Bridge will transform Hoover Dam from bottleneck to dead end

To many frustrated motorists, Hoover Dam is little more than a spectacular highway bottleneck, slowing their progress between the Grand Canyon and MGM Grand.

All that will change this fall, when the new bypass bridge opens above the Colorado River and the dam suddenly finds itself as only a stop on a road to nowhere.

"There won't be any reason to go there unless you're a tourist or an employee," said Dennis McBride, former executive director of the Boulder City-Hoover Dam Museum.

Officials from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that operates the dam, are preparing for that transition from a major interstate traffic corridor to a place people visit only by choice, not necessity.

It's a bit of a guessing game, said bureau spokesman Bob Walsh.

"Quite frankly, we don't know what's going to happen when the bridge opens. Will visitorship go up or will it go down?" he said.

There is some thought that fewer people will stop at the dam because it no longer will stand smack in the middle of the fastest route between Las Vegas and Phoenix. Others predict a rise in visitation, thanks to people who previously avoided the dam because of all the construction and traffic congestion in the area.

Walsh said the bureau doesn't really know how many people plan their trips to the dam or how many simply stop there on their way through. "We just don't have any way of tracking that," he said.

They should get a better sense of that in about eight months, though the answer could come somewhat sooner.

The bridge is scheduled to open on Nov. 1, but project manager Dave Zanetell said, "We're hoping to beat that."

As soon as the bypass opens, the stretch of U.S. Highway 93 that now winds down into Black Canyon and across Hoover Dam will close to through traffic.

The only access to the dam will come from the Nevada side by way of a new interchange on U.S. 93 just east of the Hacienda hotel and casino.

Walsh said visitors will still be able to drive across the top of the dam, but the existing highway will be closed just beyond the last parking area at the top of the hill on the Arizona side.

The decision to shut down U.S. 93 beyond that point was prompted at least in part by wildlife management concerns, he said. "There is a pretty heavy desert bighorn sheep migration route through there."

Another part of the highway-turned-access-road for the dam is where visitors will go to walk out on the bypass bridge, which will feature a sidewalk that starts on the Nevada side and runs the entire 1,900-foot length of the span.

Early on, pedestrians will have only "basic access" to the bridge, Zanetell said. But by the summer of 2011, work should be finished on a parking area and interpretive plaza so visitors can learn about the bridge and the dam before heading up a walkway that will offer incomparable views of both.

"I think they stand together, not singularly," Zanetell said of the two structures spanning the canyon.

Walsh said the dam's transition from artery to attraction also could lead to other new opportunities for visitors. Reclamation officials are contemplating new tours and increased access on and around the top of the dam, including such sites as an anti-aircraft gun turret that was built on the Arizona side during World War II.

The bureau might even start advertising if visitation drops too sharply, Walsh said.

McBride doesn't expect that to happen. He thinks visitor volume will stay about where it is now, because most of the people who tour the dam do so on purpose. Very few people stop there on a whim as they drive between Las Vegas and Arizona, he said. "As traffic has gotten worse, the last thing you want to do is stop."

One thing is for sure: The new bridge will open a whole new era at Hoover Dam, which has been a highway from the very start.

"It has always been a transit route, an interstate route," said McBride, who is now a curator at the Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas.

On March 23, 1935, before the road was even finished, Bernard "Woody" Williams, assistant construction superintendent at Hoover Dam, drove the first car across the structure, a Ford V-8 with Williams' wife and a foreman named Ted Davis in the passenger seats.

When U.S. 93 across the dam officially opened at 7 a.m. on Dec. 12, 1935, the first tourists to make the drive were Mr. and Mrs. Fred Simpson of Van Nuys, Calif., who crossed from the Nevada side on their way to Williams, Ariz., and the Grand Canyon.

Before the dam was built, travelers had a much harder time crossing the Colorado. McBride said they had to drive to the nearest bridge in Needles, Calif., or take a ferry from either Cottonwood Cove or a spot just upstream from Black Canyon.

Though convenient by comparison, driving across Hoover Dam began to lose its appeal relatively quickly, McBride said. By the 1950s, there was already serious talk of diverting traffic away from the dam. The notion seemed to come up about once a decade after that, though it never advanced very far, he said.

"It's amazing it finally happened. It's a monumental change," McBride said. "I guess that's a pun, isn't it?"

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.