History of the National Park Service and multi purpose river basin development programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority which began in the 1930s and spread to river valleys in all parts of the country after World War II. Lake Mead was the first National Recreation Area. The Boulder Canyon Project Act, passed in 1928, authorized the Bureau of Reclamation to construct Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Work began in 1931 and the dam, highest in the Western Hemisphere, was completed in 1935. The next year, under provisions of an agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation, the National Park Service assumed responsibility for all recreational activities
Cottonwood Valley (Arizona and Nevada) Cottonwood Valley (Arizona and Nevada) Cottonwood Valley is a wide valley, on the Colorado River on the border between Mohave County, Arizona and Clark County, Nevada. It extends east and west from the river into both states and is the first wide valley south of the Black Canyon of the Colorado, the last in a series of great canyons the Colorado River passes through after leaving the Rocky Mountains on its way west and where it makes its turn to the south toward the Gulf of California. All of the Colorado River in Cottonwood Valley and the lower reach of