The Wild River and the Great Dam by Simon Boughton

Follow the construction of the Depression era’s greatest building project in The Wild River and the Great Dam.

The Wild River and the Great Dam: The Construction of Hoover Dam and the Vanishing Colorado River by Simon Boughton. Little, Brown, 2024, 202 pages plus appendices.

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12

Recommended for: ages 10-15

If you’ve ever visited Las Vegas or driven to the Grand Canyon via Highway 93 you’ve seen it: a graceful, curving slab of concrete holding back approximately 28 million acre-feet of water. If you’ve ever wondered how it was built (and don’t have time to take the tour), this is the book for you. More than a mere Depression-era project, Hoover Dam was built to control “the fastest-flowing, muddiest, most unpredictable major river in the country,” besides providing water and power to the burgeoning cities and farms of the arid southwest.

From the opening pages, readers should be impressed with the sheer scale of this project, from design to bidding to raising infrastructure in the desert, even before work could begin on the dam itself. Much of its construction depended on technology that hadn’t even been invented twenty years earlier, and trial and error (plus fatalities) refined techniques even more. Men desperate for work swamped the construction site while their families made do in thrown-together tent cities under a blistering sun. Boulder City, with houses and schools, movie theater and swimming pool, came later.

Mechanical-minded readers will eat up the details of cofferdams and diversion tunnels. I could have used a few more diagrams, but anyone will catch the drift of what an achievement this was. The author gives the project full due without decrying the loss of “the wild river,” but he makes a convincing case that dam-building fever might have gone a little too far. Altering any environment this drastically always comes at a cost, but responsible stewardship should weigh costs against benefits. Overall, Hoover Dam emerges as a net benefit.

Consideration:

• A few instances of quoted curse words.

Overall Rating: 4

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic/literary value: 4.5

Read more about our ratings here.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Reviews: David Macaulay is THE go-to guy for books on some of the world’s greatest building projects. See our reviews of Crossing on Time and The Way Things Work Now. Also check out these classics we’ve never reviewed but highly recommend: Cathedral, Pyramid, and Castle.
• Review: Budding architects may find inspiration in Houses with a Story (starred review).
• Resource: See our list of Engineering Books for Boys and Girls.

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