No one was buried alive in the concrete.

No one was buried alive in the concrete.

Building the dam was too expensive for one company to tackle alone during the Great Depression, so a group of construction firms banded together and, using the name Six Companies, submitted a winning bid of $48.8 million for the project (at the time, it was the largest contract awarded by the federal government). A total of 21,000 men worked on the dam; an average of 3,500 each day, with the daily figure peaking at more than 5,200 in June 1934. When it came to hiring, the contractor was supposed to give preference to veterans of the Spanish-American War and World War I. Six Companies was contractually prohibited from hiring “Mongolian,” or Chinese workers, and while government officials pledged to help ensure that African Americans be employed on the project, the actual amount of black workers hired proved miniscule. A small number of Native Americans were hired as high scalers, responsible for removing loose rock from the canyon walls with jackhammers and dynamite, while suspended from ropes, in preparation for the dam’s construction. Building the dam was tough, dangerous work, for which men were paid an hourly wage ranging from 50 cents to $1.25. Officially, the project had 96 construction-related fatalities —from such causes as falling rocks and run-ins with heavy equipment—but some sources contend the number likely was higher. Some 4.3 million cubic yards of concrete were used to build the dam, its power plant and auxiliary features, enough concrete to pave a 16-foot-wide, 8-inch-thick road from San Francisco to New York City, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. Contrary to popular myth, no workers were buried alive in the dam’s concrete as it was poured.