Defending Environmentalists’ Punching Bag: Lake Powell

Abstract

In 1963, Glen Canyon Dam began impounding the Colorado River’s water. The rising water would eventually form Lake Powell, named after Civil War hero Major John Wesley Powell who first mapped the region in 1869. Today, Lake Powell is the second largest man-made reservoir in the United States. The lake’s finger-like nature gives it nearly two thousand miles of shoreline, more than the entire west coast of the United States. The ample shoreline, combined with stunning red rock formations, fishing, hiking, and plenty of water sports, attracts roughly two million people to Lake Powell every year. While many consider Lake Powell to be a premier vacation destination, some consider it to be the most humiliating failure of the environmental lobby. Former Sierra Club Executive Director David Brower claimed that his inability to block Glen Canyon Dam’s construction was his life’s greatest failure and tragedy. In 1975, eco-novelist Edward Abbey published his inflammatory work, The Monkey Wrench Gang. The novel’s protagonists consider blowing up Glen Canyon Dam to be the ultimate victory for the environmental community. Inspired by the story, the eco-activist group Earth First! invited Abbey to witness the unfurling of a giant, fake crack down the dam’s face in 1981. In 2007, Gary Hansen wrote Wet Desert, a fictional work in which Glen Canyon Dam is successfully sabotaged and destroyed by a rogue environmentalist.