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
Glen Canyon Dam be about . The general consensus among inhabitants of the Colorado River basin and government officials was that a high dam had to be built on the Colorado to control floods and provide carry-over water storage for times of drought. Possible locations for this dam were debated for years, and in fact the Bureau of Reclamation's first study for a dam at Glen Canyon was made in 1924, in addition to studies for locations at Black and Boulder Canyons lower on the Colorado, below Grand Canyon. These studies found that the lower Colorado sites had stronger foundation rock which might