Page, Arizona Comes of Age

During the Glen Canyon boom had made a mess of Spencer's expensive equipment. A great enterprise died a'borning. The big steamboat lay at Lees Ferry until a flood tipped it over. Today, its boiler and a bit of decking provide a place to sit and fish-and to ponder the people who've been through this land before.

The gold boom went bust, but by no means had industrializing America given up on Glen Canyon.

All that surveying hadn't gone for nothing, and there was continual talk of a dam that would make the wild Colorado yield at least some hydroelectric wealth.

Even before Hoover Dam went up, engineers were convinced there was a better site somewhere in Glen Canyon. A water-gauging station went up in 1921, and crews spent most of the '20s drilling above Lees Ferry in search of the safest site.

It might have been just four miles above Lees Ferry-but by the time a serious Bureau of Reclamation survey was started in 1946, its members discovered that the cliffs on either side of the river had some serious fractures - and something else: the same slippery shale which had frustrated the Glen Canyon gold-seekers lay too close to bedrock to allow for a dam.

For the next two years, engineer Vaud Larson and his crew worked their way upstream and 15-plus miles from the Paria, not so far from the Crossing of the Fathers, they found their site.

The dam project got Congressional approval in 1956. In 1963, Glen Canyon Dam began backing up water. By 1966, the 700-foot-high dam was dedicated. And Lake Powell became a reality, providing sports and sight-seeing to millions. The land once shunned as desolate became another Arizona visitor attraction.

Today, Del Webb Corporation's five marinas dot the lake, a concession pioneered by veteran riverman Art Greene and his family. (Art's grandson, John Schoppman, carries on the good work today as general manager of Wahweap Lodge and Marina.) Its marinas are all modern. The boats plying the lake are fast, safe, and comfortable. And everywhere along this vast body of water there are people enjoying what modern times have brought to this wide-open, long-remote country.

But even as you sit aboard your boat, a beverage bubbling down the throat, afloat hundreds of feet above the canyon bottom, the timeless beauties of this land can carry you back to-where, with just a little imagination, you can hear the sound of ancient drums, the gunfire of the Fathers' crossing, Powell's poetry recitals - and the clanking of machinery that led this land toward today's accessibility.

Page, Arizona Comes of Age by Allen C. Reed

In 1957, a temporary government construction camp was staked out on an isolated windswept Arizona mesa near the Utah border. The semiarid landscape spread out below was split by the ragged canyon of the Colorado River.

The camp was named Page in honor of the first commissioner of the Reclamation Service established during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.

That first year alone, population went from zero to 3000, as surveyors, engineers, and construction workers arrived to create Glen Canyon Dam.

The original Bureau of Reclamation headquarters along with a recently completed building housing city government offices, law enforcement facilities, courtroom, and other city offices make up the Page Civic Center today, in a park-like setting.

Community facilities include a visitor center, museum, library, swimming pool, parks, recreation center, golf course, tennis courts, bowling alley, theatre, and hospital. A local newspaper is published weekly. There is a large one-stop shopping complex in the center of town, and a second major shopping center is currently under construction.

The Page airport, with a wide, paved runway over a mile in length is the most active in Arizona for its size.

Residential life-style ranges from mobile home communities to luxurious custom homes perched on rim drives overlooking the dam, the lake, and the profusion of ever-changing colors and moods of the vast towering rock formation panorama spread out to the distant horizon. Well-kept residential communities on wide, winding streets with an abundance of mature shade trees add to the feeling of community pride.

There are 13 churches in town, 11 of them on one street, side by side in one sweeping arc.

It is doubtful if a finer, better-equipped public school system exists anywhere in the nation. Teachers are among the highest paid in Arizona, and ratio of students to teachers is among the lowest. Two thousand students, half Navajo, half Anglo, enjoy the beautiful experience of working together in an atmosphere of complete teamwork and harmony.

In a little over 20 years, an isolated, rough-shod hard-hat construction camp has become one of Arizona's finest growing cities, rapidly gaining a reputation as a model place to live and raise a family.