What Materials & Tools Were Used to Make the Glen Canyon Dam?
The Glen Canyon Dam is the upper dam in the Colorado River water management system. It is located approximately 300 miles northeast of the Hoover Dam, which is the lower dam in the Colorado system. The coordinated dams provide water and hydroelectric power for homes and farms across the southwestern states. Construction of the Glen Canyon Dam required hundreds of men, a host of materials and many types of equipment.
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Glen Canyon Bridge
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Glen Canyon Bridge. Before construction on the dam could begin, a link to eliminate the 200-mile drive from one side of the canyon to the other was required. The Glen Canyon Bridge would provide that link. The steel arch bridge was fabricated in California and trucked to the dam's site on large, flatbed trucks. Workers hoisted the steel bridge sections into place with huge overhead cranes and then assembled the bridge using welds and rivets. They also reinforced and poured the concrete roadbed of the bridge.
Explosives and Excavating Equipment
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TNT was used to blast diversion tunnels. Three tunnels were necessary before work on the dam could start. Workers used explosives and excavating tools to carve out a pair of tunnels to divert water flow around the bridge site. They drilled a third tunnel over 2 miles from the dam's base to the nearby town of Page to provide access to the dam's site. Workers excavated material from each tunnel and trucked it to build a temporary cofferdam around the dam's base. A cofferdam is built above the dam site and forces the normal water flow into the diversion tunnels, providing a dry base for the overall dam construction.
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Carpenters, Lumber and Reinforcing Steel
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Rebar strengthens concrete pours. Hundreds of carpenters worked with standard carpentry tools and equipment to build the forms for each concrete pour. The forms, called lifts, were 7.5 feet tall, 60 feet wide and up to 210 feet long. Steel workers lined each form with reinforced steel rods, tying them in place prior to concrete pouring.
Concrete and Delivery Systems
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Concrete workers delivered concrete to the forms in 12.5-cubic-foot buckets swung into pouring position by a system of overhead cranes and cables manned by journeyman crane operators. They poured concrete 24 hours a day, 7 days a week until 5 million cubic yards of concrete raised the dam to a height of 710 feet.
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