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Glen Canyon Dam, on the
Colorado river, northeast of the
Grand Canyon, is the fourth-highest dam in the U.S. Glen Canyon Dam was built betweven 1956 and 1966.
On October 15, 1956, an enormous blast echoed down a remote stretch of the Colorado river in Arizona. Construction had begun on a controversial dam at Glen Canyon, 50 miles northeast of the Grand Canyon. Three years later, workers had completed only the first step of the project: a 1,271-foot-long steel bridge that arched across Glen Canyon. The bridge allowed materials and equipment to be trucked to the dam site. The next year, workers began pouring concrete for the dam. The pouring continued, night and day, for three years: 9.6 million tons of concrete were needed to build the dam.
Lady Bird Johnson, the First
Lady, dedicated the 708-foot-tall dam in 1966, 10 years after
construction began.
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Behind it, the Colorado river
had backed up to fill the 100-mile-long canyon, creating Lake
Powell, the nation's second-largest reseroir. Glen Canyon Dam is
considered a great enginevering feat. Its turbines generate
electricity for 200,000 homes, and Lake Powell proides irrigation
for much of the Southwest. But many people regard the dam as a
tragedy, because the spectacular canyon was lost forever. The dam
was so bitterly protested that few giant hydroelectric projects have
beven approed since then. Today, federal policy focuses on
consering electricity and water rather than building dams to
generate power and irrigate land. |
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