Thanks Tim McDaniels for supplying this photo showing the service road bridge being placed as construction on Glen Canyon Dam nears completion in 1964. The back of the photo reads:
“Glen Canyon Unit: Girders for the right abutment service road bridge being lowered into place by the two 50-ton high lines.”
The concrete batch plant is still standing on the left side of the picture, but its days are numbered. Click on the photo and zoom in to see the details. These old black & white USBR photos have incredible resolution. Click the photo for a closer view.
Photo: A. E. Turner, USBR. Linda Farris and Petey Lloyd Dietz and a really big bucket. Photo courtesy of Petey Lloyd Dietz.
This photo of Petey Lloyd Dietz and Linda Farris is amazing and it’s one of my faves! The back of the photo reads:
“P-557-420-4905, Glen Canyon Dam. Petey Lloyd and Linda Farris demonstrate the procedure for releasing concrete from the giant 12-cubic-yard capacity concrete bucket. They show how Secretary of the Interior Fred A Seaton will pull the lanyard and trip the first bucket of concrete on June 17, 1960. 5/26/60, Bureau of Reclamation Photo by: A.E. Turner”
Petey told me, “P.S., Our father, Lewis H. Lloyd, was the (first) concrete superintendent on the dam from 1957 – 1963. Perhaps I had a little ‘in’ on being selected for this photo.” 🙂
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.
I have to admit to not remembering Page’s first water treatment plant being at the bottom of the canyon. When Gene LeGate gave me the first bunch of USBR photos for the blog and I saw these water treatment pics, I was dazed and confused because I could only remember the water treatment plant in town and those photos were completely different. After some research, I surmised that it sat downstream of the dam on the Page side of the canyon. Can’t fool me! What sealed it for me (sort of) was the first photo I’m sharing below that Tim McDaniels gave me that shows the road to it coming out of what must be one of the adits in the canyon wall that now serves as one of the ventilation tunnels for the tunnel that runs from the top of the canyon and to the lower spillway. If that’s incorrect, please let me know. I can take it. I’m still not 100% convinced because some of the background stuff in these pictures doesn’t look right. More on that as we move through them.
This first picture is a shot from above showing the layout of the area. This is the one Tim sent me that pretty much clinched the location. Notice the water line coming over the side of the canyon. That’s the line that brought water to the fledgling town of Page. It’s referenced in another picture below. Notice also the road disappearing into the canyon wall. The handwritten caption on the back reads, “J. Reinhold. 1st water treatment plant for Page.”
Photo: USBR Date: 5/14/63 Source: Tim McDaniels
Here’s another top down view from a different, closer angle. In this shot, the facility is still under construction. The rectangle building was an electrical switchgear and maybe a pump room. The handwritten back caption reads, “Water pumps and sedimentary tank on river below Page.”
Photo: A. E. Turner, USBR 12/16/1961 Source: The LeGate Family
Hey all, I’m taking a break from blogging for the month of December and I’ll pick back up again in January. I want to leave you with a Christmas picture of early Page. Check it out…
There isn’t anything written on the back of this picture except the name of the photographer and the date. I don’t know who that was dressed up as Santa. At first, I thought this was in the school gymnasium, which would have been new that year. But the more I look at it, I think it was somewhere else. That door in the background has a big window in it and the doors to the gym weren’t like that, at least not that I remember. I also thought at first that those were bleachers along the back wall, but I think it’s only a bench of some sort. Does anyone know what building this was in? There are two faces that I recognize, but I don’t have names to go with them.
How about you? Do you see any familiar faces in this shot? If so, let me know.
Enjoy your holidays and I will “see” you next year!
Photo: A. E. Turner, USBR Undated Source: The LeGate Family
This photo is undated, but I think it must be 1957ish. The handwritten caption on the back reads,
“In bottom of canyon upstream from bridge. Concrete form for diversion tunnel shown here. To the bottom left is tunnel (mile plus long) which will connect the power house to top of canyon wall and to Page.”
There are a couple of things that need pointed out on this photo. The writing I cited above mentions a diversion tunnel and a tunnel that goes to the top of the canyon wall. Those are two different things. The opening mentioned on the left of the picture is the bottom of the tunnel that runs from there to the top of the canyon and comes out behind the old Country Club an golf course. That tunnel is still in use. The lower opening to the tunnel that you see in this picture is now on the downstream side of the dam and comes out near the power house. The next time you’re there, look down and you’ll see it. It’s interesting that the back caption says this tunnel WILL connect the top to the bottom, as it was still under construction at the time of this photo.
The concrete form mentioned in the picture is the round object on the right. There were two diversion tunnels that re-directed the Colorado River water around the dam site during construction. In future posts, I’ll be sharing some pictures with you of construction inside those diversion tunnels, as well as the upper spillways which connected to the diversion tunnels.
Notice the roadway in the center of the bridge and the road protruding out from the canyon on the right side. The present-day visitor’s center is located on the right side of this picture by the road. Also notice the netting that hung off the bottom of the bridge to catch falling workers and material. The cables that spanned the canyon are clearly visible and it looks like there is another roadway support being set at the time of this photo. This view is long gone!
Photo: F. S. Finch, USBR 4/27/1957 Source: The LeGate Family The back of the photo reads, “Small tunnel in keyway. Used for what I don’t know.”
These are great shots of some unidentified workers in random tunnels in the rock around Glen Canyon Dam. The captions below the pictures tell you what was written or stamped on the back. I don’t know what these tunnels were used for, or if they’re still there. Enjoy!
Photo: A. E. Turner, USBR 1/30/1958 Source: The LeGate Family The back of this photo simply reads, “Tunnel in Keyway.”
Photo: A. E. Turner, USBR 9/10/1958 Source: The LeGate Family
The building of Glen Canyon Dam and Bridge wasn’t accomplished without great personal loss by some. I’m posting two photos this time because they are closely tied to one another. The handwritten caption on the back reads,
“Lower end of diversion tunnel and adit for powerhouse tunnel road. Right above the adit is where the man got killed Aug 11th. Rock ledge 200 feet above adit broke off. Small footbridge across river is at lower left.”
You can clearly see the lower opening to the powerhouse tunnel mentioned in the picture. It’s located at the base of the dam, next to the powerhouse. The lower footbridge mentioned in the caption and visible in the photo was at the approximate location of the powerhouse. My next post will be a better look at that lower footbridge. The powerhouse tunnel runs along the inside of the canyon wall from behind the old Country Club/golf course on top, to this point below. It’s still in use. The adits mentioned in the caption are the smaller horizontal tunnels that intersect the main tunnel at 90 degrees at regular intervals, primarily for ventilation. If you scroll back up to the picture, you’ll see the adit that is mentioned in the caption.
The photo was taken or cataloged one day short of a month following a fatality at this location that occurred on 8/11/1958. The photo caption mentions that a rock ledge broke off above the adit and killed a man. According to the memorial plaque below, the individual’s name was Austin Merritt. He joins 17 others who lost their lives in the Glen Canyon Dam project. All of them are listed here:
This memorial lists the names of the 18 individuals who lost their lives during the construction of Glen Canyon Dam and bridge. Source: Wmpearl (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
The above memorial plaque was created by WMPearl in 2011 and is posted on Wikimedia Commons. I don’t know where it physically resides. Click [HERE] to view the source website at Wikimedia.
In the early 1970’s, one of my friends told me that her father was killed during the building of the dam. His name is listed at the top of the middle column, Raymond D White.
UPDATE 5/24/17: Here’s a list of memorials of the names on the plaque compiled by Donna Bloxton Petersen. Thank you Donna for all the time and work you put into this!
Photo: A. E. Turner, USBR. Dated: 2/28/1964 Courtesy of the Legate family.
This picture is a real prize. There is no caption on the back, so I don’t know what event was going on that prompted this. Before we talk about the faces in it, let me set the location for you. This is in the intersection of South Navajo and 7th Avenue (Lake Powell Blvd). The Pink Sans is behind the camera and this view is toward the football field. The opening in the chain link fence to the right of the tree was the entrance to the football field. Do you see the stop sign on the right side? That’s South Navajo Drive. We had no traffic signals. Most corners had yield signs and some, like this one, had a stop sign. Do you see the (not-so-grand) grandstands near the center of the picture? The goal posts are also visible, the north one more so. To the left of the grandstands is the old snack bar and further to the left, you can see the scoreboard. It’s that rectangular black thing about 15 feet off the ground. I’ll have more to say about that in a different post.
Behind all of the football field stuff, you can see the old teacher’s apartments. These were along church row. This is also a good shot of LeChee Rock in the distance. Hmmmm, no power plant…
Now for the good stuff. Were you in this picture? Do you see yourself in this shot? If so, and you want to ‘fess up, please do. I need some help here. I looked for myself in it, but I can’t find myself (that sounds like a U2 song!). What was happening here? I suspect it was the beginnings of a parade, but that’s just a guess. Page was big on parades back then. This picture was taken from an elevated platform and the woman taking the other picture is on a different platform. Maybe they were parade floats. I don’t know.
Let’s look at some names. I’ve been able to identify a handful of the people in this. A few were my classmates, but I’m not sure where I was. Here’s what I have so far:
My half brother is the one in front between the two guys waving their hands.
Don Diamond
Larry Patterson
Jim Garber
Larry Sanderson
Theresa Kocjan
Marla Kocjan
Nancy Mayes (?)
Darryl Diamond
Larry Sanderson’s sister. I don’t remember her name for sure. Maybe Gini?
The woman with the camera may have been Mrs. Patterson.
There are several other faces that I recognize, but the names escape me.
If you were in this picture and/or can tell us what was going on that day, please leave a comment below.
A History of Glen Canyon Dam and Page Arizona 
