At a time when the country was suffering a catastrophic economic depression, the construction of the Hoover Dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona was a welcome project.
Here we see a group of smiling drillers posing for this 1933 shot and this would be a rare sight as there were only 24 African Americans in a workforce of 4,000 men. If it weren’t obvious that these men were already made of hardy stuff, just consider that they had to work in average daytime temperatures of 119.9 °F (48.8 °C).
