Boulder Dam

by Zane Grey

First published 1963

Amazon

3.8(348)

In 1932, an unemployed former football player arrives in the Black Canyon country and finds work amid the immense construction effort that will become Boulder Dam. Thousands of men are labouring in brutal heat with blasting crews, heavy machinery and dangerous river works, and the new settlements around the project attract both opportunity and crime.

A kidnapping and a criminal scheme pull him into trouble beyond the hazards of the job itself. The novel combines adventure with the social world created by one of the Depression era’s largest engineering projects, showing transient workers, rough camps and new communities taking shape around a dam that is transforming the Colorado River.