Hoover Dam

I overheard from the television in the next room today that Hoover Dam, constructed in the 1930s, used up enough concrete to construct a highway from New York to California. The dam blocks the Colorado River, the same river that over millions of years carved out the Grand Canyon. A paradoxical relationship exists between the natural wonder and the man-made wonder of the world, a physical haiku of tremendous scale, a poetic landscape with an ironic twist. The river that constructed the astounding canyon is held at bay by the dam, man's astounding construction.

Were mountains diminished to provide materials for a mountainous work?