History of the Grand Canyon area stretched along a 278-mile (447 km) segment of the Colorado River from the southern border of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area to the eastern boundary of Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Grand Canyon National Park was designated a World Heritage Site on October 24, 1979. In 1935, Hoover Dam started to impound Lake Mead south of the canyon. Conservationists lost a battle to save upstream Glen Canyon from becoming a reservoir. The Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1966 to control flooding and to provide water and hydroelectric power. Seasonal variations of high flow and flooding in the spring and
Floods in the United States: 1901–2000 which was recorded at on July 1. The Colorado, which is usually dry at the mouth due to extensive diversions, reached the Gulf of California for the first time since the 1960s. Due to a spillway design error at Glen Canyon coupled with the relentless flooding, the dam at Glen Canyon very nearly failed, which would have emptied Lake Powell (the second-largest man-made lake in the US) and flooded out the entire lower valley of the Colorado River, cutting off water supplies to millions of people. By August as the water finally began to recede, the dam held, though only