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Page is a town that came into existence with the building of the Glen Canyon Dam which created Lake Powell. In Page we parked at the Page-Lake Powell Campground.
Just east of Page, you will find Antelope Canyon on Navajo Nation Reservation land. Within Antelope Canyon there are a number of “slot canyons” which began as a small opening in the Navajo Sandstone where runoff from flash flooding worked its way through and in the process eroded the sandstone into the most beautiful forms. We toured the Upper Canyon, one of the most visited of the slot canyons, as well as Canyon-X, one of the less busy. Both of them offer jaw dropping colors and flowing rock formations. You can stand in one spot, turn and look in different directions and see a huge variety of shapes and textures.
When this location on the Colorado River was chosen as the site for the Glen Canyon Dam, a big concern was that it was a remote area with no locally available workforce. Workers began moving to the construction site during the mid- to late-1950’s. Initially, it was a haphazard collection of trailers that grew with the workforce. Plans for a company town to house the workers and their families resulted in the town of Page. The 710-foot high dam was built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation from 1956 to 1966. The dam formed Lake Powell, one of the largest man-made reservoirs in the United States with a capacity of 27 million acre feet.
A little further downstream from the dam on the Colorado River, you will find Horseshoe Bend. As you stand on the edge of the cliff wall, 1,000 feet above the river, you can view this very dramatic horseshoe-shaped meander.
Next stop: Prescott, AZ