Marble Canyon Dam States Geological Survey, which designated sites for "an unbroken string of [hydroelectric] dams from the mountains of Colorado and Wyoming to the last canyons of the Colorado River along the California/Arizona border". Although the Bureau of Reclamation expressed interest at this time in developing hydroelectric generation at the Marble site, these plans were postponed in favor of building the Hoover Dam, which would provide a much greater storage capacity for irrigation and flood control. However, once Hoover was completed the Bureau once again set its sights on the Grand Canyon, which has the greatest hydroelectric potential of any canyon in
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