Monthly Archives: November 2021

170-Congress, AZ

Cosanti Foundry

While staying in Congress, we drove into the Phoenix area to tour the Cosanti Foundry.  The foundry makes bells – big and little ones, out of bronze and ceramics.  The bells are all works of art and are done using methods that have been used for thousands of years.  They use soft damp earth to form the molds and after creating a bell in a mold, the earth is simply pushed down and used again for the next batch.

The property itself is like a work of art.  The creator and original owner of the property was Paolo Scoleri, an Italian architect who was a student at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesan West facility. 

Scoleri had a vision of people living and working together in communes.  Between 1955 and 1965 he built several structures on his property using the “earthmound” construction, where you pile up earth into a mound the size that you want the structure to be, then you pour concrete into forms on the tops and sides of the mound.  When the concrete sets, you remove the earth and you’re left with a full or partial dome building.  A dome built in this fashion is very strong, and if it’s large you can put a couple of poles up for support.  He build several half-dome building with the half-dome either on the north or south side to make use of passive solar.  If you have the half-dome on the north half of the structure then it’s protected from the sun during the hot summer months and in the winter months the sun can shine down into the structure and warm it.

Scoleri also built a “commune” using a lot of the earthmound construction and other methods about 70 miles north of Phoenix and called it Arcosanti.  It’s still in use today, with passive heat and cooling systems, orchards etc.  People can go to Arcosanti for a few months and learn the methods of construction and lifestyle that are in use there. 

These constructions and lifestyle methods never caught on which saddened Scoleri.  He did a few architectural projects, at least one in Scottsdale, one in Italy, but his passion was the work he did at Cosanti and Arcosanti.

Here are pictures of the property, foundry and structures:

169 - Bullhead City, AZ

Hoover Dam

While staying in Bullhead City we drove up to the Hoover Dam.  It’s about 1.5 hours north of where we’re staying.

The drive up had an area with some interesting rock formations.  I love the geology of the Southwest!  The lava formations from ancient volcanos makes weird shapes in the hills as the softer layers erode away, leaving just the lava that bubbled and pushed up through the earth millions of years ago.

The dam itself was impressive!  We had not yet seen the new bridge across the dam gorge and it is HIGH UP!  I wanted to take a couple of pictures from the new bridge but driving across there are high walls on each side.  Couldn’t see anything!  There is a parking area and walkway up a steep pathway so you can walk out on the new bridge, but it was a bit too strenuous looking for us.  And, we would have had to leave Laddy in the truck and it was a warm day.  So we bypassed that.

We drove across the old bridge and to an overlook high up on the south side.  We could see part of Lake Mead, the back side (water side) of the dam and the new bridge in the background.  The dam is amazing but what I couldn’t believe is how low the water level is.  I’ve heard about it on the news and know that there’s a multi-year drought going on, but OMG!  According to some news stories, if the water drops much more there won’t be enough to run the power plant which produced electricity for much of the area.

While at the lookout we saw a WWII pillbox up on the hill and learned that the bridge was fairly new during WWII and there was a lot of concern that it would be bombed and destroyed.  There were 4 pillboxes during the war and this one was retained as part of the history.  During WWII some of the engineers of the dam were asked to help devise ways to protect the dam.  One suggestion was to “camoflauge” the dam and build a dummy one downriver.  That would have been an interesting project for something so immense!  It did not happen though, and the dam was safe during the war.

There is still a lot of security at the dam.  It can no longer be accessed from both ends (remember it was the main highway through the area until the new bridge was built.  There is a security station and we were pulled over so they could inspect the truck bed which is covered.  The vehicle ahead of us was two ladies with a storage contained strapped to the top of the vehicle and they made those ladies climb up on the vehicle and unlock/open the container.  They are serious!

We also drove to an overlook for the Boulder Bay part of Lake Mead.  It again showed dramatically how low the water level is!  There are large islands in the bay, only little tips were visible for many years and how you can see the tips on another color to show how low the water is.  We got a picture with a sailboat in the foreground of the island that shows how big those islands are now.

All in all, it was spectacular!  We’ve both seen it before but it never gets old!

Here are pictures: