Lake Mead Country

LAKE MEAD WHERE SUMMER IS WET & WILD

One can imagine the confusion of Anson Call if he returned today to the small Southwest settlement bearing his name, a town he founded more than a century ago near the present Arizona-Nevada border. About six miles southwest of Callville, the 300-foothigh mountain Call would remember is no longer there. Well, it's there, but it's not a mountain anymore. Its peak has become Sentinel Island, rising only a few feet above a vast inland sea. During floods, such as the one that occurred in 1983, the island might be entirely awash. Call, if he were careless, might rip out the bottom of his boat passing over it. How many people aside from Noah could say they were shipwrecked on a mountaintop?

LAKE MEAD

feet above a vast inland sea. During floods, such as the one that occurred in 1983, the island might be entirely awash. Call, if he were careless, might rip out the bottom of his boat passing over it. How many people aside from Noah could say they were shipwrecked on a mountaintop?

Call would need scuba gear to revisit the granary and corrals he so carefully crafted on Brigham Young's orders as a waystop for Mormon goods destined for Salt Lake City from California via the Colorado River. Today, Callville itself is buried beneath 300 to 400 feet of water.

There would be other startling changes, even to someone who last visited here as recently as 1930. The dusty, inhospitable arroyos of memory now are tranquil water-filled inlets. Water-skiers, motorboaters, campers, hikers, sailors, and fishermen now revel in a sprawling wet landscape that once tempted only the hardiest of adventurers.

The river of Call's day the sometimes-tranquil, sometimes-treacherous Rio Colorado is still there. But the river bend where Call built his settlement is one of dozens of inlets on a vast lake, 110 miles long, the largest body of water in the Southwest.

The lake is, of course, Lake Mead, an incomparable aquatic playground spreading dozens of miles through the Arizona-Nevada desert behind that proud icon of engineering: Hoover Dam Viewed for the first time or the fiftieth, Lake Mead country never ceases to awe, inspire, and intrigue. It's a huge region. Together with Lake Mohave south of Hoover Dam and its necklace of shoreline, all comprising the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, it encompasses 3,000 square miles of lakes, river, desert, and rolling hills.

This place discouraged settlement. In summer it was an arid broiling land, where only six inches of rain falls each year. High winds and sandstorms frequently rake its surface. In Call's day, it was a place fit only for meager subsistence farming and a handful of wild creatures Nature had blessed with an instinct for adaptation and survival.

Now, roll the clock ahead a half-century. Lake Mead country today attracts more than 8 million visitors a year. It has become one of the most popular destinations in the national park system, despite its relative isolation from major cities.

Most visitors come for recreation, and Lake Mead supplies plenty. And Nature also leaves its calling card. There is, for instance, the distinct pungent smell of greasewood after a rain. In late afternoon, when the sun sinks low, light patterns form on the reds, golds, and grays of the region's geologic formations. Wildlife abounds with 60 species of mammals alone flourishing here.

Not surprisingly, Lake Mead is a mecca for botanists, zoologists, naturalists, and birders who come to appreciate its amazing diversity. Within Lake Mead's recreation area are five biotic communities (Woodland, Desert Shrub, Transzonal, Shoreline, and Aquatic), each with its interdependent but separately flourishing groups of plants and animals. These communities have one thing in common: given the harsh realities of survival here, they must be masters of conformation. Plants must send their roots deep enough to gather precious moisture. The animals that fare best are those that can exist with a meager water ration.

You'll see a lot of rabbits both jackrabbits and cottontails as well as coyotes, gray and kit foxes, badgers, and ringtail cats. Smaller mammals include kangaroo rats, pocket mice, and ground squirrels.

Some of these creatures are nocturnal, and it is only after the desert sun sets that you'll know they even exist here. Lake Mead's winged creatures range in size from tiny hummingbirds to the graceful golden and bald eagles.

Because of its proximity to Las Vegas and busy Interstate Route 15, the Nevada side of Lake Mead draws the most people. This explains why you'll find the Alan Bible Visitor Center located in Nevada, just outside Boulder City. If you're planning an extended stay, the center is a logical place to start; it's crammed with lake lore and tips for sight-seeing.

There is excellent swimming at Boulder Beach, just northwest of the visitors center. And if you want a quick sampling of what the region has to offer, the five-mile section of Lakeshore Drive between Boulder Beach and Las Vegas Wash does nicely. At the Boulder Beach complex, you'll see how engineers solved the problem created by the rise and fall of the lake level due to water demands of cities far to the south. Ordinarily, the level of the lake is 1,220 feet above sea level. But this can fluctuate as much as 40 to 100 feet depending on water demand and rainfall input. So, to accommodate both man and Nature, all facilities at Boulder Beach (including its marina and concessions) were designed to be moved up or down the lake slope as the need arises. All other developments on the lake rim have been placed above the high-water mark.

As you turn northeast just past Las Vegas Wash and Las Vegas Bay, traffic begins to diminish all the way to Overton Beach at the northern end of the lake. Along the way, you'll see fine examples of some of the area's most intriguing geology. The Gale Hills, for instance, almost due north of Anson Call's lost settlement, are a line of sharply pointed peaks of sedimentary rock that is closely related to formations in Arizona's Grand Canyon.

Along North Shore Road and in Nevada's Valley of Fire State Park, you'll also see isolated examples of a brilliant red rock. One hundred and forty million years ago, these outcroppings were not rock at all but great sand dunes piled up by howling winds. Later other deposits buried the dunes and compressed the granules into the rock we now call Aztec sandstone.

At Echo Bay, situated on the long slender extension of Lake Mead called the Overton Arm, you'll begin to appreciate the enormous force of Nature in the phenomenon of Muddy Mountains. Here the skyline is dominated by an imposing rock ridge that

WHEN YOU GO

Getting there: Visitors from Arizona arrive via U.S. routes 40/93 through Kingman, then north on Route 93 to Hoover Dam and Boulder City. Two side roads off U.S. 93 lead to South Cove and Temple Bar.

Where to stay: The National Park Service operates nine full-service developed areas in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. All have campgrounds, marinas with boat launch facilities, restaurants, and grocery stores. All but Las Vegas Wash, Callville Bay, and Overton Beach have motel-type lodgings, and all but Las Vegas Wash have a trailer village. There are a few motels and hotels in Boulder City just above Hoover Dam.

Houseboats: Combining lodging and lake cruising, rental houseboats are available through several concessionaires. For a listing, contact the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, 601 Nevada Highway, Boulder City, NV 89005; (702) 293-8906.

Tours: Guided tours of Lake Mead are offered several times daily. For details, telephone Lake Mead Yacht Tours at (702) 293-6180. Tours into Hoover Dam also are available daily except Christmas Day. For information, contact the Bureau of Reclamation at (702) 293-8321.

Further information: The Alan Bible Visitor Center, operated by the park service, is four miles from Boulder City on U.S. 93. It has exhibits, books, brochures, topographic maps, and nautical charts. Rangers are on duty to answer questions about facilities, natural history, and visitor needs. Contact the Lake Mead National Recreation Area at the address and telephone number listed under houseboats. To inquire about local history, fishing, camping, lodging, restaurants, boat rentals, and tours, write or call Boulder City Chamber of Commerce, 1497 Nevada Highway, Boulder City, NV 89005; (702) 293-2034.

Weather: Summer temperatures in Lake Mead country exceed 100° F., and winds on the lake can be temperamental, even treacherous. A wise rule before driving the backcountry or boating on the lake: telephone the National Park Service (visitors center number) for weather advice.

HOOVER DAM

The magnificent centerpiece of Lake Mead country, half in Arizona and half in Nevada, is 56-year-old, 726-foot-high Hoover Dam. You can visit Lake Mead without seeing the dam close up (as many do), but you cannot escape its presence. Hoover is no longer the world's highest dam, a statistic it could claim at its dedication, but it still is the highest concrete dam in the Western Hemisphere and one of the world's premier engineering marvels. (The 1,098-foot-high Rogunsky Dam in the U.S.S.R. is the world's highest dam.) It is difficult for many to appreciate that Hoover was conceived, financed, and built during the Great Depression and finished three years ahead of schedule to boot. Underscoring the hardships encountered building Hoover Dam is the grim fact that 96 workers lost their lives during its construction. Some were high-scalers who lost their balance and fell off the precipitous rock walls of Black Canyon. Others were killed by falling debris, moving machinery, or electrocution. A few drowned or succumbed to heat prostration.

There are at least four vantages from which to appreciate the history, contribution, and sheer magnitude of this farsighted engineering project. One is from the air. Seen from above, the dam, compared to the huge lake/reservoir sprawling behind it, seems a minuscule cork in a bottle. You can slip up to the dam's backside the crescent-shaped, 1,244-footlong concrete mass that fronts on Lake Mead aboard a tour boat from Boulder Marina, which operates year-round. On the tour, you'll see some of Lake Mead's varied wildlife. Sailing toward the dam, for instance, sharp-eyed passengers may spot a bighorn sheep. You can stand on the dam, peering down its angled front edge to the Colorado River. From this height, the spillways and other hydraulic works far below seem like Lilliputian toys.

Or you can take the Hoover Dam tour to get acquainted with this structure both from the inside (an elevator drops you half the height of the Empire State Building in little more than one minute) and from the bottom looking up. From any direction, though, a Hoover Dam visit is certain to be relived for months afterward. When it was conceived, Hoover Dam's major purposes were flood control, water supply, and hydroelectric power. Recreation came almost as an afterthought, and doubtless there were few in the '30s who dreamed that 8 million people would come here each year to unwind from city life and to enjoy Nature. That's a serendipitous bonus indeed.

Continued from page 9 resulted from faulting and folding of the Earth eons ago. Echo Bay, too, is a perfect spot to recall Lake Mead's rich human history, beginning with prehistoric men who mined salt and tilled the land near the Muddy and Virgin rivers until, inexplicably, they abandoned their Pueblo villages about A.D. 1200. Explorers Jedediah Smith and Kit Carson followed the Puebloans, preceding settlers who began colonizing in the 1860s, retilling fields abandoned by the ancient Indians.

Overton Beach, a favorite spot for fishermen angling for largemouth black bass, rainbow trout, and channel catfish, is the final stop going north on the Nevada shore.

To see the other half of Lake Mead country, from the dam to the western end of the Grand Canyon, you'll travel on Arizona soil. It's more remote, more difficult to reach, and less peopled than the Nevada shore but spectacular in its primitive beauty, colorful rock formations, curious Mojave Desert plants, and wildlife. Here you'll be following in the footsteps of another explorer, John Wesley Powell, whose accomplishments helped bring about formation of the U.S. Geological Survey.

On back roads such as the four-mile dirt track leading off U.S. Route 93 through Kingman Wash, the solitude is refreshing as you explore less-developed sections of Lake Mead. Don't hurry. Park beside the road, leave your car, and walk a short distance into the nearby wilderness. In this quiet place, you may see a feral burro or two, descendants of those that carried prospectors and their gear into Lake Mead country long before engineers transformed the desert into a watery playground. Or possibly bighorn sheep. Certainly, there will be coyotes and jackrabbits on the slopes of Fortification Hill rising gently before you. And, near the hill, is an area known as the Paint Pots a favorite subject of photographers - where the landscape is resplendent in brilliant shades of red, a result of the oxidation of such minerals as iron pyrite.

LAKE MEAD

Another destination on the Arizona side is Temple Bar, a settlement with a full range of modern lodgings, a marina, grocery stores, and a selfservice laundry. Temple Bar got its name from a large offshore monolith just upstream from the present community. Daniel Bonelli thought the rock closely resembled the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. So the name stuck. The "temple" was shapedby erosion out of a thick bed of sedimentary layers of the Muddy Creek geologic formation.

To reach Temple Bar, backtrack south on U.S. 93 and then take a 28-mile paved road through sandand gravel-strewn Detrital Valley. If you prefer a less developed area, you can detour off the main road to Bonelli Landing on the shore of Virgin Basin. Bonelli Landing is primitive, suited only for camping and launching boats, but that's the way most Lake Mead fishermen like it.

To explore the remainder of Lake Mead's Arizona shoreline, return once again to Route 93, then take a 44-mile road leading north to South Cove and Pearce Ferry and the imposing Grand Wash Cliffs that rise 3,000 feet above the Colorado River.

When Hoover Dam was completed in 1935, Lake Mead's rising waters backed up into the lower end of the Grand Canyon. A lot of history was lost because the water covered the point where, in 1876, Harrison Pearce established a ferry crossing to link the country to the north with important mining camps of Arizona to the south.

But there was a serendipitous blessing in the flooding. When rising lake waters diluted the Colorado's enormous power, huge mud flats were created, and they are still there.

Despite the millions who visit Lake Mead each year, there is so much water and shoreline that anyone seeking privacy need not be disappointed. Humans, in fact, feel somewhat puny as they water-ski Mead's expanse, stare in wonder at towering buttes on each side, sail into one secluded cove after another. By itself, Lake Mead counts 500 miles of shoreline, and, if you add that of Lake Mohave to the south, part of the recreation area, the total comes to nearly 700. Yet little more than a century ago, not a single mile of lake shoreline existed. Returning today to what he might remember as only dry, hot, hostile territory, Anson Call would be surprised, indeed.

Joseph E. Brown, who lives in Maine, is a native Californian who has visited Lake Mead often.

Michael Collier lives in Flagstaff. His most recent book, Arizona, A View From Above (Westcliffe Publishers), contains aerial photography of Arizona, including Lake Mead.