In the desert, water is essential for human survival, and in the dusty ranges of Nevada water has indeed been the key to that state’s cinematic legacy. When the Corleone family makes their big move out west in The Godfather: Part II, they set up a palatial headquarters beside the windy waters of Lake Tahoe, but they pay for it with casino revenue from Nevada’s most enduring film set piece: the Las Vegas strip. Yet this gambler’s paradise would never have become what it is today without the Hoover Dam, which beats Reno as Nevada’s second-most enduring cinematic touchstone. Originally called the Boulder Dam, a titular 1936 film sees fugitive Ross Alexander helping with construction – demonstrating what the federal government hoped would be the redemptive effect of large-scale works projects for down-on-their-luck Depression-era Americans. Yet building the Boulder Dam was also a dangerous job, and on-site hazards such as carbon monoxide poisoning claimed the lives of almost 100 workers. This inspired 1934’s The Silver Streak, where a train crew must race to get an iron lung to stricken laborers. In Saboteur, Alfred Hitchcock exploited the dam’s importance to the regional power and water supply when he cast it as the target of a fifth-column plot during World War II. Reasoning that it supplies most of the power to the Los Angeles district’s defense plants, plot ringleader, Freeman calls the dam a “great monument to man’s unceasing industry, and to his stubborn faith in the future.” 1941’s Manpower provides an interesting (if a bit obscure) cinematic Hoover Dam/Las Vegas connection that actually spans 50 years. The film finds George Raft as a power linesman whose team does work on the dam, while 1991’s Bugsy recreates part of the earlier film and portrays Raft’s close relationship with Bugsy Siegal – who was instrumental in exploiting the town’s access to the dam’s power and water to turn the Vegas strip into a tourist mecca. Since then, the Hoover Dam (permanently named so by Congress in 1947) has become a huge tourist attraction itself, with the most involved film example being a visit by the Griswold family in Vegas Vacation. Over the course of a guided tour, Clark manages to open a few leaks, get lost in the dam’s labyrinth of tunnels and even scale the power plant and facade. The dam wasn’t safe in animated form either, as seen in Beavis & Butthead Do America. Hitching a ride with an elderly tourist group, Beavis appropriately asks a guide, “is this a God dam?,” before sabotaging the power plant and opening the flood gates. This recurring threat of destruction has made the Hoover Dam a popular victim in some recent action films, like Universal Soldier (featuring reanimated troops repelling down the facade to take out some terrorists) and Transformers (where two giant robots have a full-on brawl as the dam rapidly crumbles beneath them). Yes, if it can manage to stay in one piece, expect film crews to keep on giving you the Hoover Dam on-screen tour.