Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography

Book Description

One of the most photographed subjects on earth, Grand Canyon continues to inspire awe, admiration, and frustration for those who attempt to capture its majesty with a camera. Reaching back 125 years into the photographic record of the Canyon, this book artfully explores the experiences of the earliest photographers and today's most exceptional artists.

Accomplished writer and Ansel Adams Award-winning photographer Stephen Trimble deftly navigates the stories of the Canyon's photographic history and takes us down the river and along the rim with the next generation of photographers and their photographs. Also included are twenty-one essays by the finest contemporary photographers recounting their experiences at Grand Canyon, along with fascinating details of changing equipment and a timeline of important moments in the Canyon's photographic record.

Customer Reviews:

Not what I thought.......2007-09-13

I bought this as a present for my wife. We had just returned from a trip that included a visit to the Grand Canyon, and I wanted to get her a memento of the visit. This book sounded good, but was not the one that included the beautiful vistas that we wanted. There are some photos too dark to really discern why they are included. There are some photos of a boat on the bank of the river. That could be from anywhere.
Although I suppose others may find it interesting, we didn't want a book of prose, we just wanted amazing photos. This was not that book.

The finest Grand Canyon book at the lowest price...........2007-02-15

This book is so awesome, and of such high quality, that its Amazon price seems surreal...I have two copies and am ordering a third, for posterity or whatever.

Intensely beautiful photographic prints, at the very leading edge of Canyon photos....almost beyond description!

If you buy one copy of this book, you'll then want another for a gift, and another for your own collection.....etc.

off the charts superb stunning startling good heavens.......2006-11-03

Yes, you would expect truly astounding photography here, and you get exactly that, in lots of different flavors too, but the stories are deft and revealing -- far more than in a book of photos alone of a place that you couldn't take a bad photo if you tried. Trimble himself is a master craftsman with the camera, but his service here is to gather some really remarkable work and voices into a tome that anyone who has gaped and prayed there will want to paw through before you get major brownie points for giving it to someone else. Terrific work.

Review by Jennifer Owings Dewey, author/illustrator.......2006-09-28

Lasting Light is a treasure, a compilation of photographs taken of the Crand Ganyon over a broad stretch of time. The viewer/reader may gain a sense of history, passing from the old to the new. The book is an experience in images of the vast wonder of the Canyon and the smallest, most discreet detail. Because the text is direct and not-technical, anyone interested in what is grand and lit by extraordinary light, the Grand Canyon itself, will find this work a delight.

A superb choice as a Memorial Fund acquisition for any library system.......2006-07-10

Lasting Light: 125 Years Of Grand Canyon Photography by award-winning author and photographer Stephen Trimble is a visual celebration and documentation of the beauty and grandeur of one of the most photographed subjects on earth -- the Grand Canyon. Comprised of the best of 125 years of great photographs beginning with the pioneering glass plate negatives of the 19th century to the digital images of the 21st century, Lasting Light produces spectacular visuals enhanced with an accompanying text of fascinating details regarding the advances of photography, stories of various individual photographers, and the relationship between the photographers and the unique American icon that is the Grand Canyon. As a coffetable art book, Lasting Light is a simply wonderful contribution to any personal, academic, or community library photography reference collection and would make a superb choice as a Memorial Fund acquisition for any library system.

Hiking Grand Staircase-Escalante and the Glen Canyon Region

Average customer rating:

Maps need improvement, but book is fine
Needs better maps

Hiking Grand Staircase-Escalante and the Glen Canyon Region
Ron Adkison
Manufacturer: Falcon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1560446455

Book Description

The Glen Canyon region of southern Utah is a desert paradise of mesas, buttes, slickrock canyons, and boundless solitude. Much of the region is roadless, and the best way to explore this wilderness is to hike it. In Hiking Grand Staircase-Escalante and the Glen Canyon Region, you will find 59 detailed hike descriptions covering hundreds of miles of trails and canyoneering routes in this vast region. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Grand Gulch, Dark Canyon, Natural Bridges National Monument, and Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness are all included. This book provides detailed maps and tips on desert safety, coping with heat and dehydration, backcountry travel, driving remote desert roads, trailhead access and services. Whether you're a casual day hiker or a seasoned trekker, use Hiking Grand Staircase-Escalante and the Glen Canyon Region to lead you on a journey through the incredible beauty of this landscape.

Customer Reviews:

Maps need improvement, but book is fine.......2007-10-14

We used Hiking Grand Staircase-Escalante and the Glen Canyon Region for several hikes this summer and, despite some shortcomings, I would recommend it.
The trail descriptions are pretty realistic and give a good idea of what to expect on the hike. Based on these descriptions we picked our hikes and were never disappointed. The book describes the general character of the terrain, what you can expect to see, how difficult the hike is likely to be, etc., followed by a decent trail description.
Where the book needs improvement are the maps. The maps are OK to get a general idea, but NOT A SUBSTITUTE for proper planning of your trip. First they are a bit simplified (which is OK), second they are sometimes wrong (which can get you into trouble). The map for the Boulder Mail Trail, for example, has an incorrect scale bar which makes the hike appear much shorter than it really is (the text gives the correct information).
However, using this book as the sole information for your hike is not the smartest thing to begin with. In combination with the deLorme (or Benchmark) Utah Atlas and Gazetteer and a series of large scale topographic maps (USGS, Trails Illustrated) we never had any issues finding the trailhead or loosing the trail. So, consider this and similar books as a source of ideas, but do your homework, get the right maps etc. and you'll be fine.

Needs better maps.......2005-06-27

On trying to follow the guide to one of the hikes, the Yellow Rock/Box of Paria River, we were fortunate to meet a BLM ranger as we were about to set out. It became clear that we weren't where we thought we were, and had we continued on, would have entered a confusing and unmarked maze of canyons instead of the entrance to the Box. This is the fault of this book - the maps are poorly labeled and confusing, and the directions (which usually start out by referring you back to some other hike, a poor strategy for a guide book) were, in this instance, just plain wrong, giving incorrect mileage to the point where we should have been. The two locator maps at the front of the book are especially bad, the first oriented perpendicular to the other covering the east part of the region, the second one showing the western part. They should be combined into one map across both pages, show the monument and park boundaries and have some kind of legend, along with better labels.
What we ended up using as a reference for the rest of the trip, on which we did four hikes, was, in fact, a place mat from a breakfast place in Escalante, which turned out to be much better organized, concise and accurate. On the front is an easy-to-understand map, clearly labeled, and on the back are brief descriptions of the principal backroads and the hikes along each one. This handy little sheet is actually easily found in most businesses in the area, for free.
Of course, a restaurant placemat doesn't give the level of detail contained in Mr. Adkison's book, which has several useful features, including good categorical summaries for each hike such as elevation gain and loss (including a line graph depicting this), difficulty ratings, hiking time, etc. It was inaccurate in one of those categories for the Yellow Rock hike, stating that no permit was required; the ranger corrected us on this count as well.
If this book were reorganized in the same manner as the place mat, with the good map of the back roads - there are several key ones: The Burr Trail, Hell's Backbone, and Cottonwood Canyon - and then listed the hikes attainable from each one, then it would be a lot more useful.

Average customer rating:

An updated, serious Monkeywrench Gang
Hannon's Gang Takes Up Where Abbey's Left Off
Silently, the canyon waits ...
An inspirational, informative, and fun book.
Buy it. Read it. Spread the word. RESTORE GLEN CANYON!

Glen Canyon
Steven M. Hannon
Manufacturer: Kokopelli Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0965512509

Book Description

Background: In the opening pages of his widely popular novel, Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey as much as promised that he would write a story about freeing Glen Canyon on the Colorado River. Since publication of the story in 1975, and several hundred thousand copies later, a unanimity of environmentalists, thousands of Colorado River rafters, riverine ecologists, the Sierra Club, the Glen Canyon Institute, and even the U.S. Park Service have called for the removal of Glen Canyon Dam-to liberate 186 miles of Glen, Narrow, and Cataract Canyons and to restore the river as it flows through Grand Canyon National Park below the dam. But as Mr. Abbey suggested, both in his novel and earlier in his Desert Solitaire, perhaps it will fall to a few dedicated citizens to actually do the job. Now, at least in fantasy, the within story may serve to salve the long-festering wound that an older generation of environmentalists, the author included, still suffers because of the Glen Canyon tragedy. The story. Getting rid of Powell Reservoir requires far more than what is involved in disabling a bulldozer or re-routing the Peabody Coal Co. train. Glen Canyon Dam has a mass of over nine million tons; and when the reservoir is full, 27 million acre feet of water are impounded: enough to cover 2.7 million football fields ten feet deep. Glen Canyon's protagonists try to find some way to drain the reservoir without catastrophically rupturing the dam. They find a way, but things do not go as planned.

Former Senator Sam Nunn, who before his retirement was probably the most respected man in government on the subject of national defense, has recently stated that the single biggest risk to our national security is the continued existence of the thousands of tactical nuclear weapons in the former Soviet arsenal, many of them located in or near an area of the world where racial and religious tensions are dangerously enflamed. On a recent edition of "Sixty Minutes" (September 7, 1997), Russian General Alexander Lebed, President Yeltsin's former national security advisor, revealed that over 100 atomic demolition munitions are missing from the arsenal. Glen Canyon takes this very real situation and expands upon it.

In the wake of Oklahoma City, Glen Canyon takes a close look at why persons could get so frustrated with the corruption in our federal government and the public's nearly total exclusion from the decision making in Washington that they might actually do the unthinkable. And such action might not be confined to back woods militia zealots. With the remaining precious natural places on our earth still being sacrificed for the greed and short term profit of the very few, even "normal" people can be driven to act.

In 1983 Nature came close to removing the dam Herself by means of a late spring flood when the reservoir was full. A great deal of misinformation exists in the public mind about what actually happened at the dam and just how close the Bureau of Reclamation came to losing one of its flagship plumbing jobs. Extensive research at the Bureau's headquarters in Denver, including interviews with the involved engineers, resulted in the book's clear description of just what happened and how the damage was repaired. Glen Canyon includes a collection of previously unpublished Bureau of Reclamation photographs that document the near disaster.

Following the 1983 event, the Bureau belatedly commissioned a study to determine just how large a flood actually could occur in the 108,000-square-mile Upper Basin of the Colorado River. In its 1990 report, Morrison-Knudsen Engineers determined that a massive flood would occur if an Eastern Pacific tropical cyclone came ashore and penetrated into the intermountain region, assisted by the presence of a 500 millibar low in the Colorado River's Upper Basin, an event that regularly occurs. With the largest El Nio event on record now occurring in the Eastern Pacific, recent Hurricane Linda, which at one point carried winds of 225 mph, demonstrated that the Morrison Knudsen projection is certainly not far fetched. Glen Canyon takes the next step from what Nature actually demonstrated in 1997.

Book sale proceeds: The publisher will donate a portion of the net proceeds from the sales of this book to the effort to overcome the Utah congressional delegation's campaign to sell off the last unsullied area in the contiguous United States. The only way to protect this area in Southern Utah is through the creation of the proposed 5.7 million acre Redrocks Wilderness.

Included photographs: The photographs of predambrian Glen Canyon are from the collection of Mr. E. Tad Nichols of Tucson. They have remained unpublished until now, as have most of the photographs that the author extracted from the archives of the Bureau of Reclamation in Boulder (NV), Salt Lake, Page, and Denver.

Although Glen Canyon and its river-the Pisisvayu of the Hisatsinom (Kayenta Anasazi)-have been lost for the time being, the author's catharsis in writing this story may be shared by others who have waited for a satisfying ending to Cactus Ed's fantasy that began in 1975. Who knows? With sufficient public input, the Bureau of Reclamation may yet remove Glen Canyon Dam. A small group in the Bureau's Denver headquarters has actually been studying such things since an Interior Secretary a number of years ago suggested that San Francisco's reservoir in Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley should be removed. And as a result of the back-fired Congressional hearing conducted by Rep. Jim Hansen (R+, UT) in September 1997 on the Sierra Club proposal to breach Glen Canyon Dam, a whole lot more people are now aware of the reasons why 186 miles of Glen Canyon as well as the 240 miles of river below the dam through Grand Canyon National Park should be restored.

Customer Reviews:

An updated, serious Monkeywrench Gang.......2000-04-27

I bought the book the day it showed up at the store. Fantastically well researched on the technical side. (nearly a Clancy novel in it's technical detail) The novelist is obviously still new at his craft as some of the writing seems a bit strained, but the story and plot are exceptionally well thought out as well as supported by all the technical detail. I not only will read it again, I've already passed it on to several friends with a strong recommendation to read it. Glen Canyon deserves to be brought back to life and Lake Foul drained... hopefully by non-nuclear means... Read it.

Hannon's Gang Takes Up Where Abbey's Left Off.......2000-04-08

If you enjoyed Edward Abbey's great novel The Monkey Wrench Gang you will be greatly rewarded by reading this Fat Masterpiece. Wow! This novel is extremely rich in detail about Glen Canyon's history - long before The Dam, as well as about the construction of the dam itself. And in the mix is a first-rate thriller of a novel with inspiring characters, suspense, and a wholly-satisfying ending. I can only hope and pray the author is a prophet!

Silently, the canyon waits ..........1999-07-23

If you've ever experienced the pain of not being able to travel somewhere you desperately wanted to go, then "Glen Canyon" is for you. Steven Hannon has crafted a work that would make James Michener a fan. By drawing on his own life experience and education, he is able to draw us into the lives of three friends who once traveled through the magnificent Glen Canyon, an experience which changed their lives. They devise a plan to restore the canyon to the state Nature intended, and are confronted with problems of varying degrees along their route. The real beauty of this book is that, in Michenerian style, it educates the reader as to how the unlikely folly of Glen Canyon Dam became reality, how easily different forces could undue it, and some amazingly technical science that would be a spoiler to explain. Also, this book is a must for anyone who has ever spent time on the water under sail.

An inspirational, informative, and fun book........1998-08-24

It's many pages seemed imposing, but once I got started I was hooked. The inundation of Glen Canyon was a tragedy, but the Colorado River waits. And I await the return of Glen Canyon.

Buy it. Read it. Spread the word. RESTORE GLEN CANYON!.......1998-04-06

Glen Canyon by Steven Hannon is an intricately woven novel surrounding the conviction that the free flow of the Colorado River should be restored through exquisite Glen Canyon, which now languishes under Powell Reservoir behind the Glen Canyon Dam. The narrative's detail reflects exhaustive research concerning the building and structural integrity of the Dam. Keeping with his ideology of environmental concern, the book is printed on 100% recycled fiber, acid and chlorine free. This is a GREAT book!

The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado (25th Anniversary Commemorative Edition)

Average customer rating:

Death of a Canyon
Historically valuable, photographically bland
A visual rhapsody
A heartbreakingly beautiful book
Oversized Paperback Rivals Original Sierra Club Hardback

The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado (25th Anniversary Commemorative Edition)
Eliot Porter , and David Ross Brower
Manufacturer: Gibbs Smith
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 087905249X

Book Description

Glen Canyon, now Lake Powell, is rediscovered through wonderful color images by Eliott Porter.

Customer Reviews:

Death of a Canyon.......2007-06-10

This not a book about photography and should not be purchased just for the "pictures". It is literally a memorial to the death of Glen Canyon. It is a reminder of our obligation to stay informed.

Glen Canyon Dam should never have been built and would never be built today. The American people would never stand for it. Ironically and sadly, it was the loss of Glen Canyon that inspired many to say, "Never again." When the Bureau of Reclamation attempted to follow Glen Canyon Dam with a series of dams down stream in the Grand Canyon, the agency met a solid wall of opposition. In ways, the river still flows free through the Grand Canyon because of the sacrifice that was made with Glen Canyon.

Even former staunch proponents of Glen Canyon Dam lived to regret their support. As late as 1974, Senator Barry Goldwater still felt the dam was an improvement over the untamed river. But by the mid-80s, he felt otherwise. In one interview, in fact, Goldwater lamented that if he could change just one Senate vote he'd cast in 30 years, it would have been his vote to approve construction of Glen Canyon Dam.

Sad.

Historically valuable, photographically bland.......2005-09-30

"The Place No One Knew" is the famous book that comes up anytime someone mentions the submersion of Glen Canyon. It was the Sierra Club's--and the environmental movement in general's--first major statement on the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, the flooding of Glen Canyon, and the filling of Lake Powell.
The book is a companion, or I should say the polar opposite, of "Lake Powell: Jewel of the Colorado," a book by Floyd Dominy, then Commisioner of the dam-building Bureau of Reclamation.
Both books are basically propaganda, though for seperate sides of the same issue; both feature scenic photos of a place, praising text, and pertinent quotes.
Glen Canyon was referred as to "the place no one knew" because its lack of national park status (and protection) was a major factor in its being inundated by the trapped water of the Colorado River. In actuality, a lot of people knew it--just not many with the Sierra Club. In fact, more people rafted through Glen Canyon a year than did through the Grand Canyon. C. Gregory Crampton wrote ten books about Glen Canyon before its demise, and liked to joke that THIS book should have been called "The Place the Sierra Club Didn't Know."
Which would have been more correct.
All that said, this book is a valuable historical document--for its role in the Glen Canyon controversy, and for its role in this century's environmental movement.
But it's not that good of a book. The photos are below average: many have a grainy, low quality-feel to them, and most of them are of very small things, and fail to give the true scope and grandeur of what Glen Canyon was. They are not Eliot Porter's best work, and some of the photos aren't even of Glen Canyon, but of other red rock from other places in Utah. (That's true, believe it or not, and it's well-documented.)
The quotes that accompany the photos are all right, but they're not amazing, they won't make you jump up.
A far, far better book featuring photos of Glen Canyon is Eleanor Inskip's "The Colorado River Through Glen Canyon: Before Lake Powell." Check it out.
And a far, far better collection of Eiliot Porter's is "Eliot Porter's Southwest." It's full of gorgeous black and white images from all over the Interior West.

A visual rhapsody.......2003-06-06

I got a copy of Eliot Porter's Glen Canyon book after reading Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire," a chapter of which is devoted to a downriver rafting trip along this stretch of the Colorado River just before the dam was built. While Abbey's descriptions are vivid, I wanted to see with my own eyes what he was describing. And Porter's camera is the closest you can get to doing that today.

His pictures are, of course, not the real thing, but they are about as breathtaking as photography can be. The colors, textures, reflections, and the play of light and shadow are wonderful, and each photograph is distinctly different. His own description of the canyon's display of color and light in the introductory essay "The Living Canyon" give an instructive insight into the eye of the photographer. His awareness of what he is looking at and his ways of choosing to look help the reader to see even more in the 80 photographs that follow.

While some of the photographs capture the monumental scale of the canyon walls and formations, many focus on the myriad surfaces that are revealed to the eye: erosion patterns, lichen, rippling water flow, the dark streaking mineral stains extending from seeps, the rough texture of weathered sandstone in glancing sunlight, smooth river stones, the layered stripes of exposed sediment, the trickling spread of water falling from overhead springs, the hanging tapestry coloration of the walls, whorled and striated rock, dry sand. There are also photographs of plants: moonflower, maidenhair fern, willow, tamarisk, redbud, columbine, cane. Above all, there is the rich array of colors, capturing a great variety of moods and attitudes.

Porter was recognized for his photography of birds, and while there are no birds visible in these photographs, his introductory essay makes mention of them, and when looked at with that awareness, many of the pictures also seem to capture a sense of "air space" for flight. Before turning to photography, Porter was a Harvard professor of biochemistry and bacteriology, and it's interesting to see the somewhat dispassionate eye of the scientist in the way he uses the camera. While the story of Glen Canyon may induce sorrow or anger, the photographs are strong for their lack of sentimentality.

The pictures also excite a curiosity about the geology of the river, and the book concludes with a short essay describing how the canyon walls reveal the geological ages that have gone into forming this part of the earth, going back millions of years. The book also includes a catalog of all the plants and animals that inhabited Glen Canyon before its inundation. Altogether, with its quotes from other writers, including Loren Eiseley, Joseph Wood Krutch, Wallace Stegner, and members of John Wesley Powell's expedition in the 19th century, this book is a fitting record of a great lost national treasure.

A heartbreakingly beautiful book.......2002-11-13

These photographs are just about all that is left of Glen Canyon. After the Sierra Club and other environmentalists had lost the battle to prevent the Glen Canyon River Dam from being built, Eliot Porter took this extraordinary series of photographs to memorialize the gorgeous area that has been lost forever. Few people at the time knew much about the Canyon. It was too remote, too difficult to get to. Although it was one of the areas that John Wesley Powell found most beautiful in his first expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers, no access roads or paths were ever built to make it possible for many people to view the areas firsthand. As a result, very few people knew precisely what we were about to lose.

The tragedy is that these areas are really, truly are gone. Even if the Glen Canyon River Dam were magically removed, many of the areas viewed in these gorgeous photographs have already been silted up. The Green and Colorado Rivers carry extreme quantities of minerals, and when the dam stops the flow to form a reservoir, they tend to drop to the bottom. All dams have a limited life. They don't last for as long as one might imagine. Basically, they create a new landmass behind them over the course of a century or so. Many of the spots photographed in these pictures are now solid earth.

One would hope that such beautiful photographs as these, photos that create tremendous longing for what we have already lost, would make us more concerned to preserve what is left. But with the current presidency even today as I write this review opening the national parks to snowmobiles and with people speculating that there will be new attempts to open arctic areas in Alaska to oil exploration, we can't assume that in the least. These photographs may end up being emblematic of all endangered areas, of the ongoing fragility of all of nature.

Oversized Paperback Rivals Original Sierra Club Hardback.......2000-08-13

I was expecting a reprint similar to the small-sized Ballantine issue of the late 1960s. I was surprised to receive a book almost as large as the original Sierra Club hardback! The color in several of the photographs is even better than in the original (and difficult to find/very expensive) book, thanks in part to the cooperation of the museum which received Porter's works as a bequest.

Best Easy Day Hikes Grand Staircase/Escalante & the Glen Canyon Region

Average customer rating:

Good for ideas, but not as a true "guide" book
Excellent for What it Covers
The Grand Escalante

Best Easy Day Hikes Grand Staircase/Escalante & the Glen Canyon Region
Ron Adkison
Manufacturer: Falcon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1560446501

Book Description

Hikes varying from half-hour strolls to full-day adventures, this guidebook is for everyone, including families.

Customer Reviews:

Good for ideas, but not as a true "guide" book.......2007-02-13

This book is divided into three sections; Cedar Mesa in SW Utah, The Escalante Canyon and Grand Staircase-Paria Canyon. The Escalante-Grand Staircase hikes range in length and difficultly. Included are the following hikes:
Upper calf Creek Falls -2m
Lower Calf Creek Falls-6.2m
Devils Garden-.07m
Fortymile Ridge to Sunset Arch-3m
Willow Gulch to Broken Bow Arrow-4m
Kodachrome Basin's Panorama Trail-2.9-5.4m
Cottonwood Canyon Narrows-3m
Willis Creek Narrows-4.8m
Lick Wash-8m
Wire Pass to Buckskin Gulch-3.4m
and 9 hikes in the SW area of Utah

This book might be good for getting ideas on where to hike, but some of the information contained in it is not accurate, or lacks sufficient detail. For example, the author fails to mention that a permit to hike Wire pass to Buckskin Gulch must usually be obtained 3 months ahead of time. Also, the directions to Sunset Arch are different than any other guide book. (?) He also fails in giving accurate campground information. There are many more camping opportunities than what he mentions. I would advise consulting other guide books before setting off on any of the hikes and would not use this book for trip planning.

Excellent for What it Covers.......2005-01-20

This is a streamlined version of Adkison's lengthier book about the national monument, but is perfect for the short hikes in this beautiful region. It has everything a pocket guidebook should have: clear descriptions, mileage, elevations, maps, and ratings. This is my favorite guidebook for the Grand Staircase whenever I do short hikes.

The Grand Escalante.......2000-07-13

Look interesting and informative for people who are planning to go to Escalante soon. Good resource. I saw Bryce and Zion Parks on my first trip to Utah- can't wait to go back The escalante looked so beautiful even though I only saw part of it on the way to Capitol Reef National Park

Glen Canyon Dammed: Inventing Lake Powell and the Canyon Country

Average customer rating:

The best book written about Glen Canyon and Lake Powell.
one of the best nature essay offerings this year
Two sides to every story

Glen Canyon Dammed: Inventing Lake Powell and the Canyon Country
Jared Farmer
Manufacturer: University of Arizona Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0816518874

Book Description

Growth is a major issue in the contemporary American West, especially as more and more towns and states turn to tourism to spark their economies. But growth has a flip sideÂ—lossÂ—about which we seldom think until something is irrevocably gone. Where once was Glen Canyon, with its maze of side-canyons leading to the Colorado River, now is Lake Powell, second largest reservoir in America, attracting some three million visitors a year. Many who come here think they have found paradise, and for good reason: it's beautiful. However, the loss of Glen Canyon was monumentalÂ—to many, a notorious event that remains unresolved. Focusing on the saddening, maddening example of Glen Canyon, Jared Farmer traces the history of exploration and development in the Four Corners region, discusses the role of tourism in changing the face of the West, and shows how the "invention" of Lake Powell has served multiple needs. He also seeks to identify the point at which change becomes loss: How do people deal with losing places they love? How are we to remember or restore lost places? By presenting Glen Canyon as a historical case study in exploitation, Farmer offers a cautionary tale for the future of this spectacular region. In assessing the necessity and impact of tourism, he questions whether merely visiting such places is really good for people's relationships with each other and with the land, suggesting a new ethic whereby westerners learn to value what remains of their environment. Glen Canyon Dammed was written so that the canyon country's perennial visitors might better understand the history of the region, its legacy of change, and their complicity in both. A sobering book that recalls lost beauty, it also speaks eloquently for the beauty that may still be saved.

Customer Reviews:

The best book written about Glen Canyon and Lake Powell........2005-09-27

"Glen Canyon Dammed," to me, is about as good as nonfiction books get. It's got great characters, a historic story, fascinating information, and an author that feels completely trustworthy. The book is one of the fairest, most objective books out there on the subject of Glen Canyon and Lake Powell. It realizes that Glen Canyon was someplace wonderful, and that Lake Powell may be as well. It questions the very subjective idea of wilderness, deftly examines a very difficult topic, and challenges the cliches that often accompany any discussions of this matter.
Jared Farmer has written a book for those on both sides of this issue, though I've no doubt the author has a decisive opinion of his own. He presents old facts with new information, and shapes a perception of the area and of the issue that's both insightful and unique.
I recommend this book to anyone looking for a good read about this issue, about the West, or about the environment. No one should be allowed to gripe against either side of this contorversy without having read this book first.

one of the best nature essay offerings this year.......2000-11-29

Biases first: I'm a rabid "drain the lake"er.

Still, one's arguments can only benefit from an effective challenge, and Farmer provides this in spades. An impassioned environmentalist, Farmer nonetheless points out that artificial environments are pretty much what we live in, and that if we look only to "untrammeled wilderness" as the source of our connection with nature, we're likely to run out of that wilderness in short order.

This book is an effective history of Glen Canyon, but it's also a critical analysis of wilderness tourism in the whole of Southern Utah, and a cogent deconstruction of our attitudes toward built versus natural landscapes. And unlike many such tomes (Stephen Pyne's valuable if turgid How the Canyon Became Grand comes to mind) Farmer writes his critique in a personable, approachable voice. It's rare to see a capable writer approach such a multifaceted subject without fear of using the first person singular pronoun. Eminently readable.

Two sides to every story.......2000-03-21

This book is well written and enjoyable. It presents the case from those that wish to drain Lake Powell but is does so quite fairly and does give decent coverage to the pros of Lake Powell and and the access and beauty created by the massive Glen Canyon Dam.

Perhaps Mr Farmer angered more than he pleased but that usually shows that he is not completely one one side or the other.

A worthwhile read.

Average customer rating:
Guide Map to Lake Powell and Glen Canyon

Manufacturer: North Star Mapping
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Map
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Boater's Guide to Lake Powell: Featuring Hiking, Camping, Geology, History and Archaeology (4th Edition)

ASIN: 0942927494

Product Description

Includes Wahweap, Bullfrog, Halls Crossing, and Stateline Marinas, plus Page and Lee's Ferry.

Glen Canyon Revisited: Anthropological Papers Number 119 (Anthropological Papers)

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Glen Canyon Revisited: Anthropological Papers Number 119 (Anthropological Papers)
Phil Geib
Manufacturer: University of Utah Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0874805201

Lake Powell: A Photographic Essay of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

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Beauty and Awe
Not enough photos of Gary Ladd...but the photos of Lake Powell are GREAT.

Lake Powell: A Photographic Essay of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

Manufacturer: Companion Press (Santa Barbara, CA)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0944197299

Customer Reviews:

Beauty and Awe.......2007-09-01

Many controversies surround the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell related to environmental concerns and I share some of these. Nevertheless Gary Ladds book is a brilliant photoessay which proves that out of bad policy decisions great beauty may serendipitously arise. I have travelled and photographed these regions for more than 20 years and these pictures are so beautiful and vivid, providing at times panoramic and at times intimate views of this beautiful canyon country, that my breath is taken away.

Not enough photos of Gary Ladd...but the photos of Lake Powell are GREAT........2005-10-02

For many people, the name Lake Powell conjures up images of a blue lake among red rock--of boating over a sprawling, azure sheen of unbroken water, beneath high, vermilion sandstone walls. It calls to mind shorelines lined with tamarisks and cottonwoods, bays mottled with preening mergansers and watchful egrets, water caves full of reflected light, and sunsets mirrored by a shining, landlocked ocean.
For others, the name alone is enough to make them start shaking in anger and sadness. For those, Lake Powell is not a lake at all. It's a misbegotten reservoir. It's a crime. It's all that lies between them and the legendary, long lost Glen Canyon-a stretch of the Colorado River so inviting, so overwhelming, and so full of secrets, it's often been called the Grand Canyon's lovelier sibling.
Unlike Cataract Canyon upstream, and the Grand Canyon downstream, Glen Canyon was a tranquil place with currents friendly enough for even the most boyish of Boy Scouts and the oldest of old ladies. Edward Abbey considered it the heart of the canyon lands. The residents of White Canyon, Utah--a town since submerged by Lake Powell--considered it home. The Bureau of Reclamation just considered it a good place to build a dam.
That dam, Glen Canyon Dam, was built in the early-1960s, to create a reservoir in which to store the water of the Colorado River for the states that needed it, to use the river's water to turn turbines and generate lucrative electricity, to control the Colorado River's seasonal flooding, to bring visiting boaters and their money in from all around the world, and to stop water-borne silt and sediment from clogging Lake Mead, an even larger reservoir downstream. The 710-foot-tall Glen Canyon Dam blocked the path of the Colorado River, the trapped river backed up behind the dam, and everywhere the water could go, it did. It covered multiple rivers, created bays, filled Glen Canyon and side canyons and coves, drowned beavers and snakes and trees, and turned buttes and spires into islands. It changed an almost two hundred-mile-long stretch of the Colorado River into Lake Powell, into a deep, manmade lake with about 1,960 miles of ragged, convoluted shoreline-a shoreline longer than America's West Coast.
And then, then there was Gary Ladd.
Gary Ladd knew Glen Canyon, and initially hated Lake Powell for inundating it. But then over time, he realized Lake Powell had a very real beauty, a beauty all its own, regardless of its origins, and he started to take pictures of it.
And his pictures were gorgeous.
And here they are.
Right here in this book.
Buy this book, and dive into the colors and textures that Gary Ladd manages to capture on film: the blues and the reds, the sugar cookie textures of sandstone, and the shocks of color-filled flowers that burst like life itself up from acres of barren rock.
Buy it, set it on your coffee table, and watch the discussions begin.

The Colorado River Through Glen Canyon: Before Lake Powell

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A Photographic Punch in the Gut
A moving documentation of Glen Canyon before Lake Powell.
Moving, well-researched visual & spitual history

The Colorado River Through Glen Canyon: Before Lake Powell

Manufacturer: Treasure Chest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0964807807

Book Description

Historic Photo Journal, 1872 to 1964 of Glen Canyon of the Colorado River, Utah and Arizona. This beautiful canyon was drowned by the building of Glen Canyon Dam, January, 1963. This book takes us back in time to visit the canyon as if we were on the river with photos and quotations from more than 50 different contributors. It also includes a map of Lake Powell Reservoir marked as a guide for today's visitors to compare Lake Powell of today with the Glen Canyon of yesterday.

Customer Reviews:

A Photographic Punch in the Gut.......2005-07-29

I have been working for years now on my own book about the controversy surrounding Lake Powell and Glen Canyon, and out of all the things I've read and seen, and all the people I've talked with, nothing has made the case for Glen Canyon more clearly than this book right here. If you are familiar with Lake Powell, then you know might that Gregory Butte is a tall island in the middle of Lake Powell's Last Chance Bay. But, open this amazing book and you'll see that Gregory Butte was merely a single, amazing spire surrounded by miles and miles of twisting slickrock canyons and mesas all racing and swelling toward the butte in their center. Never before was I so aware of just how much is now underwater. It's almost unbelievable. This book is beautiful, but it is also depressing and enraging for the sad truths it reveals. It will show you one of the most gorgeous places you've ever seen, and then tell you that place no longer exists, and that you can never go there. I discovered this book in the stacks at UNM, and sat on the floor for hours until I had studied every page of it. I wouldn't argue with someone that gave it five stars, but I'm giving it four solely because the book's text left a little something to be desired. Some of the quotes are quotes that have been repeated in every book ever written about Glen Canyon, and many are from a certain female folksinger that I just find annoying.
That aside, this is an amazing book. True, it idealizes Glen Canyon as a place of untouched nature--when it also had Boy Scouts that killed snakes for fun, beaches strewn with unburied human waste, and mines that indiscriminately dumped radioactive piles of uranium tailings right by the river--but there WAS still an awful lot to wax poetic about. Get this book, get this book, get this book. If you are at all interested in this subject, get this book. Buy it no matter what the cost.

A moving documentation of Glen Canyon before Lake Powell........1999-02-11

Glen Canyon before Lake Powell is at once a beautiful and tragic book. It consists of a collection of photographs--mostly color--of the landscape now hidden beneath the eerie turquoise waters of Lake Powell, a vast man-made reservoir on the Colorado River near the Utah-Arizona border. Editor Eleanor Inskip has skillfully paired each photograph with quotations from those who knew Glen Canyon before the water began to rise on that fateful day in January 1963. Explorers, river runners, popular writers, archaeologists, historians, and environmentalists all find a voice in this extraordinary collection, but the work's greatest strength is nevertheless its images.

The book is neither strident nor moralizing in tone. Instead, a sense of quiet grief pervades. The photographs speak for themselves, as do the observations so eloquently captured in the accompanying quotations. In the end, the questions raised are unspoken but obvious: Who are we to decide the fate of an organism so alive and so vital as a river? What have we lost in our relentless quest for the "good life?" And can it in fact be a "good life" with the waters of the Colorado stilled? Inskip respects her readers enough to let them judge for themselves.

Admirers of Eliot Porter's famous The Place No One Knew, now out of print, will find this to be an appropriate companion volume. Very highly recommended.

Moving, well-researched visual & spitual history.......1998-11-23

Through carefully chosen photographs and comments of people who experienced Glen Canyon before it was inundated by Lake Powell, Inskip presents a moving portrait of sinuous sandstone channels, lush microclimates, and the favorite beaches we will never again view.

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