Glen Canyon Dam
Hats off to the Bureau of Reclamation
You can’t miss Glen Canyon Dam driving through Northern Arizona on Highway 89 toward Utah — it really is huge. The dam stands 710 feet tall and was, at the time it was completed, the second-highest dam in the entire Western Hemisphere. It was built by the Bureau of Reclamation between 1956 and 1963 to hold back the Colorado River, creating Lake Powell, which became the second-largest reservoir in the United States once it finished filling in 1980.
The dam provides a steady water supply and hydroelectric power to a huge stretch of the desert Southwest, but it didn’t come without controversy. Before the dam, Glen Canyon itself was a spectacular network of sandstone gorges, spires, and grottoes, home to thousands of ancient ruins and remarkable plant and animal life. Much of that was submerged when Lake Powell filled, and the loss became one of the defining regrets of the American conservation movement — a big part of why dam projects like this one are so much harder to build today.
