Where are all the boulders? Everything you need to know about a visit to Boulder City

I find it interesting the places I travel where the names do not always make sense.

For instance, I once traveled through Boring, Oregon and when I asked a man for a good place to have lunch - he jumped up and down, “Dude, there is this awesome burger joint, it’s always rockin’."

I drove through Canada and Texas a few years back and was surprised no one had a French accent, and the folks there liked me, an American.

Another time, I cruised through Intercourse, Pennsylvania - I did not stop.

Does Boulder City have lots of boulders?

So, when Laureen and I visited Boulder City, Nevada, recently, I saw no boulders.

“Where’s the boulders?” I asked.

My lovely wife shook her head. “It’s named after Boulder Canyon, where Hoover Dam was built.”

I nodded. “Still, it would be nice to see some boulders since its name is Boulder City. Just one huge granite rock stuck in the middle of the main street, with a sign pointing to that igneous thingie that says, "Welcome to Boulder City.”

“Time for lunch and your meds,” Laureen commented.

And soon, we found ourselves at the Boulder Dam Brewery in the Boulder City Historic District. All was well with the day.

It was our two-hundredth wedding anniversary, and as a surprise, I booked a room at the historic Boulder Dam Hotel.

Laureen wanted Paris, France, and frowned when I suggested Perris, California.

So to Nevada, we went.

No gambling in Boulder City? You betcha'

Boulder City is only one of two cities in Nevada that does not allow gambling. The other is a town named Panaca - somewhere near the border of Utah.

What if I wanted to wager a month's salary on the spinning ball of Roulette?

According to the Boulder Dam Hotel concierge, “You’ll have to leave town to gamble. This city was one of the first planned town developments in the nation, and gambling was not one of the vices for the residents.”

It turns out that Boulder City was built on federal land and was, in fact, an experiment on how to lay out a city with everything that would be needed for the folks who would reside in the area. There would be paved roads, houses, grocery stores, churches, and everything else that would make up a wholesome community, excluding games of chance.

The Bureau of Reclamation headed the project, tasked with overseeing the construction of the Boulder Canyon Project, later known as Hoover Dam, along with six separate construction companies that had won the building contracts from the federal government. The project was too humongous for any one company to construct.

It was in December of 1928 that President Calvin Coolidge authorized the building of Boulder City to house all the workers needed for the massive and ambitious plans of creating a dam along the mighty Colorado River.

“We need a place for our laborers to rest after laboring all day in a gazillion degrees while hanging off sheer cliff faces,” it is rumored that President Coolidge stated to a flunky.

The flunky may have nodded in agreement. “Should there be gambling?”

“No.”

“Brothels?” the flunky asked.

“No brothels for them or you,” the president said quickly, grabbing a pen and ensuring it was in the construction by-laws.

It seems when news of the huge dam project was floating around the area of Boulder Canyon, the smallwigs in Las Vegas wanted dam workers to reside in Las Vegas - this was before Bugsy Siegel and the mob had taken over Sin City - they would later be known as bigwigs. Las Vegas was just a small gambling locale in the middle of the desert, and the smallwigs thought having a large group of men with loads of cash in their pockets after working all day along the river might bring some more stability to the desert gambling mecca.

The government, later to be known as Big Brother, told the gambling folks from Las Vegas to keep their distance from the hard-working men building the dam in the canyon.

“Last thing we need is to have a man lose a month’s salary in one naughty night in Las Vegas and have him dangling from a rope high above the Colorado River,” one foreman may have uttered.

“He may become untethered and then really untethered,” another foreman may have commented.

So, Boulder City was built in two years, from 1931 to 1932 - very fast for a full-blown town, but then again, the Hoover Dam was completed two years earlier than expected—a solid work ethic in those roaring thirties.

All the seven main streets in the town were named after states through which the Colorado River runs: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California. It was a lovely touch since these states were also where many workers had resided before moving to Boulder City to be employed for the dam project.

Boulder City has some marvelous views

As Laureen and I drove through this beautiful hilltop town overlooking the stilled waters of the Colorado River just north of the Hoover Dam, we marveled at the view from Denver Street. The story goes that it has the same view as back in 1932, with huge mountain vistas looking east toward Arizona with the startling blue waters of Lake Mead below. I wondered about that for a moment. Why wouldn’t it have the same view? What could have changed the landscape? An earthquake, a meteor impact, the Colorado River drying up, or perhaps Denver Street rerouted through the years.

These are the ponderings that keep me awake at night.

After the dam was completed in 1936, the hydroelectric power was delivered to Nevada and Southern California and turned over to the Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light (later changed to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power) and the California Edison Company.

The Feds controlled the entire region upon which Boulder City was built until 1958, when Congress approved the Boulder City Act, allowing the Bureau of Reclamation to turn over nearly 33 square miles to the newly enacted city government. In January of 1960, Boulder City was incorporated with huge fanfare from its many residents.

“About time,” one happy resident was heard shouting.

The Bureau of Reclamation kept control of all facilities needed to ensure the proper operation and maintenance of such a vital structure as the dam. And even the townsfolk realized the federal government always ran things much better and more efficiently than the local bureaucrats could (he typed with a wink).

The historic district is meant to meander and leisurely enjoy all the sights. There is a comfortable and quaint feeling while walking down the town streets, with buildings dating back to the dam's construction.

Downtown Boulder City full of art, history

The downtown district is registered on the National Register of Historic Places, with most buildings dating from 1931 to 1942. Only 40 or so were built after 1950, and since there are 514 buildings within the district, the entire area is a historical adventure for the tourist to take in and appreciate.

To highlight how life was in the early days of Boulder City, there is wonderfully crafted metal artwork seemingly every few yards down the main street.

A work created by artist Sutton Betti depicts men known as puddlers. These men smoothed cement with shovels after a pour, creating the shape of the dam.

Further down the street, a huge green metal frog by artist Kim Kori is blowing a kiss to visitors. Dozens of other uniquely created metal sculptures with descriptive plaques explain who the artist is and why such a piece was crafted.

The Boulder Dam Hotel, our abode away from home, was also added to the National Register of Historic Places in July of 1982. The hotel was a vision of Jim Webb, who believed Boulder City would need a hotty-totty sort of place where VIPs could stay.

Folks like Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., Will Rogers, the Maharaja and Maharani of Indore, India, as well as Dr. and Dr. John R. Beyer, and many such important people who needed a hotel with air conditioning, private baths, and a lavish wood-paneled lobby. And this hotel meets all those specifications.A marvelous museum, which depicts the early days of Boulder City and the construction of the Hoover Dam, is one of the main points to see within the hotel, which is visited by over 45,000 people annually.

There are modern touches here and there, with newer structures housing hotels, restaurants, breweries, and the like. Still, the overall feeling is one of stepping back in time to see how the ingenuity and perseverance of the human spirit changed this section of the Mojave Desert into a modern and welcoming destination for travelers.

John can be contacted at beyersbyways@gmail.com

Information

https://www.bcnv.org and https://www.boulderdamhotel.com/

This article originally appeared on Salinas Californian: Where are all the boulders? A look at Boulder City