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. 

Utah and Arizona State Seals

While I was walking around on the top of the Hoover Dam, I found these very lovely bronze state seals for Arizona and Utah. The seals are embedded in a decorative cement base for two huge statues on the Nevada side of the dam. I will get to the statues later in another post. I decided to show these two seals because of my earlier post about the Utah beehive and seal. Arizona's seal has the motto "Ditat Deus" which is supposed to be Latin for "God Provides." Google Translate renders the saying as "God Enriches."

The images look skewed because if I took the picture directly above the seal, I would have cast a shadow, so we have to live with the skewed images.

Bridge over the Colorado

This is a 180 degree panorama of the view from the top of the Hoover Dam down river towards the Mike O'Callaghan – Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. Formerly, all of the traffic between Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada traveled over a narrow road on top of the dam after winding down a narrow canyon. This dramatic bridge over a 1000 feet above the river is an engineering masterpiece and a huge tourist attraction in addition to cutting almost 45 minutes off of the trip from Phoenix to Las Vegas. We have stopped to take pictures from the bridge before but this was my first opportunity to show the bridge from the dam. As usual, you need to click on the photo to actually see the detail.

Full Halo Around the Sun

This is not the first time I have seen a full halo around the sun, but it is the first time I was standing there with a good camera. This is usually a winter phenomena because it is caused by ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Usually, the halo is much smaller. Halos around the moon are also common. This picture was taken on the Mike O'Callaghan - Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge across the Colorado River just south of Hoover Dam at about 1:00 pm.

The most valuable artifact

This is a replica of the original Sunstone from the original Nauvoo Temple built in Nauvoo, Illinois in the 1940s. The reason I say original Temple is because the original was destroyed and a replica finished in 2002. There are only two remaining original Sunstones. In 1989 the Smithsonian Institution purchased one of the two remaining stones from Historical Society of Quincy and Adams Counties in Illinois and had been displayed on the grounds of the Woods mansion in Quincy for the preceding 75 years. A news account of the day said,

In one of the most expensive purchases ever by the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History, it has bought a "sunstone" from the Mormon pioneer's abandoned and destroyed temple in Nauvoo, Ill.

The 2 1/2-ton stone, with a carved radiant face emerging between cloud banks beneath a pair of handheld trumpets, began display this week just a few feet to the side of the original Star Spangled Banner at the museum's main entrance."Except for the Star Spangled Banner, you couldn't ask for a more central location," said Richard Ahlborn, curator in the museum's division of community life.

 See "Nauvoo Sunstone at the Smithsonian" By Lee Davidson, Washington Bureau Chief, Printed in the Deseret News, Published: Tuesday, Nov. 28, 1989 12:00 a.m. MST

The Beehive State

Utah has been known as the beehive state ever since I was born. When I was growing up, the neighbors had beehives but the hives were kept in white boxes, not rounded and not woven. This is the first and only beehive I have seen in the design used by Utah almost everywhere. Here is a stained glass window with the same design. Sometimes we have to look to history to understand the present. In fact, without history, we can never understand the present.

Reality or a Dream?

We get so wrapped up in hyper-realism that we may have lost our ability to dream. What is a dream? A vision of what can or could be? Or merely an excuse for ignoring reality? Of is it a refuge from reality? As Hamlet is quoted by Shakespeare,

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub