Echo Park

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Echo Park

Echo Park

We're looking back at Echo Park in Dinosaur National Monument. Steamboat Rock is on the left bank, Echo Park is the flat, open area ahead. If the Bureau of Reclamation had had its way, this would all be under 252 feet of water. Stopping this dam in 1956 was a major triumph of the environmental movement. We're on the Mitten Park Trail, unmarked on maps but not hard to find. It's a straightforward trail, but as this picture suggests, it uses rock ledges to move along the river, underneath a spectacular cliff. May 2011.
Arthur Digbee
on May 27, 2011 3:01 pm
Lat/Lon: 40.53233°N / 108.99133°W
Image Type(s): Hiking
Image ID: 718555

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Bob Sihler

Bob Sihler - May 27, 2011 3:57 pm - Voted 10/10

Not without cost...

I'm glad this place wasn't drowned, but if I recall correctly, Glen Canyon was part of the price. Few know or remember how many arches, slots, etc. were drowned, but I understand that it rivaled the best of Utah.

Arthur Digbee

Arthur Digbee - May 27, 2011 4:07 pm - Hasn't voted

Re: Not without cost...

More or less yes. It wasn't an explicit deal but a choice of strategy -- "we can defend the principle of no dams in a national park unit, but we can't fight a dam outside a national park."

Scenery aside, if they'd known the effects of the Glen Canyon Damn in terms of the Grand Canyon's hydrology, they probably could have made the case.

It's easy to second-guess the 1950s. And David Brower second-guessed himself the rest of his life.

But he gets credit for stopping *two* dams in Dinosaur; Split Mountain was the other.

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