April 2019 - My Site

Valley of Fire, March 12, 2019

I went on a bus tour of the Valley of Fire, the first state park in Nevada, and had an amazing time. We had an experienced and enthusiastic tour guide, Sally, who made our trip enjoyable. On the way to the Valley of Fire, she explained that she moved to Las Vegas in 1966 from England and has dual citizenship. On a recent solo car trip from Las Vegas starting at 6:00 a.m. to Los Angeles, she decided to count the number of 18-wheelers going into Las Vegas, and counted over 900! It was visual proof that just about everything is brought in from somewhere else. She said that most people assume that palm trees naturally grow in the Las Vegas Valley, but they are in fact brought in from California or Arizona at a cost of about $5,000 each. Casinos along Las Vegas Boulevard paid over $11 million to have palm trees planted along the Strip.

We learned that Las Vegas has pig and shrimp farms. Las Vegas leads the nation in shrimp consumption and its residents and visitors consume 22 million pounds annually.

Sally likes the Paiute Indian tribes because they respect their women for keeping their civilization going. They are a gentle people who have an enormous amount of knowledge about the medicinal value of desert plants.

After we entered the park, we saw erosion and the effects of wind, rain, and violent weather over millions of years that have produced unusual sandstone formations and beautiful colors. We stopped for photo ops at the Beehives, Elephant Rock, Seven Sisters, and Mouse’s Tank. We saw ancient petroglyphs. At the Visitor’s Center, I snapped a picture of a petrified log.

Sally pointed out the creosote bushes that can keep neighboring bushes stunted by using their highly effective root system to draw water for their own survival. She pointed out galls in trees, black round balls that are home to ants. We learned that mistletoe plants kill their host trees and saw many examples.

As we ate lunch, two desert squirrels scurried alongside our picnic area, and two ravens eyed our food from the top of a large rock. We didn’t see any tortoises, but Sally admonished us not to pick them up and move them across the road because they will be traumatized and disoriented. Their defense mechanism will kick in and release the contents of their bladder and possibly cause them to die in drought conditions.

Sally pointed out the mountain area which shields Area 51, its existence long denied by the government. She told us that employees drive their cars to work, but higher level personnel are flown in by Janet airlines in unbranded planes that are white with a red stripe. She told us that Janet unofficially means “Just Another Non Existent Terminal.”

We witnessed magical and alien terrain, the power of nature, and beautiful and unique formations millions of years in the making. It was cloudy most of the day, but blue skies appeared toward the end of our tour. Sally and her competent driver brought the sunshine with them and gave us a spectacular day.

Hoover Dam, a brief history. Herbert C. Hoover, our 31^st president, approved the funding of the construction of the dam, then known as the Boulder Canyon Project. The goal was to build a dam across the Colorado River on the Nevada-Arizona border to harness the power of the river to generate electricity, fairly distribute water to several southwestern states, and to fuel the economic growth of a burgeoning southern California. In the process, Lake Mead, the world’s largest man-made reservoir, was created.

No one company could come up with the $5 million bond required to bid for the contract and six companies subsequently joined together to form Six Companies, Inc., in order to combine their resources and they were awarded the contract. Concrete contractors realized that if they used traditional methods for pouring and curing concrete, it would take 125 years to cure. They used 600 miles of thin steel pipes and wove them into the concrete and circulated ice water from a refrigeration plant to cool the concrete. After the pipes were used, they were filled with concrete and made the dam even stronger.

The dam was built during the Great Depression and gave jobs to thousands of unemployed men. An entire city, Boulder City, was built to house the workers. The early days of the project had many workers in makeshift shanty towns made of tents and cardboard boxes, and a strike occurred in August of 1931 to protest dangerous working conditions and poor housing. In the summer months, workers endured 120 degree heat and 140 degree heat in the diversion tunnels with exposure to carbon monoxide from the machinery. The workers demanded adherence to safety laws, better lighting, and availability of water. Unfortunately, there was sweeping unemployment in the country and the workers did not have any leverage against their employers, and the strike ended after six days. The Six Companies did expedite the construction of housing and added some safety measures. Casinos were outlawed in Boulder City and workers were paid with special coins that could only be used in Boulder City to discourage workers from going to casinos in Las Vegas. The last bucket of concrete was placed in the dam on May 29, 1935 and Hoover Dam officially opened in 1936.

The Black Canyon River Float Tour. The Sun City Community Association offered a tour of Black Canyon on a river float raft for $125 that included transportation by bus, shuttle bus to the launch, a three-hour river rafting adventure and a box lunch. It was well worth the money for learning about the fascinating features of Black Canyon, named for the black volcanic rocks strewn about the canyon.

The Hoover Dam bypass bridge was interesting because of its magnitude. It was the first concrete-steel composition bridge in the United States and includes the longest concrete arch in the Western Hemisphere. It was named the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge and opened in 2010. Mike O’Callaghan was the governor of Nevada from 1971-1979. Pat Tillman gave up his career with the Arizona Cardinals and enlisted in the U.S. Army after the 9/11 attacks. He was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire in 2004 at the age of 27.

Our guide, Reid, was experienced and knowledgeable about the terrain and history of the area. He asked kayakers how they were doing as we passed them and had radio communication in case help was needed. During the tour, he pointed out turkey vultures flying about and told us to “look alive!” as vultures like dead animals. We saw turtles not native to the canyon, which meant that humans let loose their pet turtles and they survived. The only palm tree that is native to the area is the fan palm but we saw a grove of small palms of a different species that was probably started by a bird dropping a seed on fertile soil.

Reid pointed out red cacti that hold quite a bit of water, but he said you’d have to get through the thorns, the skin, and then mash the pulp in order to taste the moisture that would probably make you sick. He also pointed out rocks that flew across the river in violent periods of geologic events. We saw waterfalls, quiet coves, and unusual formations that told their own stories. We also saw an unconformity rock up close that reflected a missing interval of a geological period.

Reid did an outstanding job in maneuvering the raft and giving us an informative narrative. We were soaking wet from the splashes from the river but back home in dry clothes, I’m sure everyone understood the breathless magnificence of the Hoover Dam, the triumphant taming of the Colorado River, and the pleasures the river brings to visitors from all over the world.