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Show MOUNTAIN The massive rust and black varnished Continued from page 8 though the best has gone under.” Similarly, when writer Wallace Stegner was asked whether Lake Powell was a beautiful place, he said, “Yes. But it’s like looking at a picture of Miss America ered.” with her TIMES cliff face traces. Countless native American artifacts lie. beneath Lake Powell. The reservoir rose too quickly for proper archeological survey. In 1776 — months after the Con- 50 foot tinental Congress passed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia of Wright Bar displayed legs coy- a spectacular panel of ancient drawings hat lies beneath Lake Powell's numbered navigational buoys? pecked into stone Few Americans alive today saw Glen Canyon “as John Wesley Powell did. One of them is Ken Sleight, who guided river runners through the canyon from 1953 to 1963. Sleight is at a loss when asked to name his favorite place in predam Glen Canyon. “There were so many beautiful places,” he said. “Forbidding Canyon, Music Temple, Hidden Canyon. On each trip through Glen Canyon, I went to one place I hadn’t been,” he remembers. “I don’t go to Lake Powell very often, it’s too painful,” he said. To the few that knew and appreciated Glen Canyon and its many side canyons, the buoys are as sobering as tombstones in a cemetery. To the dam builders, cathedrals were built of granite and marble by the hand of man. But river runners found the canyon’s dramatic wild places had spiritual qualities and named many of Photo by Cynthia The treasures of time are buried in Glen Canyon Wilcks beneath the waters of Lake Powell them after places of worship. Cathedral-in-the-Desert — now lying below Lake Powell’s channel buoy number 68 — was an immense vermilion alcove over thirty stories high, ribboned with silver-black desert varnish. High overhead, a small crack of sunlight streaked through narrow canyon walls, illuminating a jade pool fed by a slim crystal waterfall. Velvety moss blanketed the red sandstone. “It was the single most spectacular place I ever visited,” wrote Eliot Porter in The Place No One Knew. Porter found another canyon named Cathedral a “journey reminis- cent of Xanandu,” referring to a mythical place of idyllic beauty. There he walked “through caverns measureless to man.” Cathedral Canyon lies below Lake Powell’s buoy number 45.5. Pre-dam Glen Canyon was one of the most remote places in the United States. It was not until 1946 that a dirt road was completed across the area, linking Hanksville with Blanding. A ferry across the Colorado was a homemade contraption of planks hammered into a two-car size bridge and hauled by rusty overhead cables. It was the only crossing of Glen Canyon above Lee’s Ferry, Arizona. Called Hite Crossing, it now lies below buoy number 139. Anasazi & other imhabitants But Glen Canyon was full of human history. The first visitors, small groups of stone-age nomads, hunted mammoth, sloth, and camel, and gathered edible plants in the region about 9,000 years ago. Their few remains are flint chips, fireplace hearths, and grinding stones. Thousands of years later, Anasazi planted and corn on the canyon wove baskets in the bottom alcoves. Their adobe dwellings reveal that they favored Navajo Creek, as well as Mogqui, Forgotten, and Lake canyons off the main stem of Glen Canyon. The first five miles of Lake Canyon, for example, had over three dozen stone and mortar dwellings. T:. massive rust and black-varnished cliff face of Wright Bar — NOW underwater across from Wahweap Marina — displayed a spectacular 50foot panel of ancient drawings pecked into stone. Some petroglyphs dated from 100 B.C. Photos show that each of the hundreds of inscribed figures are unique, yet their combined effect suggests a prehistoric billboard or narrative. The Anasazi left Glen Canyon about 1300 A.D. Utes, southern Paiutes, and later Navajos, ranged over parts of what's now Glen Canyon National Recreation Area but left few Rags 1h Ge alleria floral & Design Oe arr aaa 580 Main ¢ Galleria Mall ¢ Park City park City’s Favorite on Historic Florist Main ¢ Guaranteed Fresh Flowers European Gardens MOUNTAIN 649-2600 outa World Wide Delivery & PAGE 9 — European-Americans saw Glen Canyon for the first time. wo Franciscan friars, Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre V6lez de Escalante crossed the Colorado following a major Indian trail that had been in use for over 700 years. They had attempted to reach the Pacific Ocean from Santa Fe. “Crossing of the Fathers” is at the bottom of Padre Bay, near buoy number 21. Fur trappers explored Glen Canyon, but the only evidence of their passing is one signature in stone, “Denis Julien 1836,” carved into a cliff in Cataract Canyon, just north of Glen Canyon. In 1858, Mormons led by Jacob Hamblin first reached Glen Canyon They forded the Colorado at the Crossing of the Fathers on a mission to Hopi villages. For most of the nineteenth century, southeastern Utah was a blank space on government maps. The Escalante River was undiscovered, and the nearby Henry Mountains were still unnamed. Powell, with four boats, ten men, and a few brass scientific instruments, floated the Colorado River from Green River. Wyoming into unknown territory After weeks of tumultuous rapids Powell washed into tranquil Glen Canyon. He wrote of leisurely passing by towering monuments, oak-set glens, fern-decked alcoves, and mural curves. They glided hour after hour stopping each time some new wonder arrested their attention Powell spotted a cleft in the canyon wall, almost hidden by cottonwoods, near the San Juan River's junction with the Colorado Inside was a vast grotto over two hundred feet high Deep and five hundred feet long. inside, a clear pool mirrored colum- bines, ferns, and moss clinging to red walls. Powell’s thermometer read 1040 on the river, but in the hollow it was cool and shady. Continued on page 10 paey id Gar | hg ee |