1931 Eddy Bird's-Eye View Map of Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, and Environs

This is a 1931 Gerald A. Eddy bird's-eye view perspective map of Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, and environs. Hoover Dam appears in the lower-left along the border next to Boulder City, explicitly founded to house the thousands of workers involved in building the dam. Lake Mead dominates the foreground, and the view stretches hundreds of miles north to Salt Lake City, Utah. Published as a promotional piece for Union Pacific Railroad in the year the dam's construction began, a thick red line traces the railroad's route south from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas and on to Boulder City and the construction site. The Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, and Cedar Breaks National Monument are highlighted, no doubt in the hopes of driving tourism despite the Great Depressing being in full swing. The region's numerous mountain ranges, canyons, and other natural wonders are also identified.

Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam, built on the Nevada-Arizona border, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in Black Canyon on the Colorado River. It was built between 1931 and 1936 and thousands of people. Over 3,000 individuals were on the payroll when construction began, and the workforce hit its peak in July 1934, with 5,251 people on site. Over one hundred people died during construction. Hoover Dam forms Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. The dam generates electricity for millions of people in Nevada, Arizona, and California.

Naming Controversy

When people began lobbying for the dam's construction in 1928, the press referred to it as the 'Boulder Dam' or the 'Boulder Canyon Dam,' even though the proposed site was in Black Canyon. On September 17, 1930, Secretary of the Interior Ray. Wilbur spoke at the ceremony celebrating the beginning of the construction of the railway between the dam site and Las Vegas. During his speech, Wilbur referred to the dam as 'Hoover Dam' and cited a tradition of naming dams after presidents (never mind that one had never been named after a sitting president). After Hoover lost his reelection bid in 1932, the new Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, began vehemently campaigning against the name Hoover Dam. He would only refer to it as Boulder Dam, even going so far as to state, incorrectly, that Congress had never formally used that name. The naming controversy continued, with average Americans using the names interchangeably until Congress officially renamed the dam Hoover Dam in 1947. Intriguingly, this naming controversy extends to the present map, with a later state, issued in 1934, using the name Boulder Dam instead of Hoover Dam, as here.

Publication History and Census

This map was drawn by Gerald A. Eddy and published by R. B. Robertson for the Union Pacific system in 1931. A second edition, identical to the present edition in every way except for changing the title from 'Hoover Dam' to 'Boulder Dam,' was published in 1934. Nine examples of the present map are cataloged in OCLC.