Customer Reviews

The American Experience: Hoover Dam, The Making of a Monument [VHS]

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"Hoover Dam, the Making of a Monument," is more than just the story of how the Hoover Dam was built. It's the story of people who fought for the dam and fought against it. This fine documentary puts the struggle to build this dam in its proper context: in the midst of the Great Depression when men were begging for work and in the American Southwest where farms were thirsting for water. In just one hour, this film chronicles the struggle to gain approval for the dam, and then the search to find someone who could build the something most engineers said was impossible, and finally the actual construction. The film also tells the story of the average workers who flocked to the desert looking for work, regardless of how dangerous it was. The documentary's validity benefits from interviews with many former dam workers and residents of the local workers' village. These interviews, along with extensive period footage and still photos, paint a vivid picture of ordinary men and women who created something marvelous and fantastic in the midst of one of America's greatest domestic crises. This film will help you appreciate Hoover Dam a little bit more the next time you see it, and will remind you that great works don't just occur by themselves. They happen because people, from the highest levels of power to those digging the tunnels, make them happen.

My 10 year old son watched this video and can't get enough of it. He wants to be an engineer when he grows up and the building of this huge dam just boggled his mind.