Boulder City Magazine is a monthly publication full of information about Boulder City and Southern Nevada. Boulder City Magazine features the Boulder City Home Guide, a real estate guide to Boulder City and Southern Nevada.




Boulder City History
by Dennis McBride, Boulder City Museum & Historical Association

Hoover Dam Advertising
Hoover Dam was always considered a prime tourist attraction even while it was still under construction. Thousands of people flocked to southern Nevada to see this great monument to technical ingenuity rising in Black Canyon. Hoover Dam inspired a sense of accomplishment and boundless hope in Depression-weary Americans. The dam also inspired dollar signs in the eyes of corporate advertisers who realized what a great image Hoover Dam provided for selling their products.





Sometimes the product and the dam complemented one another. Kelly Springfield, for instance, issued a two-page spread titled, “Black Canyon—The White Hell for Tires,” to sell its own, presumably superior, car and truck tires. A 1936 ad for International Trucks pointed out that its company “handled 80 per cent of the heavy hauling at Boulder Dam,” while Alcoa Aluminum touted its dump truck bodies “Moving Mountains at Boulder Dam 25 Tons at a Time.” Shell Industrial Lubricants linked its products to Hoover Dam through Allis-Chalmers, which built the dam’s turbines.

An image of Hoover Dam under construction served as the backdrop for Erwin Jones, Boulder Dam engineer, leaning leisurely against a boulder, wearing high-laced boots and jodhpurs, smoking a Camel: “It’s been thrilling to have a part in the vast enterprise of building Boulder Dam,” Jones said. “Plenty of strain, too. When I get tired, there’s nothing like a Camel … Mild, cool, and mellow!” Another ad from R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company depicted dam workers coming off shift in the Joe Magee high-line transport: “The day shift’s coming on, and boy am I tired.” “Me, too—let’s have a camel.”

Automobile manufacturers felt that linking their vehicles with Hoover Dam would imply the same high degree of engineering and performance. The 1940 Studebaker Commander suggested power and grace parked downstream with Hoover Dam rising behind it. General Motors’ 1954 Pontiac Chieftain, parked on the Arizona side of Black Canyon, promised to get the nuclear family anywhere it needed to go.

One of the more surreal advertisements associated with Hoover Dam came from the Calvert Distillers Corporation in 1951: the ad depicted a giant tray with two glasses and a bottle of Calvert Reserve whiskey floating in the sky over the dam noting the “World’s biggest power plant—Hoover Dam Challenges Comparison with any work of man. Calvert’s good taste Challenges Comparison with any whiskey!”

Sponsored by the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum.



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