BUILD YOUR OWN DAM

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Build-your-own model dams out of Mini Building Blocks. The Hoover set with 450 tiny pieces sits on top of the larger boxed Three Gorges set with 4,050 pieces. As the 2017 Chinese structure generates around eleven times the hydroelectricity of our esteemed 1936 dam, it seems appropriate their Mini Block sets are proportionally sized. The illustration on the box shows some complex structures on the right that do not appear in any photographs of the dam. We haven’t been able to learn why they were added to the model. Do you have any idea?

Artifacts that picture dams are many and varied. Ashtrays, plates, coffee cups, novelty salt and peppers, pennants, and medals decorated with the image of a specific river control project are created to sell as souvenirs. Among the scarcer of these gewgaws are diminutive models of these massive structures.

Tiny metal model of Bagnell Dam, which backs up the Osage River, creating Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks. Little model dams can be considered “buildings” and they have fans, many of whom are architects. They have bid up the price of the models. A lot of dam memorabilia are unappreciated currently, but souvenir dams are still avidly sought by collectors.

Assembled, this Mini Block model of Hoover Dam is 6 ½ x 3 1/8 x 1 7/8 inches. Its box has a warning: “There is a choking hazard from the tiny pieces.” The box is also imprinted with “for ages 7 and up.” If your second grader can put this together, s/he should be starting MIT.

Recently, kits of Lego-like mini-blocks have been created that replicate dams.  To our knowledge only three projects have been marketed: Hoover, Three Gorges, and Glen Canyon, which has sold out. Assembling these projects requires diligence and considerable dexterity working with very small objects. Though not a standard souvenir, the Hoover Dam model (below) is sold at a reasonable price on location at the National Park gift shop. They charge $17.99 plus tax. The Chinese kit for the larger Three Gorges Dam is available online for a bit over $100 plus shipping. Some offers are from China.

The two available kits (Hoover and Three Gorges) reflect the proportional size of their subjects. Like their real-life subjects, the Three Gorges box and model are larger than those of Hoover. If smaller than the Chinese dam, Hoover (Boulder) is still a celebrated American icon and symbol of our technological prowess.In the 89 years since it first clamped down on the unruly Colorado River, it has relinquished the title of “world’s biggest.” No longer can our press engage in such excessive hype as this Los Angeles Times quote of 1933:

“This great structure presents a picture of massive power, which overwhelms even the modern concept of the great Mayan builders.” Surpassing the Great Wall of China, the Acropolis, Hagia Sophia of Constantinople, and the pyramids of Egypt, the Times declared the dam to be “in fact, the greatest structure ever built by man.”

The Three Gorges set is produced by LUZ, a German firm with a large factory in China. Their catalog shows nano-block collections of birds, air and space, dinosaurs, landmarks, holidays, insects, trains, and art—one art kit is Munch’s “Scream” in 697 pieces.

Dams serve symbolic as well as functional needs as evidenced by the numerous comparisons of Hoover Dam with the celebrated relics of fallen civilizations. In 1937, the Boulder Dam Service Bureau (whoever that was) published a booklet, Boulder Dam Book of Comparisons, price 25 cents. Among the absurd references between the giant hydroelectric project and past-built achievements were factoids like this: two great pyramids could be built from “material excavated to anchor the sides of Boulder Dam.” The gee-whiz aspect of giant construction projects is a fallback for dam publicists. The actual merits of a project are boring. Size matters.

That glorious Hoover has been eclipsed worldwide has not gone unnoticed. Online are numerous references to this fall. It now ranks Number 34 in height. Itaipu Dam between Brazil and Patagonia and Three Gorges on the Yangtze generate exponentially more electricity and Hoover’s reservoir storage capacity ranks Number 28. Even so it attracts millions of visitors and remains an object of wonder for some.

As the American Depression Era engineering miracle was endlessly lauded, China’s Three Gorges Dam is celebrated by its Communist government, but its preeminence may be brief. The People’s Republic has approved a dam in Tibet that will more than triple the electrical production of Three Gorges.

The golden era of unopposed big dams may be over but the tradition of treating massive water resource management structures with reverence is not. Size still seems to be in and of itself newsworthy. Dams are monuments comparable to other big construction projects like the great pyramids. The benefits they provide may be cited but rarely (until recently) have their negative features been covered by the media. The symbolism of dams has not only been neglected by the press, academic writers have, until recently, been blind to the popular mystique of these massive projects.

Even though these symbolic aspects of dams were not written about until recently, dams represented national pride. That began in earnest in the 1930s with the hyper-promotion of Hoover (Boulder) Dam. In Imaging Hoover Dam, Anthony F. Arrigo brilliantly makes this point and laments the cultural aspects of dams have traditionally been overlooked by scholars.

“Dam Jack” Savage (white guy in hat) and Chinese Delegation, on Yangtze River, 1944 (Public Domain photo)

Not only did America’s Bureau of Reclamation’s chief engineer design Hoover Dam, John L. (“Dam Jack”) Savage traveled the world promoting engineering solutions to wild rivers. In an historical irony, in 1944 one of his journeys was to China’s Yangtze River at the invitation of Chiang Kai-shek. Savage was enthusiastic about controlling that river.

He envisioned his “dream dam” there. Decades later, it came to fruition as Three Gorges – outpacing in size and power capacity our own Hoover Dam. He had sold the idea to the nationalists, but the replacement Marxist government actually built the multibillion dollar hydroelectric and flood control project. Dams have been power showcases of strong central governments of more than one political persuasion.

 

John L. Savage’s Proposal for the Yangtze River Gorge Dam, 1945 (Public Domain photo)

OLD GLORY WAVES OVER HOOVER DAM

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The bins of postcard dealers are well stocked with postcards of Hoover (Boulder) Dam. A surprising percentage of these overproduced cards have an American flag adding a patriotic note to the gargantuan concrete structure. Why shouldn’t the Bureau of Reclamation fly our sacred flag? Here America fought and beat the enemy Colorado River. Loyal citizens should make a pilgrimage here to salute this victory. Anthony F. Arrigo explains in his book, Imaging Hoover Dam, how such water resource projects “fulfilled long-held American religious and cultural beliefs.”

The pervasive discourse of man dominating nature in the early 1900s and the resulting ‘golden age” of dam building throughout the American West from the 1930s to the early 1950s has been well documented. This discussion highlights a long-held, religiously sanctioned Western tradition of striving to improve the land through human endeavor augmented by technology.  ….

It is these ideas that have shaped American notions of nature and its role in American culture. Hoover Dam underscores these notions through its depiction as a titanic clash of human labor and technology against the “menacing” Colorado River, the latest and greatest in a long line of man’s struggles against a sublime nature, and a testament to American’s divine right of transformation and the inevitable march of American greatness. The narrative of Hoover Dam—man using technology to tame nature for the betterment of the country—fulfilled long-held American religious and cultural beliefs. Yoked together and displayed in the form of utopian visual and verbal assemblages, these narratives formed a cultural imaginary of Hoover Dam, a shaping mechanism for regional and national identities. Hoover Dam was another step toward American manifest destiny and an undertaking that was projected to transform the land for the betterment of humankind by fulfilling the tenets of Calvinism, Protestantism, capitalism, and high modernism. Without the dam, many said, the Southwest was fated to be the “cactus-covered waste” that it had always been.

 

BUCKLE UP With a DAM Good Belt Buckle

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Like Hoover (Boulder) Dam, all dams and reservoirs, even small ones, can generate images that promote purposes beyond their hydrological justifications. Cultural and symbolic meanings, Dr. Arrigo, author of Imaging Hoover Dam, convincingly asserts, can be perceived in advertising, souvenirs, and a variety of artifacts that celebrate the mystique of that particular river-blockage.

We further his thesis with a group of decorated hunks of metal used to support a fellow’s jeans. Most of the iconography of these belt buckles isn’t about flood control or hydropower but perpetuates Americans’ belief in the restorative power of outdoor recreation—increasingly a selling point for dam building. Some reservoirs (lakes) are in fact popular. These unnecessarily decorated useful accoutrements, like much of the other stuff in this post, are not specifically mentioned in his book. Our explanations may not be lifted from his writing either, but we run with his ideas that dam trivia can have hidden meaning.

Hoover Dam is just such an icon. It is often used to embellish products like this Montana Silversmiths Men’s Nevada State Heritage Attitude belt buckle. This firm produces buckles for all fifty states decorated with their best-known symbols. A reference to Hoover Dam and Las Vegas appears in this one with a cowboy and hunter flanking the state seal. Many buckles have been produced featuring Hoover Dam’s iconic flank alone

Though not specifically mentioned in Imaging Hoover Dam, these decorative belt buckles embody his thesis that structures built for economic reasons have cultural significance. Thousands of smaller dams built by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers, although not as commanding as Hoover, are promoted for the outdoor recreation their backed-up waters provide.

Bonny Dam in eastern Colorado still stands but its reservoir was drained following a 2003 Supreme Court ruling that forced Nebraska and Colorado to release river water as mandated by the Republican River Compact. The dam exists but in 2011, after years of appeals, the lake behind it was drained to the chagrin of local fishermen. This buckle graphically illustrates the affection locals had for its recreational opportunity in an arid and monotonous High Plains landscape.

 

Belt buckles with anti-dam iconography are exceptional. This “Free the Snake River” buckle expresses the goal of an active movement to remove four Corps’ dams on the lower Snake River. They were built to allow barges to move more freely and to generate a minuscule amount of hydroelectricity. They block the spawning runs of several species of salmon, including Chinook. Once these fish were a vital economic resource.

In the next to last paragraph of his book, Arrigo muses over the ironic fact ephemeral images of dams may continue to freely “speak” to future generations “long after the dam is gone.” Bonny Dam has been left but its function is “gone.” In his account of dam-removals the author doesn’t dismiss the usefulness of some dams. Images of dams do not always verify their stated purpose. Builder propaganda and product advertising have no obligation to be truthful.

A solution to blocking spawning runs has been to stock reservoirs above dams with hatchery-raised fish. That program created a popular sport fishery in Lake Sakakawea but at a cost—hatchery raised fish have poor reproductive fitness. If they mix with the more genetically diverse wild population, the offspring will do poorly. More than 300 scientific studies verified that hatchery-raised trout are poorly adapted to natural environments.

Dr. Arrigo cautions readers that dam memorabilia can misrepresent reality. This belt buckle celebrating the hatchery solution to the blockage of spawning runs is an example.

This species of salmonids is big but not as gigantic as the monster on this sculptured belt buckle commemorating the popularity of stocking Chinook in the biggest North Dakota impoundment.

Not far from Tuttle Creek Lake (Reservoir) is the doing-OK town of Leonardville, Kansas, population 429. Early on a railroad came through and today it’s connected by highways. Leonardville, unlike ten other nearby small towns, supported the construction of a Corps of Engineers dam. Those other burgs would be flooded, or nearly submerged, by the Tuttle Creek flood control project. Despite strong opposition from the three thousand who would be displaced, the earthen dam was built, and the reservoir began filling in 1962.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Tuttle Creek plate shows valued recreational opportunities the impoundment once offered to residents. They were benefits,recreational opportunities the impoundment once offered to residents. They were benefits, but they came at a high price.

A Kansas farmer mowed an anti-Tuttle-Creek Dam message into his field.

Water-powered mills were frontier necessities. Families gathered to convert their grain to flour and the small ponds behind the low dams were places the kids played. These low-tech mills were fondly remembered and idealized in popular culture. Artists painted them and sheet music like “Down by the Old Mill Stream” memorialized them. In a limited-edition belt buckle, Chapman, Kansas recalled an “Old Mill Dam” inactive since1903.

 

The preceding plate-style buckles evolved from Army belts of the mid-1800s. As is evident, this type of buckle affords a large space for decoration. Embellished with Western motifs, they were sported by movie cowboys and awarded to winners of rodeo events. These heavily sculpted ornaments were once exclusively male attire, having had a military origin. Construction, like building dams, was exclusively masculine.

 

DAMS AS SOUVENIR MOTIF

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Imaging Hoover Dam: The Making of a Cultural Idol was published eleven years ago but the book only came to our attention recently. Author Anthony Arrigo of course deals primarily with that gigantic plug on the Colorado River that generates electricity and diverts much of the Colorado’s flow to thirsty southern California. Our collection of dam memorabilia contains material imaging Hoover as well as dams across America, even some around the world. We have not only acquired artifacts that comport to Dr. Arrigo’s linkages to American cultural currents, but we have some whose meaning is cryptic.

Cast in pot metal, the ashtray that issues smoke from the openings in the head appears to be a knock-off of a ceramic four-eyed man (drunk?) made by Ensco. Conceivably it was offered long ago to tourists as a souvenir.

The very survival of the then-small Bureau of Reclamation hinged on the successful completion of Hoover Dam. Fortunately for them, the BOR was a publicity-savvy bureaucracy. They flooded the media with interesting images taken by their staff photographers accompanied by glowing press releases praising this symbol of American technological expertise.

One of their first official photographers was Cliff Segerblom hired in 1938. He had never used a camera before but had training as an artist. The Bureau hooked him up for instruction with Margaret Bourke-White and Ansel Adams—both had done contract work for them. Although Segerblom only worked for the BOR for several years he fulfilled their need to control the public opinion of the giant, expensive project.

As for the miniature doll house plastic toilet with a picture of Lake of the Ozarks’ Bagnell Dam, we could easily transfer this from our dam collection to our kitsch collection. Souvenirs are often obscene or scatological, failed humor assaults on good taste. They sometimes say nothing at all about their subject

He posed his wife-to-be, Jean Wines, placidly peering down at the dam to counter his earlier images of construction whose brutality may have given the impression that the dam was a dangerous place to visit. This tranquil view was reproduced in a 1941 Arizona Highways magazine and more recently on the cover of Imaging Hoover Dam.

There are some very different, but similar compositions. A sightseeing day trip to the dam and reservoir is a tradition for Las Vegas visitors. When tourism developed, the BOR lost control of the imagery that they had enjoyed during construction when photographers needed a pass to even see the dam. German art photographer and specialist in erotica, Helmut Newton, doubtlessly cared little what the BOR would have made of his view of Hoover Dam. We have not found out if this were an assignment from Vogue, Vanity Fair, or even Playboy. Las Vegas was a go-to resource for curvaceous females who would disrobe on request. We speculate he may have brought a showgirl in a thong to add pictorial interest to the scene of this great engineering accomplishment.

Contrasting Segerblom’s demure Mormon fiancée with a Vegas showgirl is a rather dramatic illustration of Arrigo’s thesis that Hoover Dam doesn’t have a single picture—its image is a mix of often very different views.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

General view,” photo by Cliff Segerblom (left). Hoover Dam Overlook, Helmut Newton (right).

 

 

THE PAYTON DAM COLLECTION

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Catalog for a photographic exhibition created for the University of Missouri Extension

We had two young sons to raise after Leland lost his employment creating photographic exhibits for the University of Missouri Extension. He was let go because of pressure from Stuart Symington. Missouri’s senior U. S. senator was angered because he sicked the Environmental Defense Fund on the Army Corps of Engineers’ Harry S. Truman Dam and Reservoir project that would block the Osage River. The lawsuit didn’t stop the impoundment, but it did force the Corps to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement. In detail the documents revealed the project’s adverse effects and poor cost-benefit ratio.

Leland’s traveling photographic shows on Missouri’s natural environment were pleasing to both regionalists and environmentalists.Supported financially by the Kansas City Association of Foundations his work came to the attention of Nancy Hanks, head of the National Endowment for the Arts. She backed his creation of a large exhibit on the state in observation of the Bicentennial. Ms. Hanks was offended when Sen. Symington sent an aide asking her to withdraw support for Leland’s project due to his “stop Truman Dam” efforts. University of Missouri Extension officials were cowed, however, by the Senator’s pressure. When he refused to withdraw as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, he was sacked.

Neither Leland nor wife and mother Crystal had marketable job skills, so they became itinerant, underfinanced antique pickers. As a kid, Leland had collected coins and Indian relics so along with looking for undervalued old stuff they started several collections of stuff that was interesting but cheap. One of these collections was of memorabilia relating to dams motivated by the effect they had had on his life.

The late John Margolies inspired us to collect souvenirs and memorabilia relating to book projects.

While exhibiting at a New York City antiques show, they met John Margolies, the preeminent and well-published roadside photographer. John thought their accumulation of kitschy 1950s lamps was interesting, so he introduced them to Walton Rawls, an acquiring editor at Abbeville Press. In 1989, Turned On: Decorative Lamps of the Fifties was published. It was a modest success.

Weary of traveling to the coasts to buy and sell Art Deco and folk and outsider art to selective customers, the Paytons settled in Leland’s Ozarks homeland. From Springfield, Missouri, they did several more pop culture books then segued to self-publishing projects on regional subjects. To illustrate these projects, their accumulation of Ozarks memorabilia would be mixed with their contemporary location photographs. Several titles centered on the celebrated spring-fed streams of the rugged uplift. Recently Missouri State University Libraries-Ozark Studies Institute acquired their 5,000+ piece Ozark collection.

Hopefully their dam collection can similarly find an institutional home where it can be made available to scholars of water resource development. The stunning graphics of much of this stuff lends itself to exhibition as well. In this post we illustrate some of our material showing the variety of ways dams are perceived. Some we match up with quotes from Imaging Hoover Dam by Dr. Anthony F. Arrigo. All the illustrations in this post are from the Paytons’ dam collection.

Dr. Arrigo acknowledges the power of these diverse representations. He was amazed at how they influenced public opinion but how few scholars recognized this fact:

I was struck by the rhetorical features of these images, as well as their ability to instantaneously arrest my attention and “speak” to me in ways that the text did not or could not. As I began to research the topic in more depth, I found a seemingly endless trove—thousands upon thousands—of images of all sorts published in every conceivable medium. It seemed to me that these images had their own story to tell, and the more images I found, the more diverse the story became, in some cases veering wildly from the received history of the dam that I had casually come to know.

Later in the preface he points out the sneaky way these megabuck endeavors to remake the landscape are advanced:

I trace how its imagery was deployed through advertising, government propaganda, journalism, and other promotional outlets to shape the public’s perception of the project. This discussion ranges from how the dam’s imagery reflects the cultural and ecological imperatives that precipitated its construction, to the influence of religious doctrine and the American agrarian movement in the drive to build the dam, to the visual commodification of the project as a way to sell cars, trucks, vacations, and a variety of other goods and services.

The book laments the neglect of “this endless array of images” by historians.

Although the Hoover Dam project itself has been the subject of hundreds of publications, this mass of related visual material has barely been considered. By foregrounding representations of Hoover Dam that were produced before, during and after its construction, Imaging Hoover Dam shows how this supra-discursive visualizing process was integral to the development of the mythology, indeed the very iconicity, of the dam, and how the use of Hoover Dam imagery shifted over time from ensuring its construction, to its celebration as a sublime engineering wonder, to its utter commoditization as a means of selling everything from whiskey, to cars, to vacations, to space pens.

It was a costly undertaking during the Depression: “Regardless of its potential, luring residents to the harsh, flood-prone, and as-yet-undeveloped Colorado Desert, and persuading a reluctant government deep in the throes of the Great Depression to spend tens of millions of dollars on a giant dam—what some saw as a boondoggle of monumental proportions—would require a massive public relations effort.”

Hoover Dam and Las Vegas are intimately related. This musical snow globe shows Kokopelli (adapted from an ancient Indian petroglyph) cavorting around the base while two Kokopelli dressed as tourists look down into Hoover Dam inside the globe. A cautionary tableau, fabricated into a souvenir. (left) Many souvenirs like the vintage glass ashtray (top right) show both Hoover Dam and Vegas.

Native Americans are the embodiment of primitivism. Surprisingly they appear in conjunction with this icon of modern technology. In Imaging Hoover Dam, the author addresses this strange pairing:

The figure of the Native American is clearly a romantic one, as is suggested by the title of the booklet, but what is also romanticized here is the technological achievement and the materials of modern construction—concrete and steel. The Native American figure is part of the old Wild West romance myth that is so important to the ethos of the American West. But the native also seems to be looking at the dam in wonderment and perhaps resignation. The figure appears to be looking at the dam as one looks at a curiosity. Although the native carries his own technology, an instrument of war and hunting, his bow and arrow are clearly impotent against the modern dam.

Near naked warriors in front of Hoover and other dams are not uncommon, if paradoxical. Arrigo explains: “In these images, the old and new are powerfully contrasted. Native figures in traditional dress—feathers in their hair, and loincloths around their waists—look out onto the ultramodern dam, a symbol of industrial and governmental power, symbolism echoed in the oversized stately building placed at the bottom of the dam. Here we see that the native people are left behind, a romantic legacy of a time long past.”

The conclusion of Imaging Hoover Dam examines the changing public perception of these heroic projects and the future of Hoover and other monumental efforts to control nature:

The dam’s demise may, in fact, come at the behest of the American public if it decides at some future point that Hoover Dam is no longer appropriate in the zeitgeist of a more environmentally concerned society. The frenzy of dam building that the Bureau of Reclamation set into motion in the early 1900s in the United States is over and appeals for movement in the opposite direction have been taking hold.

Fishermen lobby to remove blockages of fish that spawn in headwaters. Reservoirs fill with sediments. Some objectionable dams have been removed. New projects are justified because hydroelectric power is “green.” In the ten years since this book was published, “clean energy” advocates have included hydropower in their suite of proposals. Alas, growing populations need water for irrigation and believe in the promised flood control. At the same time, the movement to remove aging, fish-blocking, sediment-clogged dams has gained momentum. The outcome of these conflicting needs and interests is unknown.

BOOK REVEALS HOOVER DAM FULFILLS CULTURAL AS WELL AS ECONOMIC PURPOSES

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Imaging Hoover Dam: The Making of a Cultural Icon, by Anthony F. Arrigo, (University of Nevada Press, 2014), stands apart from any study for or against that we’ve seen.

This post is a review of Imaging Hoover Dam we submitted to Amazon, here illustrated with objects from the Payton Dam Collection.

Dr. Arrigo, in his preface, states:

In this book I try to answer the question of how Hoover Dam evolved from a pipe dream of land developers and farmers, to an ambitious civil engineering project in the middle of the Mojave Desert, to the visual and cultural icon that it is today. To do this, in contrast to most scholarship on the dam, I provide a significant shift in focus away from chronicled accounts of how it was built and onto its myriad visual representations. In doing so, I trace how its imagery was deployed through advertising, government propaganda, journalism, and other promotional outlets to shape the public’s perception of the project.

Previous books largely ignore dams’ symbolic and cultural significance. Some are for, some are against.

It has been estimated that there are 50,000 large dams in the world. There is no shortage of titles published on the subject of impounding rivers. These mega structures provide benefits. Supporters claim that by controlling wild streams flooding will be reduced. Many produce hydroelectricity. Stored water can be used to irrigate crops. Some of their reservoirs (most often euphemistically called ‘lakes’) develop recreational attractions.

Economics of these costly construction projects are often left to the computation of their builders, who are usually sanctioned and supported by a nation’s central government. Until recently their good was seen to outweigh the loss of farms and towns to their backed-up waters and the blockage of spawning fish was ignored. Cost-benefit analysis is outrageously manipulated by supporters.

Environmentalists point out the environmental degradation caused by some projects. Their effects on a place are more complex and profound than originally suspected. There is now a bookshelf of anti-dam publications matching works that advocate engineering solutions to water resource management. Not only can dams damage the environment, but they also lose storage capacity due to sedimentation as they age. A dam removal movement is gathering momentum in America. China however is building more and bigger dams.

The vitae of this associate professor of writing, rhetoric and communication at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, doesn’t indicate a long career interest in water resources. Dr. Arrigo reveals in his preface why he wrote the book:

A few years ago I was having a casual conversation with someone about a recent vacation to Nevada and California in which I took a side trip to see Hoover Dam. Little did I know that the seemingly inconsequential exchange—a polite “how was your trip” type of encounter that we have with people all the time—would become the catalyst for several years of research culminating in this book.

The unnamed interlocutor, “not being from the United States,” told him, “You must be proud of that as an American.” In further conversation the professor deduced that Hoover (Boulder) Dam was an object of pride in national identity commensurate with Niagara Falls, Mt. Rushmore, and the Statue of Liberty.

This image is from an N.B.C. press release about a program, “It Couldn’t Be Done,” and shows a group of “imposing accomplishments” among which is Hoover Dam.

“The interesting question to me was why.” Arrigo isn’t unaware of the hydrologic aspects of river management or how reservoirs modify landscape. It’s the way images have shaped public opinion of dams that intrigues him. He lists businesses that associate their products with this colossal river intervention. The dam is used as a backdrop for ads for both construction equipment and family cars.

Absurdly, Coca Cola produced a series of items picturing the dam to celebrate Hoover Dam’s Golden Anniversary.  Souvenir stands have dispensed kitsch trinkets decorated with representations of this giant hunk of concrete. Supportive media readily published stories and photographs supplied by the Bureau of Reclamation, the government agency in charge. Hoover Dam became accepted as a wonder of engineering exemplifying America’s mastery of technology and the environment. Negative information and photos were quashed by the BOR.

From Boulder Dam Book of Comparisons, 1937.

Although the Hoover Dam project itself has been the subject of hundreds of publications, this mass of related visual material has barely been considered. By foregrounding representations of Hoover Dam that were produced before, during, and after its construction, Imaging Hoover Dam shows how this supra-discursive visualizing process was integral to the development of the mythology, indeed the very iconicity of the dam, and how the use of Hoover Dam imagery shifted over time from ensuring its construction, to its celebration as a sublime engineering wonder, to its utter commoditization as a means of selling everything from whiskey, to cars, to vacations, to space pens.

Images of Hoover Dam decorate thousands of souvenirs and gifts like this space pen and money clip.

That mention of “space pens” in connection to Hoover Dam sent us to the computer where a Google search revealed a Fisher pen with the image of the dam. It comes in a box with a graphic of the American moon landing suggesting a connection between two disparate examples of our country’s technological genius. It was a nice addition to the collection of memorabilia of many dams we have made. Throughout his book we found mention, and at times illustrations, of stuff already in our horde. Occasionally, as in the case of the space pen, he mentions stuff we could look for.

The author apparently is not a collector of Hoover Dam memorabilia and has relied on institutional collections such as the Boulder City Museum for objects to study. We’ve written and published several books on Ozark rivers and have used photographs of artifacts in our collection to illustrate them. Impounding the clear, spring fed streams of the Ozark uplift has a long and contentious history. Hoover is the centerpiece of this book, but it also critiques the scheme to alter the waterways of the entire Southwest. We were only vaguely familiar with the details of “making the desert bloom” but the manipulation of public opinion to get public support and censor criticism by the dam-building coalitions are very familiar. The methods are the same. Control of wild rivers was, and is, undertaken with fanaticism. Threats to interfere with that sacred mission are dealt with harshly.

After having three titles on pop culture published by major publishers, we founded Lens & Pen Press and produced a group of books on the Ozarks. Damming the Osage (2012) worked in an account of Leland’s punishing experience as a participant in a lawsuit to stop the Harry S. Truman Dam and Reservoir. James Fork of the White Transformation of an Ozark River deals with the way water resource development changes the landscape.

We found out how punishing dam advocates can be. Leland was fired from a position with the University of Missouri Extension for being a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit brought by the Environmental Defense Fund to stop or modify a massive Army Corps of Engineers project on the Osage River in Missouri. In a later post we will tell that tale. The EDF challenged the Corps’ economic calculations and pointed out negative impacts, enlisting the testimony of many kinds of scientists.

Dr. Arrigo repeatedly makes the point that these mega projects are propelled by symbolism and promise to fulfill cultural purposes as well as promising tangible economic benefits. In his first chapter, “Nature, Culture, and Transformation,” the author acknowledges the term “culture” is one of the most complex words in the English language:

The way that I used culture in this book, however, centers on an American tradition of land transformation, one that embodies an ethos of modernity eager to use science and technology to transform or order nature into utilitarian functionality. This perspective frames the Hoover Dam’s construction as a beacon of modernism and the apogee of man’s long struggle against nature, one that spurred a frenzy of dam building in the United States and around the world. It also views Hoover Dam as another in a long line of liturgically motivated endeavors to use technology to re-create or reclaim the Garden of Eden for the profit of humankind, a process I term the “divine right of transformation.”

This mechanism of gaining support for dams isn’t unlike the process Vance Packard describes in his 1957 book, The Hidden Persuaders. His motivational research reveals subliminal messaging is used by advertisers and politicians to manipulate expectations and create desire for products or a favorable opinion of candidates. These subconscious promises are more personal and emotional than the manipulations of image for cultural fulfillment in the case of dams.

This book reveals a body of publicity, advertising, and journalism that influences public opinion. For us, Imaging Hoover Dam has served to illuminate our extensive collection of dam memorabilia and souvenirs. More importantly it reveals the power of these hidden persuaders to facilitate the industry of river improvement. If Professor Arrigo’s insights were better known it might make unwise dams more difficult to authorize, fund, and build.

Media has cooperated with agencies that build dams. Magazines and newspapers uncritically published Bureau of Reclamation and Corps of Engineers press releases and used supplied images.

Invention & Technology in 1970 praised Hoover Dam, reproducing a Fortune 1933 cover of one of the dam’s hydroelectric generators. Echoing the promotional hype of the 1930s, the article said, “the incomparable triumph” was “a symbol for all that was right and wrong with America.” Recently, some journalists have noted the adverse effects of some projects but overall most media is laudatory.