The Beehive Then and Now

The Hive as it looked then….

The Beehive as it appeared in this 1950s photo, showing preliminary construction of Glen Canyon Dam and Bridge. This photo is undated.

The Hive as it looks now…

The Beehive as it appears today. The upper parking lot of the Visitor Center (on the far side of the Beehive) is where the rail-mounted crane towers were located. They were used to lower buckets of concrete into the canyon as well as moving equipment and personnel into and out of the canyon.

The early, undated photo of the Beehive at the top shows preliminary work underway for the Glen Canyon Bridge and Dam. I can’t tell if the east side has been cut away yet. The second picture is one I captured on Google Earth for comparison. I love putting together these then and now pics when I come across them. I’m close to brilliant! 🙂

Be sure to check out my Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/pageaz/

-Mike

Butler Buildings

Source: Lonnie Carl DeArmond via Donna Bloxton Petersen. Photo was originally a 35mm color slide. 1958-1959

Here’s a great shot of the Butler Buildings that housed Page Schools in the early years of the town. These sat on the rim where North and South Navajo Drives meet. A few of the pink transa homes are visible on the left side of the photo. The sidewalk and curb on the far side of the road haven’t been poured yet. Click on the image to open it in a new tab. You can see more detail that way. I have an aerial view of these buildings in another post called A Color Aerial View of Page. Does anyone remember what the black-sided building to the right of the Butler buildings was?

Children at Play

Photo: USBR, Date Unknown

Do you recognize anyone in these photos? Are you in any of these shots? I don’t remember who supplied me with the picture above. It’s uncategorized in my files. But each time I open it, my eyes are drawn to what appears to be a Chevy Suburban behind the bus. After I stare at that Suburban for a second, wishing it was parked in my garage, I realize there are other things in this picture, like children and a school bus. 🙂

I don’t know where this was taken exactly. Maybe in front of the old Butler buildings? There’s no road curbing or pavement yet, if that’s the case. I’m having trouble identifying the plateau on the left side of the picture behind the Chevy. Here’s another one….

Photo: USBR, 1957

This basketball rivalry took place at the Transa Homes along South Navajo Drive. Are you in this photo or do you recognize anyone in it? If you are or do, please leave a comment below. I’d like to hear the story. The paragraph below concerning the above photo was sent to me from Donna Bloxton Petersen:

Steven Clark “Steve” LeClaire, Page High School Class of 1962, as an 8th grader, December 14, 1957, behind his pink “Transit-Home” near the PHS “Butler Buildings” on South Navajo Drive in Page, Arizona, playing basketball with Howard ’62 & John ’64 Perkins & Paul ’62 & Mack ’63 Page. Steve’s back is to the camera. He is third from left, if you count the boy in front of him. (USBR photo). Steve lived in Kanab, Utah, part of 1957, where he attended first semester of 8th grade while his dad worked on the Glen Canyon Construction Site until their Transit-Home had arrived in Page with the others that made a long row along S. Navajo Drive.

Photo: USBR, undated

Based on the building at the end of the road on the right side of this photo, it looks like it was taken on or near D, E, or F-Street in the MCS Trailer Court. Do you remember those buildings along that road to the airport? They were barracks and a cafeteria for the Dam construction workers. The dirt road they sat along is called Aero Avenue today. Maybe it was called that then too, it’s all a blur at times. From the air, most of those buildings were H-shaped (not that spent a lot of time in the air or anything like that). Also, if you were in this photo or recognize someone in it, please leave a comment.

Enjoy!

Glen Canyon Dam Construction Site

Photo: A. E. Turner, USBR. Source: Terry Edwards

Here’s another aerial view of the Glen Canyon Dam construction site. This is looking upstream toward Wahweap creek. It’s a good look at the coffer dam, the early stages of the dam itself, and the power plant. The crane towers are visible on each side of the dam. If I remember right, there were two 25-ton towers and one 50-ton tower on either side. These crane towers moved back and forth along tracks. The road down to the visitor lookout site is visible on the right side of the canyon, coming off of US89. The oval shaped area was the parking lot and you can see the walking trail down to the lookout point. The footbridge is faintly visible in this photo too.

Lake Shore Drive, which was still dirt, is clearly visible. It was built and used for hauling gravel to the concrete batch plant at the dam site. Aggregate was trucked in to the batch plant from Wahweap Creek and dumped in an underground hopper at the base of the conveyor belt, visible in this picture near the end of the road. The aggregate was processed and conveyed to the concrete mixing plant seen in this picture on a large shelf cut out of the canyon wall. That concrete mixing plant was about twenty stories tall. The mixed concrete was dumped into a rail car that in turn, dumped the concrete into the buckets suspended by the cranes, for their trip to the topmost section of the growing dam. That’s the abbreviated story of the process. I always wanted to go inside that mixing plant but I never got the chance. Click on the image to enlarge it. Download it and check out the detail.

Enjoy!

It’s a Dam Site

Glen Canyon Dam Construction, 1962 or 63. Source unknown.

There’s a lot of good detail in this photo.It’s a good look at both spillways and the temporary coffer dam at the bottom of the picture. The concrete batch plant is visible on the canyon edge to the right. Water is visible exiting the right diversion tunnel, but not the left. The left diversion tunnel inlet was about 33 feet higher than the right tunnel inlet and was intended to be used only during high river flows. The parking lot for the lookout point is visible on the left, just above the bridge. The rectangular building along the highway on the left side of the bridge was the original visitor’s center. It was later moved into town and became the LARC center. I don’t remember what that acronym means. The rail-mounted cranes are visible on either side of the canyon. There were two 25-ton cranes and one 50-ton crane on each side. In addition to transporting buckets of concrete to the dam, these cranes were used to transport people and equipment in and out of the dam site. Near the bottom right corner of the picture, you can see the tower structure holding the footbridge, and the footbridge is visible too. The dark area by that tower, that curves around the sandstone knoll, was the road/parking lot for the footbridge. You can still see the remnants of that road on Google Earth. Go take a look.

 

Enjoy!

Mike