Boulder Dam Conquest: 1935

This 1935 silent documentary, Boulder Dam: The Pictorial Record of Man's Conquest of the Colorado River, produced by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation with Six Companies, Inc., showcases early Hoover Dam in black-and-white 16mm. It pans Boulder City’s orderly streets, government houses for workers, and roads carved through desert, all framing the rising dam in Black Canyon on the Colorado River. Capturing the dam’s monumental scale—dedicated by FDR in September 1935—it celebrates engineering triumph over nature, a New Deal feat taming floods and powering the Southwest, with stark vistas of a pre-war frontier town and colossal concrete.