Movin’ Right Along

The Hoover Dam Bypass opened in October 2010.

Despite cancer, our lives move on. We’re driving across America, including a test drive of the new Hoover Dam Bypass, which relocates U.S. 93 traffic 1,500 feet away from the old Rte. 93 atop the dam itself. The Bypass is a stunning, spanning arch of concrete 900 feet above the Colorado River. Hoover Dam, well worth a stop and a $30 tour, was built during the Great Depression, but it wasn’t a Democratic New Deal public works project — its origins were Republican, back in the days when Republicans believed in government investment in the future. Hoover Dam provided water and power to transform vast areas of the desert Southwest, a region now populated by folks who like to oppose government and government spending. Funny to hear Tea Partiers rally themselves against government and then go home to air-conditioning and running water, thanks be to Hoover Dam.