Our Kingly Expedition: Glen Canyon Dam

This 710 foot high dam on the Colorado River forms one of the largest man made reservoirs in the United States, Lake Powell. The lake can hold 27 million acre feet of water! ( That term means enough water to cover 27 million acres with 1 foot of water.)

It's fascinating to me how it fills all those little canyons for miles and miles.

There is a group pushing to decommission dam and they have lots of reasons that are very interesting to read about but I doubt it will ever happen. One reason is the reservoir has covered hundreds of Indian ruins and artifacts. Some claim the lake will be completely filled with silt in 200 years while other statistics show it's only hurting the west's water shortage issue. Who knows?!

Impressive!

They have a fountain with this plaque in front of the Visitor's Center. This plane crash sounds vaguely familiar but I can't quite remember it? I thought maybe someone else from Colorado would.

The $ amount of electricity the dam has produced in the last 54 years (not as much as they thought it would)

The Carl Hayden Visitor Center was very informative with many pictures and demonstrations on how it all works.

Tubes showing the amount of snowfall each year for the past 20 years. They keep careful track so they know how much to let out of the reservoir in anticipation for the snow melt.

The bridge!

When they first began the project, they had to drive 200 miles to get to the other side! The first bridge was a chain link fence with chicken wire for the sides. Some of the children were a little freaked out to walk across it because they heard me talk about the first bridge and thought I meant that's how it is now :). O, only 18 people died during the construction of the dam and all bodies were recovered. Apparently that's impressive for a dam this size.