Hoover Dam Bypass

The Hoover Dam is only 30 miles/ 48 kms from Las Vegas. It's around a 45 minute drive. Much closer than our 5 hour drive to the Grand Canyon the other day. You actually drive on top of the Hoover Dam going to the Grand Canyon and back. It's the best way and primary link for travelling between Las Vegas and Phoenix. However, traffic can get pretty slow when peeps travel across the dam due to the narrow two lane road and increased security concerns due to terrorism.

The construction of this bridge is so immense, difficult and complex that they've already been featuring the building of the bypass on National Geographic and Discovery Channel even before its completion! Here's how it's supposed to look when its finished. And here's how the new road will join up with the existing one along with other features. As per the latest update on wiki, they'll be allowing people to park and walk across the bridge for viewing, picture-taking etc!Cool!

We finally got to park and get our first gander at the Hoover Dam from the parking area.

"Hoover Dam, originally known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada. When completed in 1936, it was both the world's largest electric-power generating station and the world's largest concrete structure." It was surpassed in both these respects by the Grand Coulee Dam in 1945. It is currently the world's 35th-largest hydroelectric generating station."