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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.