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
Course of the Colorado River is removed for irrigation here. The Gila Gravity Main Canal provides water for the Gila Valley in Arizona. The All-American Canal, which runs west to the Imperial Valley of California, is the largest irrigation canal in the world, capable of carrying – the entire natural flow of the Colorado prior to damming. The canal supplies more than half a million acres (2000 km) which due to its mild climate grows most of the winter produce in the United States. Below Imperial Dam the remnants of the Colorado river lessen in gradient and in its lower course flows through the Colorado