Drowned river: the death & rebirth of Glen Canyon on the Colorado

Abstract

In 1963 the waters began rising behind Glen Canyon Dam and 170 miles of the Colorado River slowly disappeared. Environmentalists considered it a disaster and mourned Glen Canyon as gone forever. The Sierra Club joined forces with photographer Eliot Porter to document what would be lost under the dam's waters. But in an unexpected victory that speaks to the pervasive disaster of climate change, the reservoir is now declining and the Colorado River is coming back. Photographers Byron Wolfe (born 1967) and Mark Klett (born 1952), along with writer Rebecca Solnit (born 1961), spent five years exploring the place as expectations and possibilities changed, and the river reemerged at the upper end of the reservoir.

Contents

Introduction / Michael Brune -- Selected pages from The Place No One Knew / Eliot Porter -- Drowned River / Mark Klett, Rebecca Solnit & Bryon Wolfe.