| OCR Text |
Show Blip ill! ffeTs3& ; - ;WsV&t fishing and the National Parks Service is working right now to make sure it will be just right for boating. Every public agency involved with fishing, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Utah Fish and Game Department (about 90 per cent of Lake Powell will be in Utah) and the Arizona Fish and Game Department, already are making plans for the cast and retrieve set. Current hopes call for dual fishery, with rainbow trout living liv-ing it up in the deeper colder waters of the lake and with bass abounding in the more shallow, warmer portions. At least it is the plan now to plant both trout and bass in the lake in the first experiment. As for the boaters, Lake Powell Pow-ell could well become America's greatest inland boating paradise. para-dise. When the water backs up and makes some of Glen Canyon's splendor accessible by boat, the lake will be administered some what like downsteream Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam. Lake Powell will be more spectacular than Lake Mead but probably won't get as heavy use since it is not as close to recreation recre-ation hungry Californians. Even so, some one to two million visitors vis-itors are expected every year. The waters wil start backing up behind thedam in 1963 and almost al-most immediately the boaters will be out en masse. Planning to accommodate the expected mobs the National Park Service, cooperating with Bureau of Reclamation, carefully has blueprinted sizeable water development de-velopment at nine sites. Plans call for developments such as road, boat and air access, ac-cess, marina, eating, lodging, picnic areas, trailer villages and boat launching facilities. These nine camp and marine areas will be located at Wah-weap Wah-weap Creek, Warm Creek, Padre Point, Hole in the Rock, Oak (Continued on page 10) ' " - " " U - 4. . , , . t. .v., .-.Vj.v.v.v......,..vV.v.t.jJJ v 0 .j0 , Scenery such as this will belong to the boater and adventurer along Lake Powell's shores behind Glen Canyon Dam. The reservoir will have a shoreline of 1,800 miles and will be about 700 feet deep in parts. Boating Paradise Shapes Up In Southeastern Utah Area depth of the lake. You stand out on a flat mesa, miles in diameter dia-meter and you know the Colorado Colo-rado River is hundreds of feet below you. At your feet will be a campground camp-ground and right in front of you will be a sandy beach and the water will be 20 feet away. Waters of the lake will be clear and clean. They will be cold out in the middle and down in the deep reaches where the depth will reach several hundred hun-dred feet. But up in the shallow arms the water probably will be just right for swimming, water skiing, (Editor's note: This is another in a series of "See Utah" articles designed to better acquaint our Utahns with their home state. the dam. Today it is virtually impossible impos-sible to visualize the size of the r-hkm T 6 IWwi 2rr The articles have been prepared by the Utah Tourist and Publicity Publi-city Council. Each week a different differ-ent sector of the state will be featured). Twenty or so years ago, when river recreation was in its infancy, in-fancy, anyone venturing down 1 the Green, San Juan or Colorado Rivers of south western Utah was deemed a bit daft. In a couple of years jaunts on the reservoirs of the Green, San Juan or Colorado Rivers will be about as common as riding on the Staten Island Ferry. The reason for this explosion of water interest in one of the most rugged, roadless, inaccessible, inacces-sible, yet most beautiful, regions of the United States is Glen Canyon Dam. Glen Canyon Dam, downstream down-stream on the Colorado River, 12.4 miles from the Utah Arizona Ari-zona line, will give the nation one of its biggest, best and most spectacular playgrounds. The 700 foot high dam, now about half completed, will form mammoth , Lake Powell, very properly named for the one-armed one-armed pioneering naturalist of the 1870's, John Wesley Powell. Lake Powell, which will be the world's third largest man-made man-made reservoir, will back up in to thousands of narrow canyons and washes creating a total shore line of about 1800 miles. That's as long as a shoreline extending from Salt Lake City to San Francisco to Los Angeles and back to Salt Lake City. Lake Powell will extend 186 miles back up the Colorado and 71 miles back up the San Juan. At Hite Basin, where' the road from Hanksville now contiues across the Colorado River on a ferry, the lake will be 40 feet deep, and this is 147 miles from This is Glen Canyon Dam at the half-way completion mark. The dam will be 700 feet tall when completed and will back up a gigantic ' reservoir. Note size of cars on bridge linking the canyon walls. Boating Paradise Shapes Up In Southeastern Utah Area (Continued from preceding page)-Island, page)-Island, Cummings Mesa, Shock Bar, Oil Sheep Bar and Bullfrog Bull-frog Creek. Most of these areas are about 300 miles from Salt Lake City and about 575 miles from Los Angeles. Boating time from Wahweap, closest to Glen Canyon Dam, north over the 115 mile run to Bullfrog Creek, will be six hours in the average powerboat, cruising beneath multi colored cliffs and mesas in a region now impassable. Lowe Powell and all its water are not involved in the current Canyonlands National Park discussions. dis-cussions. The proposed Canyon-lands Canyon-lands Park area is north and east of the lake site. Lake Powell Pow-ell already has been designated a National Recreation area. In addition to increasing the nation's outdoor fun facilities, Glen Canyon Dam will provide access to famed Rainbow Bridge in remote southern Utah. In its current semi isolated status, Rainbow Bridge is accessible acces-sible only by an arduous pack trip by horseback or by a long river trip plus a six mile hike. As a result, comparatively few persons have seen this 309 foot high attraction, the largest and most renown of the world's natural bridges. This new access to Rainbow Bridge is just one of the many recreational bonuses to be provided by Lake Powell. New vistas will be opened for conservationists, tourists, fishermen, fisher-men, boaters, nature lovers and the American family. It will be a land of space enough, time enough and certainly cer-tainly scenery enough for all comers for many generations to come. |
