Black Canyon of the Colorado Black Canyon of the Colorado The Black Canyon of the Colorado is the canyon on the Colorado River where Hoover Dam was built. The canyon is located on the Colorado River at the state line between Nevada and Arizona. The western wall of the gorge is in the El Dorado Mountains, and the eastern wall is in the Black Mountains of Arizona. The canyon formed about 15 million years ago during the Miocene Basin and Range uplift. Black Canyon gets its name from the black volcanic rocks that are found throughout the area. Just south of the Hoover Dam on
Steamboats of the Colorado River the river, except for the "Searchlight" that lingered on as property of the U. S. Reclamation Service until it was sunk in 1916. Steamboats were tried in Glen Canyon, the Green River in Utah and Wyoming and the Grand River, (after 1921 renamed as the upper part of the Colorado River), above its confluence with the Green River in Utah and in Colorado. Unlike the Lower Colorado, the railroads made possible most of this steam navigation on the Upper Colorado, bringing in the boats or their parts and their fuel to the points on the river where they were assembled