Winged Figures of the Republic

Oops, for those who read this earlier, here is the photo I left out.


That is what the statues are called. There are two of them and they are reportedly the largest bronze statues in the United States at the time they were cast. Quoting from the Bureau of Reclamation website and quoting the sculptor, Oskar J. W. Hansen from Norway,

The building of Hoover Dam belongs to the sagas of the daring. The winged bronzes which guard the flag, therefore, wear the look of eagles. To them also was given the vital upward thrust of an aspirational gesture; to symbolize the readiness for defense of our institutions and keeping of our spiritual eagles ever ready to be on the wing.

Concerning the statues:

The winged figures are 30 feet high. Their shells are 5/8-inch thick, and contain more than 4 tons of statuary bronze. The figures were formed from sand molds weighing 492 tons. The bronze that forms the shells was heated to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, and poured into the molds in one continuous, molten stream.

The figures rest on a base of black diorite, an igneous rock. In order to place the blocks without marring their highly polished finish, they were centered on blocks of ice, and guided precisely into place as the ice melted. After the blocks were in place, the flagpole was dropped through a hole in the center block into a predrilled hole in the mountain.

When I visit the dam, the sculptures are overpowered by the immensity of the engineering work at the dam. The huge canyon, the huge electrical transmission towers, the huge dam itself, all tend to make the huge sculptures rather insignificant in comparison.