National Register of Historic Places: April 1981; National
Historic Landmark: August 1985 The need for a dam through the
Colorado River was recognized by the federal government as early
as 1902 when President Theodore Roosevelt established the Bureau
of Reclamations, which sent out a team of engineers to
investigate and report on the harnessing, control, and possible
uses of the Colorado River. The river had periodically flooded,
endangering the farming communities of the surrounding valleys.
In 1922, Reclamation Bureau engineer Arthur P. Davis issued a
report the construction of a dam for year-round irrigation of
the surrounding land. In this report, Davis also suggested the
construction of a hydroelectric power plant that could recover
construction costs by selling the electricity generated to the
rapidly expanding cities of Southern California. Six years
later, the Swing-Johnson Bill authorized federal funding for the
construction of the dam. In 1929, Congress passed the Boulder
Canyon Project Act and the