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Creating the diversion tunnels had required a great amount of creativity and long hours for the dam workers.
However, the excavation of the riverbed was to involve nothing but muscle. The dam was to be poured on solid bedrock
but for this to be accomplished the workers had to dig through thousands of years of accumulated silt.
In a continual stream, tons of sediment from the river bottom was loaded into trucks. Workers began wondering if they would ever
see the bottom of the riverbed.
On June 6, 1933, the first bucket of concrete was poured into
what would gradually become the Hoover Dam. There was no way the
dam could be poured continuously; it would have to be done in separate
interlocking blocks. Mammoth buckets of concrete suspended on highways
of wires suspended high above the dam site delivered tons of concrete.
Gradually, columns of cement slowly began to rise and construction
crews became so familiar with the process that the pouring began
to take on an artistic flow.
As concrete dries it gives off heat. To combat this, dam designers developed a system that would allow water to be piped
through different parts of the growing dam. Water from the river was refrigerated and then circulated through the pipes.
Once a block was completed, the cooling pipes were filled with grout and work moved on to a new section.
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