High Scalers of Boulder Dam in the 1930s

Before construction could begin on Boulder Dam (now called Hoover Dam) in the early 1930s, loose rock had to be removed. Special men were required for the job, men called "high-scalers." Their job was to climb down the canyon walls on ropes. Here they worked with jackhammers and dynamite to strip away the loose rock. It was hard and dangerous work, perhaps the most physically demanding work on the entire project. Laden with tools and water bags, the men would descend the canyon walls. Moving about on the cliffs was difficult and dangerous. Live air hoses, electrical lines, bundles of drill steel festooned the cliffs. The scalers had to carefully pick their way through the resulting maze. The danger from falling rocks and dropped tools was extreme. The most common cause of death during the building of the dam was being hit by falling objects. The men began making improvised hard hats for themselves by coating cloth hats with coal tar. These "hard-boiled hats" were extremely effective. Several men were hit by falling rocks so hard that their jaws were broken by the impact, yet they did not receive skull fractures. Because of these "hard-boiled hats," men survived accidents which would otherwise have killed them. The dam contractor, Six Companies, then contracted for commercially made hard hats and issued them to every man on the project. The use of hard hats was encouraged, and deaths from falling objects were reduced. A monument at Hoover Dam, depicting a high-scaler, is dedicated to all of the men who labored to build the dam, 98 of whom lost their lives during various phases of the project. For more information, link to: http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM4GJ0 . This is clipped from the 1930s film, Boulder Dam, produced by the US Department of Interior. The entire film is available at the Internet Archive at http://www.archive.org/details/tmp_BoulderD_2 .

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Boulder
• Hoover
• dam
• fall
• protection
• hard
• hat
• construction
• hazard
• safety
• Nevada
• Arizona
• 1930s
• worker
• workplace
• death
• fatality
• OSHA
• NIOSH
• CPWR
• NIEHS
• hazwoper
• training
• PPE

[SkinGrindCleaver]

they had balls of steel.

[MeMrJust]

@admiralcrash1 Wow, Respact!

[admiralcrash1]

wow. I love government propaganda vids. The helmets wouldn't matter, cause they were only sitting on a piece of wood. Their safety rope was a single line tied around the waist...if they fell, they were literally broken in half by their safety gear. Rockefeller and JP Morgan didn't give a shit about these people. They worked in perilous conditions, and had no choice because of the stock market crash, orchestrated by the same people that employed them to their deaths. Problem, Reaction, Solution.