Two Storeys
99% Invisible
00:00
The Memory Palace
Nate DeMello: In 1931, at the height of the Depression, people began hearing that there were going to be jobs in Nevada. He says 5,000 men packed up their families and drove to the desert for work on a dam named after President Herbert Hoover. 96 of those men died when the harnesses that fastened them to the canyon wall, 800 feet in the air, snapped. But not long after they finished the dam, orange groves, and alfalfa fields, and baseball diamonds, grew in the desert.
Play episode from 04:49
Transcript
