
Hoover Dam is located about 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas on Highway 93. It straddles the Colorado River at Black Canyon, a deep narrow defile on the border between the states of Nevada and Arizona. It was originally called Boulder Dam, and the nearby city of Boulder, Nevada was created to house the workers building this amazing wonder of engineering. You can easily drive to Boulder City and Hoover Dam from Las Vegas in less than one hour.
Hoover Dam is one of the largest dams in the world. It is 726 feet high (232 m) and 1244 feet long (379 m). It impounds the waters of the largest reservoir in the USA, Lake Mead. It is worth seeing.
Lake Mead is 115 miles long (185 km), 1 to 8 miles wide (1.6km to 12km) and covers 247 square miles (640 sq km). It has over 550 miles of shoreline (885 km). The Lake Mead National Recreation Area includes Lake Mead but also contains much of the desert landscape surrounding the lake, a large strip of land bordering the Colorado River to the south and Lake Mohave 67 miles south of Hoover Dam.

