Glen Canyon Dam and the US-89 steel-arch bridge — the 710-foot dam that plugged the Colorado River (1956-1966), the bridge nearly 700 feet above the river, and the Carl Hayden Visitor Center.
Just ahead, Highway 89 is going to carry you across one of the most heart-in-your-throat bridges in America — so slow down and take it in. You're about to drive the Glen Canyon Dam Bridge, a great steel arch leaping across the gorge nearly seven hundred feet above the Colorado River. When they built it in the late nineteen fifties, it was the highest arch bridge in the world; they needed it to haul the materials across to build the dam.
And there's the dam itself, right beside you — Glen Canyon Dam, a colossal curving wall of concrete plugging the whole canyon. It stands seven hundred and ten feet tall, one of the highest dams in the country. They poured it between nineteen fifty-six and nineteen sixty-six, block by block, more than five million cubic yards of concrete, to tame the wild Colorado, generate electricity, and store water for the dry Southwest. Behind it, that wall holds back the entire river.
On your right, watch for the Carl Hayden Visitor Center — it's worth a stop, perched right on the canyon rim looking down at the dam, and you can take a tour deep inside the thing if you like. Pull in if you've got time. But understand what you're really looking at, because it's not a simple story of triumph. To make the lake on the far side of this wall, something extraordinary and beautiful was drowned — and Boone's going to tell you what. Keep on north; the lake is just ahead.
Photo: Christian Mehlführer, User:Chmehl · CC BY 2.5
