FATHER AND SON DIED ON THE SAME DAY, 14 YEARS APART, WHILE WORKING ON HOOVER DAM

From the Las Vegas Review Journal, December 18, 2016

On December 20, 1921,* a crew surveying locations for the dam got caught in a flash flood, and a man named John Gregory Tierney was lost forever in the raging Colorado River, one of the first** casualties of the project. Then on December 20, 1935, 14 years later to the day, the job site suffered its last fatal accident, when a worker fell to his death from one of the two intake towers on the Arizona side of Black Canyon. That man was Patrick William Tierney, J.G. Tierney’s only son.

Their names appear in raised metal on a plaque near the dam, never to be forgotten.

*The Bureau of Reclamation shows the year of J.G. Tierney’s death as 1922, but I believe 1921 is probably correct because the writer of the newspaper article obtained his information from the family of Tierney.

**The Bureau of Reclamation lists J.G. Tierney’s death as the second death on the project. However, the Bureau also notes that deaths prior to 1931 are not included in the official count of 96*** fatalities because they occurred before actual dam construction commenced. At the time of his death, J.G. Tierney was a surveyor working for the Bureau of Reclamation.

***Died at the dam site