahead of time, right?

-Yes, absolutely.

They were able to make sure that they wouldn't have any cracks or problems as it cured through the years.

They were able to get it done a lot faster, and it would be good to go.

-What about some of the machinery?

I mean, I would guess some of this is so old you wouldn't be able to just replace it easily.

-Yes.

For the most part, some of the stuff is very unique to us just because of the sheer size and scale of it, so we actually have a shop in-house that can do quite a bit of things, even in really large scale.

-That's amazing.

How much pride do you personally feel getting to work here?

-Oh, there's a ton of pride that goes to being part of the team that's with Hoover Dam.

Obviously we're, you know, one of the most recognizable-- if not the most recognizable-- dam in the world, but it's also, you know, something to be proud of as an American, that this is something that was accomplished at a time when they didn't have computers, didn't have any of that stuff, and they were able to accomplish this gigantic engineering feat that's just incredible.

-Tell me about Hoover Dam and the environment and how it changed the Southwest.

-So there's one good essay that I like to go to where the author said that water was the miraculous developer of the Southwest, and for the most part, that is true.

If we didn't have the reservoirs, we wouldn't be able to feed the large metropolitan areas of the Southwest and also provide power to those areas as well.

-You know, I've always been enamored of this, but getting more information and learning more about it and spending the day with you really just ups the ante a whole lot more, and I just want to say thanks for taking the time today.

-Yes, absolutely.

-Really cool.

Make sure you find the time to visit the Hoover Dam.

It's a marvel of engineering and a testament to the spirit of the American worker.

♪♪♪ Support for Outdoor Nevada comes from Jaguar Land Rover Las Vegas.

♪♪♪ Inspiring the spirit of adventure with confidence in any terrain or condition.

We're proud to help introduce a new generation of adventurers to the diverse experiences that our state has to offer.

Information at jlrlv.com.