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1956 - The Beginning of Lake Powell
by Felice Prager
Turn off your cell phone. It is time to recharge. However, this time
you will not be recharging your phone; you will be recharging your
inner self. This is what is behind the love affair
people have with Lake Powell. There are very few places on earth where
words do not come close to describing how spectacular they truly are.
Lake Powell is one of them.
It is located at the northern border of
Arizona and spreads into southern Utah. It was created in the 1950's
by the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam. It is a 186-mile lake with
96 major canyons and 1,960 miles of shoreline. Lake Powell has a shoreline that is 800
miles longer than the California coastline. If you are looking for the
perfect place for a vacation, Lake Powell is it.
The first people to live in the area now covered by Lake Powell were
the Paleo Indians. They were nomads who hunted mammoths and bison. The
climate was cool and wet at the time. When the climate changed in 6000
BC, the animals moved away. In about 200 BC, the Anasazi Indians lived
there. They developed a system of irrigation, made excellent pottery,
and drew petroglyphs on rocks.
The peak of the Anasazi civilization was
from 1050 to 1250 AD. They built Defiance House, an Anasazi village
that is located in a canyon called Forgotten Canyon. Today it is the
most visited ruin on the lake. Soon after the Anasazi's peak of
civilization, they mysteriously disappeared. It is speculated that
their disappearance was due to a drought, soil depletion, over
population, disease, or wars with other Indian tribes.
Not much is known about Lake Powell's history until 1776 when the
Spaniards came. Then beaver trappers arrived and soon after this,
explorers looking for an overland route to California arrived. The
Mormons followed.
In 1869, John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) arranged an expedition
exploring and mapping the area from the Green River in Wyoming through
the canyon that is now the location of Lake Powell. Powell, a
professor of natural history at a small Illinois college, and his band
of 10 men departed from Green River, Wyoming in four boats, on their
two-and-a-half month journey of 1,000 miles.
Three of the ten men deserted in
mid-expedition, never to be heard from again. Powell was referred to
as the "one-armed leader" because he lost his lower right arm in the
Civil War's Battle of Shiloh. Because of Powell's expedition, ranchers
began arriving in the 1880's.
In 1896, George Flavell and Ramon Montez
became the first tourists. In 1911, the Kolb brothers photographed the
Colorado River. In the 1930's, Norman Nevills had the first commercial
trip down the river.
Much of what John Wesley Powell explored is now underwater, along with
ranches and other settlements along the river.
On October 15, 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower pushed a button in
the White House to set off the first blast of the United States Bureau
of Reclamation project at Glen Canyon, 2100 miles away. The dam itself
was erected with almost ten million tons of mixed concrete. It took
seven years to complete.
The construction of the Glen Canyon Dam
helped create Lake Powell and dramatically reduced the natural flow of
sand and nutrients down the Colorado River and into the Grand Canyon.
Water started backing up behind the dam in
1963, and it took until 1980 for the water to reach its desired
fullness. The water covered much of the Glen Canyon that John Wesley
Powell had explored. Lake Powell holds about 8.5 trillion gallons of
water.
In March 1996, and then again, in October 1997, the federal government
released more than 100 billion gallons of water from Glen Canyon Dam.
This artificial flood added more than three feet to some beaches along
the Colorado River and cleared fish spawning grounds of debris and
sediment.
The hydroelectric power produced by Glen Canyon's eight generators is
sufficient to meet the complete energy needs of a city of 1.5 million
people. Arizona's population of 4.2 million in 1995 is projected to
grow to 6.4 million by 225. The cost of the dam was $155 million, and
the cost of the power plant was $70 million.
The water of the Colorado River used to range from freezing to 80
degrees Fahrenheit. Now it is 45 degrees, dropping and rising only
about 10 degrees all year. Some fish are now extinct or endangered
because of this.
Four million people visit the lake each year for boating, fishing,
water sports, sightseeing, and just recreation. Houseboat rentals are
available at any of the four land-based marinas. There are often long
waiting lists for rentals. For more details about vacations, houseboat
rentals, and travel information:
http://www.powellguide.com/
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