Introduction
There had never been a more desperate time in the United States. With the Wall Street stock market crash in 1929, and the Great Depression that followed, families who had been well-off suddenly found themselves living on the street and standing in bread lines.
'There had never been a more desperate time in the United States. '
In the social and economic darkness that fell across the nation in 1930 and 1931, however, there was one gleam of hope: in the most desolate and inhospitable corner of the Mojave Desert, the US government was about to start building the Hoover Dam.
Located on the Colorado River, 50km (30 miles) from the dirty little railroad town of Las Vegas, Nevada, the Hoover Dam project meant jobs, and so thousands of unemployed men and their hungry families crowded into southern Nevada, begging for work.
Published: 2003-09-23