VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: Hoover Dam was Built to Provide Water and Power to Vegas

• Contrary to popular belief, the Hoover Dam was not built to provide either water or power to Las Vegas
• Las Vegas only ended up needing water and electricity because the dam happened to be built near it

Today, the body of water created by Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, provides nearby Las Vegas with 90% of its water. However, the reason the dam was built had nothing to do with Las Vegas.

In fact, Las Vegas didn’t start drawing water from the lake until it nearly depleted its own underground water supply in 1971. That was 35 years after the dam’s completion.

Dam Lies

Hoover Dam — which, by the way, was never officially named Boulder Dam — was built to control flooding along the Colorado River.

Southern California’s Imperial Valley had by then become one of the most profitable agriculture centers in the US. But whenever the snowmelt or rainfall feeding the Colorado River was heavy, it made the waterway jump its banks.

This flooded and destroyed hundreds of farms and dozens of towns, causing millions of dollars in damage. Over and over again.

It just so happened that the most suitable place to build a dam was determined to be along its closest approach to Las Vegas — between the narrow, steep walls of Black Canyon, hundreds of miles upstream from the reason it was built.

It was a happy coincidence for Las Vegas, since its construction from 1931-36 helped transform the city from a sleepy railroad stop to the thriving metropolis it is today. But it was just a coincidence.

Current Events

As for hydroelectric power, this is certainly a beneficial byproduct of the dam, and aided in getting its construction approved. However, though the Hoover Dam’s 17 generators put out enough electricity to supply a city of 750K people, that city is also not Las Vegas.

In 2023, the last full year for which data is available, only 16%-18% of Hoover Dam’s electric power made it to Las Vegas, where it accounted for only 3% of the electricity used by the region, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Most of Las Vegas’ electricity (56%) came from natural gas-powered power plants — though the contribution of solar in 2023 was an impressive 25% and rising.

The lion’s share of Hoover Dam’s hydroelectricity (57.7%) goes to power California, as determined by a compact signed just before the dam was built — back when LA had 1.2 million residents and Las Vegas had 5,000.

In fact, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), along with Southern California Edison, operated the dam’s generators for 50 years, as part of a contract with the Bureau of Reclamation that ended in 1987, when the bureau took over its operation.

DWP still owns and operates a seven-bedroom, 3,500 square-foot lodge on a hilltop overlooking Lake Mead, as well as a nearby operations center, to house mechanics and patrol crews who maintain the transmission lines emanating from Hoover Dam and terminating in downtown LA.

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