River Osborn
Well, I’ll Be Dammed



Phillip Hyde, renowned landscape photographer, describes so well what many have felt during the drawn out battle over the damming of desert canyons. While on a trip through Glen Canyon shortly before being closed off to the public for construction, he proclaims:

“I needed more time to digest what I saw in the arid lands…In my memory of the river trip, nights on rocks radiating too much heat for sleeping are mingled with days of growing awe of the strange forms of this stone country. My awareness of water as a miracle was born in the shining trickles in the canyon bottoms and the sudden springs that gushed out of rock as though piped through the waterbearing Navajo sandstone. These imprints went deep. This landscape took hold of me.”

This is the story of the confrontation and battle between the people in favor of building dams and the conservationists. People who were committed to transforming the West in the name of progress and development for humankind, so that it could be something more than a “wasteland”. “The West’s water wizards--politicians, farmers, cash-register entrepreneurs--saw the construction of the dams as symbols of pride and prosperity”, says Russell Martin in A Story That Stands Like A Dam. On the other side were the people who were equally committed to the idea that this space, which was wild and undisturbed, was a resource to the soul that must not be destroyed. They contended that the dams and the power they would produce were not needed being that they were being built in such isolated places. Places so unique to the planet they should not be bothered. This is the story of compromise and loss for Echo Park Canyon and Glen Canyon.

The controversy began just after World War II, with the nation teeming with returning veterans. To get these veterans back into the workforce, part of President Truman’s “Fair Deal” involved federally sponsored development projects. One of these was the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP), (Sproul). The CRSP was passed by The House of Representatives, with the total estimated cost at $756 million, one of the largest reclamation projects ever proposed (Bradley). This was a multipurpose plan undertaken by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 1956 to control the flow of the upper Colorado and its tributaries and to aid in the development of the upper Colorado River Basin, which includes Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico (Farmer 7). The CRSP stemmed from the Colorado River Compact of 1922, which states in its first article:

“The major purposes of this compact are to provide for the equitable division and apportionment of the use of the waters of the Colorado River System…and to secure the expeditious agricultural and industrial development of the Colorado River Basin, the storage of its waters, and the protection of life and property from floods”

This was a time when long-term effects were not largely thought out. No one argued that the ecology of the region would forever be changed with the building of the dams; in fact there was not an Environmental Impact Assessment, because they didn’t exist yet. Development was the key motivation (National Research Council).

The Federal Government had big plans for the Colorado River and the appropriations of its waters long before the dams of Glen Canyon and Echo Park Canyon were even a twinkle in the eye of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamations staff. Both canyons had been potential dam sites since 1916.

The CRSP was aimed at not only developing natural resources but also at securing water rights for the Upper Basin states. The Bureau of Reclamation, whose motto was “Our Rivers: Total Use for Greater Wealth”, proposed that it and the Upper Basin states construct a series of nine dams, two of which included sites at Glen Canyon and Echo Park Canyon (Sproul). The dams were to play a crucial role by regulating the flows of the river, holding during floods, and releasing during floods, thus constantly delivering water to high-country farms, ranches, and even to Salt Lake City (Farmer 134).

However, the dam planned in Echo Park Canyon just happened to be located in Dinosaur National Monument. Despite what one may think, environmentalists didn’t seem to attack the proposal right away.
In 1949 the Sierra Club was a very regional organization, compared to the national lobby it has since become. As Martin describes, Sierra Club members at that time were “a confederation of conservative businesspeople and academics”. All in all they were not that radical or interested in a conservation cause that did not involve either the Sierras or general wilderness. In fact, former club president, Walter Huber, had visited the proposed dam site at Echo Park, and said that the place was nothing more than “rocks and sagebrush”. Club director Bestor Robinson argued that the responsible position for the club to take would be to support the dam. The club’s official response to the proposals for the dams was to ignore them altogether (Martin 51).

Two years would come to pass before someone else took an interest in the situation. Sierra Club member Edward Mallinckrodt had been disappointed and confused as to why the club hadn’t originally taken action and spoken out against the dam. Whether the land was just “rocks and sagebrush” or not, the dam site was within the boundaries of a National monument and thus should be protected. Mallinckrodt brought his concerns to the new executive director David Brower, who had also had similar feelings (Martin 58).

They believed that the integrity of the National Park Service must be upheld, keeping commercial and civil resource development out. Their job was to maintain the pristine wilderness already protected. They backed their argument with the 1916 National Park System Organic Act, which had a specific mandate. In its “statement of purpose” the Act declared that the purpose of a national park was to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects…and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” (Sproul 4)

David Brower, along with Olaus J. Murie and Howard Zahniser of the Wilderness Society, launched a public relations assault on federal and state leaders using letter writing campaigns (and thousands of letters did they instigate), publishing books on Dinosaur National Monument, and organizing direct pressure whenever it was possible. Brower began taking key people, such as politicians, from the communities down the river and through the canyon so that they could see for themselves the beauty that would be forever destroyed, in hopes that they, too, would push for the protection of the park (Martin 52). This proved to be a good tactic.

For the next four years, the environmentalists waged an all-out war against everyone who was in support of building the Echo Park Dam. In truth, the dam was popular among residents of both Utah and Colorado, which made the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society draw needed help from all of their members nationwide. During the struggle over Echo Park, conservationists created the philosophy that concern did not solely depend on one’s personal geographic location but on the principles behind the very idea of protection (Sproul). It was at this time that the Sierra Club lived up to its self-proclaimed slogan of being a “Guardian to the West’s National Parks” (Martin 50).

Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument

Brower and Zahniser had never testified before Congressional committees, but they put the challenge before themselves. They argued not so much against the building of dams in the Upper Colorado Basin, or the Colorado River Storage Project itself. They argued that it was not wise water use, or legal, to be building in Dinosaur National Monument. Brower also disproved some of the Bureau’s engineers’ evaporative statistics. Using his own “simple, ninth-grade variety” math he showed them that they had forgotten to add and subtract some vital information surrounding the evaporation concerns. This turned out to be an embarrassment to the Bureau. Up until that point they had considered themselves heroes. They had constructed great dams that added to the progress of the nation after the slump of the depression, and now their authority and professionalism was being challenged. (Martin 58-59).

Brower and his colleagues argued that the dam should be built somewhere else for maximum efficiency. Brower even went on not only to support the building of the Glen Canyon Dam, but argued that its height could even be raised. It could hold more water and compensate for water evaporation. Up until that point, Brower had never visited Glen Canyon, and had a life changing experience on the waters of the Green River, and couldn’t imagine that any place could be more beautiful and wondrous than Dinosaur. This was his personal motivation behind the battle.

After more than half a decade of fighting, debates, hearings, and compromise, the environmentalists planned an attack from a different angle. They paid for a full-page ad in the Denver Post, an “open letter” stating that if Echo Park was not irrevocably eliminated from the CRSP plan, they would launch an all-out attack against the whole upper-basin project. Congress, not wanting to call their bluff, finally conceded and agreed to dismiss Echo Park as a dam site, instead making Glen Canyon the focus of the CRSP (Martin 72). Environmentalists whooped their victory cry, but not for very long.

Cathedral in the Desert, Glen Canyon

Up until this point, Glen Canyon, which was at the time on the Navajo Indian Reservation, was a fairly unknown refuge for silence and exploration. Other than Reclamation survey crews and a few boatmen escorting paying customers, the canyon was pretty much untouched.
Without much consideration, the Government enacted a land exchange with the Navajos so the dam could be built at the chosen site. The leaders of the Navajo nation were more than happy to comply at the time, concerned more with the immediate economic benefits than long-term effects of the dam. Martin reports, “Tribal leaders sent a telegram to Washington, D.C., explaining that the tribe had completed a preliminary survey of its lands surrounding the dam site and “LOCATED IDEAL TOWN SITE ON COOL SOILED MESA SOUTH OF DAM.” And the message assured the men in Washington that the “TRIBE WILL COOPERATE TO MAXIMUM WITH PLANS TO LOCATE TOWN SOUTH OF RIVER.” This was because the dam promised the tribe a significant opportunity. Long plagued with unemployment, lack of power, resources, and economic income, the tribe found the chance they had been waiting for--for a long time. Glasser says,

“Congress approved the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project (NIIP) as part of CRSP in 1962, but never realized that the original plans called for a power plant at Navajo Dam to pump water onto NIIP’s farmlands. However, the following year, the tribe entered into a contract with the Utah Construction Company, one part of the “Big Six” Companies that had built Hoover Dam, to set aside a 24,000 acre area for strip-mining coal at fifteen cents a ton. Utah received sale profits, while the tribe received royalties. This important arrangement would bring power closer to Navajos, provide Navajo labor, training, and housing improvements, and possible funding for the reservation’s own coal power generating plant in the future.”

Though very few people had seen the canyon, Brower and the Council of Conservationists had a general understanding that the heightened dam size, which they originally encouraged, was going to be so great that the backed up waters might encroach on the boundaries of Rainbow Bridge National Monument, home to Rainbow Bridge, the world’s largest natural bridge and home to sacred rituals of the Navajos. Early on, Secretary of the Interior, Douglas McKay, wrote to Brower to assure him that the Bureau of Reclamation and the National
Park Service would take all necessary precautions to make sure Rainbow Bridge was protected. After all the fuss that had occurred with Echo Park Canyon, officials wanted to avoid triggering the conservationists at all costs.

During 1955 there was an ongoing discussion on what should be done regarding Rainbow Bridge. Leslie P. Arnberger and Harold A. Marsh, both employees for the National Park Service wrote to the General Superintendent for Southwestern National Monuments, suggesting that the Bureau either move the location of the dam downstream, or lower the level of the dam to the point where Rainbow Bridge would no longer be at risk. The Bureau of Reclamation was not willing to budge on the location of the dam; luckily the Park Service was dedicated to protecting Rainbow Bridge (Sproul 4).

Bureau of Reclamation assured there would be funds available in the dam’s budget for protective measures. These would include a barrier dam below the bridge, a diversion tunnel above the bridge, and a catch basin at the tunnel outlet. (Sproul 5)

Despite the fact that Rainbow Bridge would be safe, from harm’s way, some of the key conservationists began to wonder why they didn’t fight the whole of the CRSP. Even after the victory at Echo Park Canyon, Brower had wanted to keep up the opposition to the dams. The Bureau of Reclamation’s uncertainty about the dam’s specifications and the cost of the whole project seemed like enough ammunition to use against them. However, the Sierra Club board reminded him that their fight had been the one over Echo Park Canyon, and since they had won, the fight was finished (Martin 72).

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Ken Sleight, who had a small business taking kids, Mormon youth groups, down the river in Glen Canyon, had differing ideas about the dam. He was familiar with Echo Park Canyon yet couldn’t understand who in their right mind would ever trade it for Glen Canyon. Sleight was not only a desert rat river guide, but was also the president of the Escalante Chamber of Commerce, and had helped his friends form the Western River Guides Association (WRGA). The WRGA was working to protect their commercial interests, and didn’t understand why the conservationists didn’t just attack the CSRP as a whole (Martin 171).
Sleight, some of his river buddies, and some of the outdoor activists from the University of Utah decided to form Friends of Glen Canyon. Their name proclaimed their mission, yet they didn’t have a clue of how to tackle it. The conservation groups who would have been their allies had pushed for the dam, and it seemed everyone accepted that the canyon would be flooded—politicians, chambers of commerce, civic and church groups, and wildlife organizations (Martin 171). With all the support for the dam, the challenge seemed daunting.

Friends of Glen Canyon worked out of Salt Lake City, searching for funds and trying to make headway with the politicians. They tried their best to remind everyone they could that just over a decade earlier, FDR was on the verge of making the Glen Canyon country the largest national monument in the nation (Martin 172). How had people forgotten that so quickly?

They also tried to make a case regarding the overwhelmingly abundant history of the area. From the Anasazi to the Hole-in-the-Rock pioneers, to Powell’s expeditions and the gold-crazed miner—this place had major history. To address water issues, they argued that it may be more beneficial to have many smaller water-storage facilities located in the upper valleys where people actually resided instead of a huge dam way out in the middle of nowhere (Martin 172).

Brower, who had a change of mind in 1955, also began to fight in the name of Glen Canyon, to the dismay of the Sierra Club. It wasn’t so much the beauty he was worried about, he still hadn’t paid the canyon a visit, but it was the unreliable evaporation data from the Bureau of Reclamation and the cost of building the dam. However, with the Sierra Club victory with Echo Park Canyon, Brower would now have to fight alone (Farmer 144). This time he was not up to the challenge, and later on said that not fighting against the Glen Canyon dam was his biggest regret in life.

In the end, their cries of injustice were not heard, and the Glen Canyon got its death sentence. On October 15,1956 the echoing sounds of the first blast were heard and felt in the souls of all those who fought for and against the dam. The dam continues to be a hot topic to this day, people fighting for and against its decommission.

“It is so dim…so eerie…so quiet and humanless…so cool…that only a photograph could explain it…we feel creation all around us, deep in the womb of Mother Earth. We touch her scars and now and then, with the wonder of it, there are tears in our eyes. We feel we have been let in on a great secret-and we have! When I think ahead, I begin to choke…this will all be under water”, writes Katie Lee on October 10, 1956 while exploring Dungeon Canyon, just four days before the blasting of the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona began.

The dam took ten years of construction and over seventeen years to completely fill creating “Lake” Powell.

The Bureau of Reclamation finally won the chance to build “the big one”. Due to the passion it drew from many people near and far, who had and hadn’t seen this raw natural beauty, the Bureau may never have a chance to construct such projects without the battle of a lifetime.

Many environmentalists took this story to be a good lesson and warning for future compromises: do not trade something away of which you do not already know.

Glen Canyon Dam, Page Arizona

“Oh Desert, yours is the only death I cannot bear.”
-Edward Abbey