Glen Canyon Dam A dam in Glen Canyon was studied as early as 1924, but these plans were initially dropped in favor of the Hoover Dam (completed in 1936) which was located in the Black Canyon. By the 1950s, due to rapid population growth in the seven U.S. and two Mexican states comprising the Colorado River Basin, the Bureau of Reclamation deemed the construction of additional reservoirs necessary. However, the USBR faced opposition when it proposed the Echo Park Dam in Utah's Dinosaur National Monument, which the nascent environmental movement saw as a legal threat to the status of protected lands. After a
Course of the Colorado River Bridge carries U.S. Route 89 over the Colorado River. Below here the Colorado flows through the last of Glen Canyon, passing the scenic Horseshoe Bend, before emerging briefly from its canyons at Lee's Ferry, where it is joined by the warm, shallow, muddy Paria River. Historically a ford used by Native Americans, explorers and settlers, Lee's Ferry serves as the dividing point between the Upper and Lower Colorado River Basins, which were each allocated one-half of the Colorado River flow in the Colorado River Compact of 1922. Below Lee's Ferry the Colorado begins to trend more south than southwest, through