"The hard-rock miners who bore the brunt of this labor were a special breed; many were Irish, with kelly-green surnames like Regan, Ryan. Malan, and McCabe... They came from the copper mines of Butte and Bisbee, the silver mines of Leadville and Coeur d-Alene, the zinc mines of Missouri's Joplin district, and the gold mines of Nevada and California. They were rowdy, profane, and absolutely relentless in their assault on the rock faces, determined to outdrill and, in their off hours, outdrink the man next to them.39 - Joseph E. Stevens "I was a rodman there. That s where I fit in... They had to drill out a 56-foot hole. The tunnel, when they were finished, was 50 foot in diameter [because] there had to be 3 foot of concrete all the way around. "They drilled about a 9-foot hole at the top. The engineers had to give line when you started in that tunnel, give line all the way through there, and where it came out down there. When a curve came on the line, you'd put in stakes. They had to know where the tunnel started and where that tunnel would come out at the end. If one went way over here and the other one some other place, you'd be lost. - Tex Nunley Although Frank Crowe once told a reporter that building the Hoover Dam was a job for machines the delicate tasks were performed by humans. The so-called "powder monkeys" (above) prepared dynamite cartridges and blasting caps at a distance from other crews, then brought the hazardous cargo to the diversion tunnels in time for each day's firings. Drilling preceded most essential tasks at the dam site. The drillers forced their white-hot steel bits into the canyon's stone to open holes for blasting and to set the rings that moored bridges, supplies, and equipment.