Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Geology

Storm over Lake Powell | Photo by Gary Ladd

An extraordinarily beautiful river canyon lay where today’s Lake Powell shimmers. There was nothing else like it on earth with its isolation, twisting and mysterious side canyons, Indian ruins, and gentle, idyllic landforms. But, in the mid-1950s, the US Congress voted to utilize the canyon, not for its beauty and historic properties but its water-storage capacity as a reservoir site. A great deal of beauty and history was lost beneath Lake Powell but, it must be admitted, much remains beyond the reach of the lake even today, 50 years later.

Alcoves, natural bridges, arches, desert varnish, slot canyons—Glen Canyon’s list of interesting geologic phenomena is both intriguing and plentiful in the Lake Powell area. To set the stage for the region’s amazing landscape features let’s review the characteristics of the Colorado Plateau Geologic Province, a region of northern Arizona, southern Utah, and smaller parts of Colorado and New Mexico, about the size of France all together of which Glen Canyon and Lake Powell are a part.

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