Rock spires, arches, amphitheaters and ecosystems were gradually submerged. To Abbey, it was 'an insult to God's creation.' The Glen Canyon Dam, named for the canyon it drowned, was celebrated as one of the 'engineering wonders of the world' by the Bureau of Reclamation.

The plot of Abbey's most famous fiction, The Monkey Wrench Gang, centered on a band of environmental extremists hellbent on destroying the concrete behemoth that pinched off the Colorado River near the Utah-Arizona border in 1963. It would be hard to overstate the anger sparked by the creation of Lake Powell and the flooding of Glen Canyon. A critical 'bank account' that's overdrawn 'So I think it's really important for policymakers to consider what phasing out this reservoir looks like, because if we don't, then we might just be stuck in a harder situation down the road where it's happening by default.' 'All of the best data that we have suggests it's going to be mostly empty for now on,' says Eric Balken, executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute, a nonprofit that wants to see the canyon restored. Now human actions are causing it to shrink. A half-billion-dollar tourism industry has blossomed on its stored waters along the Utah-Arizona border.īut with water levels at record lows and dropping, hindering tourism and revealing long-hidden rock formations like the one behind Dombrowski's boat, advocates for Glen Canyon see a unique opportunity to catalog what was lost and to correct, perhaps, what environmentalist David Brower called 'America's most regrettable environmental mistake.' Lake Powell is one of the busiest tourist destinations in the country. The goal has always been viewed as a bit far-fetched. Dawn at Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell in Utah.Īt Lake Powell, the nation's second-largest reservoir, record-low water levels are transforming the landscape, renewing a long-standing dispute over the land the reservoir drowned - a canyon labyrinth that novelist Edward Abbey once described as 'a portion of earth's original paradise.' For half a century, environmental groups and Colorado River enthusiasts have implored water managers to restore Glen Canyon by draining the reservoir.

Slot canyon with water images