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Show OCTOBER 1996 GLEN CANYON’S BURIED TREASURE Continued from page A NEW SERVICE FOR ON PARK CIty! DEMAND same day / 24hr service (most jobs) Only adventurous visitors SHORT. 3, es? ane one?) 00 Se ee Se Se Full color PRINTING (Other digital prepress services available) Call today for more details 364-0498 435 West 400 South #101/ SLC 84101 FAX: 364-5588 Klay Anderson Audio nc a We we oe Civ 1.800.FOR.KLAY 7054 SOUTH 2300 EAST + SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 84121 VOICE 801.94.AUDIO + FAX 801.942.3136 slver Junction Mercantile Every thing You Want But Can't Find BINGHAM JUNCTION ANTIQUES and COUNTRY STORE “You Can't Sell From An Empty Wagon” Articipation Galleries Original, Limited Editions, Sculpture, New Artists, Framing, Etc. eA. Friberg ¢ H.F. Sellers eJ. Bama °B. Dolittle (801) 649-8654 558 Main St. « Friends of Glen Canyon. “We didn't know how to protest or lobby to stop the dam. We were too timid.” “But some of .us are not so timid now,” he adds. Only five months after Glen Canyon Dam was authorized, the first bulldozers went to work. Lost Eden eee Se Se Fe U N 11 A song in the alcove echoed to the river, half-mile away. It was made for an academy of music” Powell said, and named it Music Temple. They stayed two refreshing days. His men carved their names in the alcove wall. Music Temple lies under the east side of Lake Powell near buoy number 55 P.O. Box 715 Park City, Utah 84060 From 1883 to 1912, gold miners probed Glen Canyon. In 1901, the Hoskaninni Company built a hundredfoot, two-story gold dredge in the canyon, hauling lumber and supplies overland by wagon. They found gold, but it was as fine as flour and nearly impossible to extract. The dredge now lies under Bullfrog Bay. In the early part of the twentieth century, adventurous visitors came to float the river and see Glen Canyon, not to take from it. In 1940, Franklin D. ReO701Sze ve Its Secretary of the Interior, Harold a Ickes, proposed 4.5 million-acre park, the national heart of which was Glen Canyon. Called Escalante National Park, it was to include both sides of the Colorado River for 280. miles Moab down The reservoirs water rose quickly in the 1960's. A mile below Halls Crossing in a side canyon named “Lost Eden,” a rookery hosting scores of Great Blue Herons drowned. Up and down Glen Canyon that scene was _ repeated. Nesting grounds of egrets, pelicans, and other birds were inundated. Rising water submerged side canyons of willow, tamarisk, and cottonwood, which had from to miles of shoreline are bare sandstone or rocky areas, less than two percent is sandy beach. Too often vacationers don’t use the outhouses provided and bury their poop on the few beaches. Another problem is the rise and fall of the reservoirs water level. Campers and boaters apparently didn’t understand , they must bury their feces 100 feet above the reservoir’s highest highwater mark. Lone Rock, Hansen Creek, Forgotten Canyon, Stanton Beach, Hobe Cat Beach, Wahweap Picnic Beach, and Warm Creek Bay have all been closed at least once because of bacterial contamination. Eventually wind and waves flush feces deep into the reservoir where it’s colder and bacteria can’t grow. With almost three million visitors yearly, the reservoir sometimes can’t keep up. ARAMARK Leisure Services, Lake Powell's main concessionaire, was fined in 1991 for dumping dissolved paint, grease, oil, and at least 500 used boat batteries into — the reservoirs Wahweap Bay. Batteries contain hazardous materials, including sulfuric acid and lead. The Park Service now monitors the reservoir’s sediment, as well as its water, for contamination. Still, there’s only one town on Lake hela ES = Powell — Page, EROW Bydiony Dever Each year 3 million visitors make an impact on the shores of Lake Powell. Leess) Ferry. It would cover the Green River from its confluence with the Colorado up to the town of Green River, and it would extend east, protecting 70 miles of the San Juan River. Lobbyists for mine owners and cattlemen, and the Utah Congressional delegation, were incensed over the possibility that grazing permits and mining access would be restricted. They quickly mobilized and scuttled the plan. After World War 11, the Bureau of Reclamation proposed building dams in Dinosaur National Monument, Flaming Gorge, and Glen Canyon as part of the Colorado River Storage Project. Midwestern and eastern legislators complained western irrigation dams were government subsidies benefiting a few. Utah Senator Arthur Watkins denounced citizen dam opponents as “abominable nature lovers.” No western elected representative spoke in favor of preserving Glen Canyon. To Sleight, it was senseless to drown 150 miles of canyon to generate electricity, or to store water while downstream Lake Mead was full. In the early ‘60s he joined with river runners and other local outdoor activists to form a group called Friends of Glen Canyon. “We were too young,” Sleight said of PAGE provided habitat for ringtail cats, deer, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, skunks, badgers, Glen Canyon’s beavers, and cougars. seep-watered hanging gardens — so specialized they live in few places in the world — were the last to submit. The native Squawfish, which grew to five-feet long and one hundred pounds in J.W. Powell’s time, all but disappeared. The Bonytail Chub, once the most common fish in the Colorado, is also a victim of the dam’s cold, clear water. Today, the reservoirs shoreline nurtures little vegetation or wildlife habitat because the water level fluctuates 20-25 feet a day when the giant dam valves are opened. Lake Powell boaters get what was once a birds-eye-view of upper Glen Canyon. Waterskiers buzz around previously high and inaccessible cliffs, alcoves, and domes, though it may seem like “flooding the Sistine Chapel so visitors can get a better view.” If you go to Lake Powell, bring a toilet. Beginning in 1997, Park Service regulations in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area require overnight campers and boaters to have a self-contained toilet when away from areas with outhouses. Most of Lake Powell’s two thousand 10 7 iri oic == atiGl 1 NaS fewer than 10,000 people. Glen Canyon’s rims are bridged only at Hite on the north and at Glen Canyon Dam on the south. The reservoir itself is not natural, but the surrounding desert is remote and rewarding to the patient, attentive traveler. Also, the Colorado River never sleeps. As it flows into the stillwater of Lake Powell, it drops enough silt to bury more than fifty square miles of lake bottom a foot deep eaeh year. Most of the sediment is upstream where the river first slows. “There is no question that at some point Hite Marina will silt in,” said the Park Service’s John Rittenour. “But we have no immediate plans to move it.” Eventually the Colorado will fill Lake Powell with sediment and make a waterfall of Glen Canyon dam. There’s a lesson in Lake Powell, Sleight contends: “Stop developing wild places. You destroy what people come to see. It’s happening over and over again in Southern Utah. Sleight believes that the canyons now drowned by the reservoir would begin to regenerate if the Bureau of Reclamation reduced the water level. Of course, with its chalky bathtub ring of mineral deposits, and thirty-three years of silt and manmade garbage, Glen never be the same. @ Canyon will |