An entire city was created for people working on the dam.

An entire city was created for people working on the dam.

In the early 1930s, Boulder City, Nevada, was constructed to house 5,000 dam project workers. Before the city was built, many jobless men and their families who’d converged on the dam site, hoping to find employment in the midst of the Great Depression, had lived in squatters’ settlements. Boulder City was situated on federally owned land and had no elected officials. The city was run by an employee of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (the agency responsible for the dam project), who had the authority to evict residents as he saw fit. Among the local rules, alcohol and gambling were banned. The Boulder Dam Hotel was erected to host dignitaries coming to see the dam’s construction; famous figures from Bette Davis to the future Pope Pius XII visited in the 1930s. After nearly 30 years, the federal government relinquished control of Boulder City, which was incorporated in 1960.