Episode 231: Everyone And Their Dog

Music Patrick Tierney fell to his death on December 20th, 1935. The 25-year-old electrician's helper from Missouri had been working on one of two intake towers that graced the Arizona side of the nearly finished Hoover Dam when he tumbled 320 feet

to the newly forming lake mead below. His body wouldn't be found for several hours, floating in roughly 25 feet of water. Tierney was not the first to die during the dam's construction, but he holds the honor of being the last recorded death on this truly monumental project.

Because 14 years earlier, it was Patrick's father, John Gregory or J.G. Tierney, who lost his life. J.G. had been hired to work on a survey crew that was scoping out potential dam sites along the Colorado River. They were further upstream looking at Boulder Canyon, not Black Canyon, where the dam eventually went up, when the unpredictable Colorado decided to be unpredictable.

Apparently, there were differing accounts on what happened exactly, but the end result was the the same. J.G. somehow fell into the river and then disappeared below the water. His body was never recovered and it would take two weeks before news of his death eventually reached Las Vegas, the closest spot of civilization. But here's the kicker. The day that J.G.

disappeared into the river never to return? It was December 20th, 1921. Exactly 14 years to the day before his son would fall off that intake tower. The connected deaths of J.G. Tairney and Patrick Tairney is one of those incredible historical coincidences that make

you wonder how random the universe actually is. Beyond that though, I think it's a good metaphor for the building of the Hoover Dam. There was a lot of tragedy, a lot of suffering, and more than a few deaths throughout every

phase of the process. Yet in between, one of the great public works of its time somehow became a reality. I'm your host David Ruckhausen, and you are listening to AZ, the history of Arizona. Episode 231. Everyone and their dog.

Welcome back everyone. Last week we started discussing the Boulder Canyon project, which would eventually be built in Black Canyon and even further down the line would officially become known as the Hoover Dam. After talking about the staggeringly unoriginally named six companies which would build the dam, we then dwelt on the logistics of getting workers

to the site, and got up to the point where the Colorado River started to be diverted around the actual construction through the massive tunnels that had been carved through the canyon rock. Today we are going to do a speed run through the next several years to try and get through

the rest of the construction, while also talking about the workers, their conditions, the dozens of men who ended up just like Patrick Tierney. I also feel like right here I should give my semi-regular disclaimer about what I am NOT. In this case I want to stress that I am in no way an architect, engineer, civil, or

otherwise, or a construction worker. So I'll try to explain all this the best that I can, but I definitely don't have mastery over all aspects of this and we will be going pretty fast as a result. Okay, with work progressing on having the Colorado run around the construction site,

crews next had to tackle the canyon walls. Workers began stripping away loose rock and debris so that the dam could abut against solid rock on both sides, and to keep any loose materials from raining down on the job site.

But black canyon at this particular site is like 800 feet deep. So how did they go about this? Well, this is where the high scalers come in. These were men who were literally lowered over the side of the canyon in either safety

belts or what could generously be called chairs, but which author David Owen in Where the Water Goes describes as basically children's swings. These high scalers would use steel bars to knock away anything that was loose or could be knocked off easily.

However, there was other rock that, while solidly attached to the cliff face, was so fragmented and riddled with seams that it would become loose by later construction or blasting. In these cases, the high scalers had to use jack hammers or blast-set rock loose.

Just imagine doing that from a simple wood seat hanging from two lines hundreds of feet in the air. Nothing about this job was easy, as the sun-baked canyon walls could burn skin upon contact, and men working above often caused rocks to tumble down on those working below.

Owen said that the high scalers were greatly respected for their daring in taking up this difficult assignment. He also relates a story about when a Bureau of Reclamation engineer visiting the site started to fall down the canyon wall, a high-scaler working 25 feet below him instantly

pushed himself from his work site in an arc that allowed him to grab the poor man's leg to keep him from tumbling the rest of the way down. Stripping the canyon face would proceed from August 1932 until June 1933. Meanwhile, down at the bottom, construction of more temporary dams made sure the site was now completely dry and excavating the foundations could begin.

This required digging down and removing any loose materials until hitting solid bedrock, which was generally 35 to 40 feet down at the base of the canyon walls, but up to 125 feet down in the middle of the canyon. These excavations were finished by June 1933, but then it was time for a process known as grouting, where they drilled 143 holes up to 150 feet deep into the bedrock

and injected grout at high pressure. This apparently was to provide a barrier against seepage through the foundation and abutments, and to produce a more monolithic rock on which to rest this whole dam project. The first bucket of concrete was poured for the dam's foundations on June 6, 1933, nearly

18 months ahead of schedule. This bucket was poured into what was known as Block J3, more on that in a second, which was the deepest section of the foundation excavation, and if I may be smug for a second, closer to the Arizona side than the Nevada side.