When you need to cross the Colorado River, do you drive over the Glen Canyon Dam?

Question

I'm trying to recall what this area looked like and I can't remember if the road goes over the dam? Any details would be helpful.

Answer 1

Glen Canyon Dam is built across a deep red-walled canyon which continues southwards in its original state 15 miles to Lees Ferry. The main road, U.S. 89, does not pass over the dam, as is the case with U.S. 93 over the Hoover Dam, instead it crosses the river on a steel girder bridge a short distance away.

The section of Glen Canyon that was selected as the location for the dam followed surveys by the Bureau of Reclamation shortly after WWII.  The reasons for the site selection for the dam were that the canyon was narrow at the location; the walls of the canyon were stable sandstone; there was a nearby supply of sand and rock; and the huge area upstream that could be flooded without disrupting any settlements or roads. The scheme was opposed at the time by environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, but the need to supply water and electricity to the fast growing cities of the Southwest outweighed any objections.

Initial development required workers to drive nearly 200 miles from one side of the Colorado River to the other, but work speeded up once the bridge was completed in 1959. The concrete dam took 3 years to build and began to form Lake Powell in 1963.

Today, the existence of the dam is still opposed by a small but growing number of people, and proposals have been made to drain the lake and restore Glen Canyon to its natural state. More likely is that operation will eventually be rendered uneconomic by a gradual build up of silt, as this can no longer be carried downstream by the Colorado River.

Photographs of the area are located at several web sites, including the following:

http://www.desertusa.com/gc/gcd/du_glenc...

http://www.ci.slc.ut.us/utilities/NewsEv...

http://www.swaviator.com/html/issueJA03/...

http://www.nau.edu/library/speccoll/glen...