Source: The LeGate family. No caption on back.
I’m glad I was able to scan this photo before there was any more water damage. I’m not sure what this meeting was about, or where it occurred for sure. There was nothing written on the back. Was this inside the USBR warehouse? Are you in this picture? Do you recognize anyone in it? Please leave me a comment if you do.
-Mike
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.
-Mike
Here’s a look back and a reminder of how Page looked in those early days. Most of these photos are scattered throughout other posts but I wanted to get them into the same post, so here they are!
That’s all for now. Enjoy!
This first picture is undated, but it’s from the 60s. When I moved all of my pictures to a new computer, the meta data didn’t come with them, so I’ve lost all the dates and photographer info that was written on the back of them. But check this out:
You might want to click on that picture and open it while we talk about it. This is a look down present-day Aero Ave, looking toward the airport. The long building in the center was (is?) the USBR warehouse. To the right of it is the bowling alley and below the bowling alley is the Page Boy Motel. The street at the bottom is Vista Ave. Looking down Aero Ave toward the airport, I believe the first long building on the left was Page Market. I seem to remember the H-shaped buildings being barracks and a mess hall built early-on for construction workers on the dam.
The small buildings lined up at the near end of the trailer court were early Page businesses. Rexall Drug, Page Jewelers, and a Men’s Store were among those buildings. Was there a shoe store there too, or was that part of the Men’s Store? It’s all a blur sometimes. The building below the Little League field on the right of the picture was the original location of Babbitt’s and First National Bank of AZ, and the barber shop. I don’t remember if there was anything else in there. It looks abandoned in this picture, so the permanent buildings may have been in place by the time this photo was taken.
To the right of the baseball field, you can see a little bit of the concrete slab that was used to show outdoor movies and for dances. Above it, you can see a corner of the MCS apartments. Do you see that building by itself on the curved road from the MCS apartments to the trailer court? Did that serve a dual purpose? Was it both the Teen Canteen and the American Legion hall? For some reason that sticks in my mind. If you look at the very top of the picture and zoom in, you’ll see the airport hanger on the left. The dark area just below the hanger was our trailer. The small trailer to the right of the hanger was the Bonanza Airlines terminal. There was also an elevated platform near that trailer that served as the “tower” for Bonanza Airlines. Whenever the airline was on its way in or taking off, the airline guy (I don’t remember his name, but he lived on First Ave) would go up on that platform and talk to the pilot via radio. As a young kid, I always thought that was pretty cool. Zoom into this picture and look at the detail. You’ll see people walking, cars on the move, and one car with its hood up.
Here’s a shot I took this morning from Google Earth, showing that same area. I tried to get as close as possible to the same angle. This screen shot was taken today, 3/31/18 but the Google info on the photo is dated 4/6/2015. Enjoy!
Thanks for visiting my site!
-Mike
Photo: USBR. Glen Canyon Bridge Dedication, 1959. Source: Terry Edwards.
The dedication ceremony of Glen Canyon Bridge took place on Friday, February 20, 1959. My understanding of that event (we moved there shortly after the bridge was dedicated) is that the ribbon-cutting was actually a chain-cutting using a cutting torch and once the chains were cut, the crowds quickly moved onto the bridge to take a look below at the beginnings of Glen Canyon Dam. These pictures capture some of that day. If you were there, I’d love to hear your story in the comments.
The photo above is taken from above the beehive, looking back toward Page. If you click on the picture you’ll be able to zoom in and see the detail. Look at the number of cars parked on the Page side of the bridge and the line of cars still arriving on US89 in the distance. You can also see the original visitor’s lookout near the top of the canyon wall on the Page side of the canyon.
Photo: USBR. Glen Canyon Bridge Dedication, 1959. Source: Terry Edwards.
The photo above is a look from the Page side of the bridge. Check out the ambulance, the ’57 Chevy, and the old busses. The ambulance is visible in the first picture above by zooming into it.
Photo: USBR. Glen Canyon Bridge Dedication, 1959.
Click on the above photo and look at the detail. The parking lot on the right was for visitors and there was a walking path down to the lookout point that I mentioned in the first picture, also clearly visible in this photo. The buses in the previous photo are visible in this one, to the right of the bridge. The first visitor center would eventually be placed on US89 between where those busses are parked and the end of the bridge. Looking in the canyon, the ledge has been cut in the canyon wall for the concrete batch plant but it’s not there yet. You can also see the keyways are cut for where the dam would be anchored to the canyon walls.
The lower footbridge is visible near the bottom of the photo and the upper footbridge can be seen in the background. No dam yet, but it’s on its way. You can see water flowing through the right diversion tunnel. Right and left seem relative, but in previous photos, right and left are usually referenced from the upstream side of the dam, looking downstream.
Photo: USBR. Glen Canyon Bridge Dedication, 1959.
The above photo is like the “Where’s Waldo” of bridge dedications. Are you in this picture, or do you recognize someone who is? If so, please leave a comment and let me know.
Photo: USBR. Glen Canyon Bridge Dedication, 1959. Source: Donna Bloxton Petersen
The photo above was sent to me by Donna Bloxton Petersen with this caption, “Glen Canyon Bridge Dedication or First Bucket of Concrete for GC Dam when Paul Fannin was Governor – by Donna Burgess Kielland” I’m going with the bridge dedication since there is only one crane tower built and it may not be completely built (two more were built on that side of the canyon). Those three cranes were used in conjunction with the three on the opposite side of the canyon to lower the concrete buckets (and other things) into the lower canyon.
Source: Page Signal, February 4, 1959.
Photo: USBR. Glen Canyon Bridge Dedication, 1959.
Until next time… Enjoy and share!
Mike
Photo: A. E. Turner, USBR. Source: Terry Edwards
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.
Enjoy!
It took me a few minutes to figure this one out, but I eventually did. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so that explains a lot. This first pic is an early shot of two of the first buildings that went up in Page, if not THE first two.
There weren’t any landmarks in the picture to go by, so it kind of leaves you on your own. Give up? This is the corner of Vista Ave and North Navajo Drive. The larger building is the hospital and the smaller building originally served as the USBR admin building. It’s been a number of other things since then. I talked about it and shared a really nice photo of it with you in a previous post [HERE]. Be sure to click that link if you haven’t already seen it. It’s worth the click! The dirt road between the two buildings is Vista Ave. The nicely graded road to the left is Gum Street. For reference (and because I have awesome moments) the picture below is how that same area looks today. I rotated it to match the angle of the picture above as much as possible, and I circled the same two buildings. The hospital’s grown from it’s original size, so the area I circled is the original footprint of the building.
Enjoy!
-Mike
This picture, dated 1/6/1958 is another view of the post office with the USBR warehouse behind it. The warehouse is still there, but this post office is long gone. The Windy Mesa was eventually built just to the right of where this post office sat, on North Navajo Drive. This picture was taken from the approximate location of present day Stromboli’s. The fire station and old USBR ranger station were to the left of this picture. I did a separate post about this post office building [HERE]. Now I know where it was located.
I’m not sure if the hamburger and hotdog stand was a regular event, or if there was something special going on this day.
-Mike
I appreciate the clean look of this photo, dated October 6, 1958. The handwritten back caption reads, “Municiple buildings where big cheeses from Bureau work.” If you live in, or have lived in Page for any length of time, you probably recognized this building right away. It sits on the corner of North Navajo Drive and Vista Avenue. If you type Page Arizona into Google Earth and go to that intersection, you’ll get a good look at how it appears today.
In addition to the USBR administrative offices, this building has also been the Page Municiple building and courthouse and the National Park Service headquarters. I seem to remember the library being in there too, but I may be having a senior moment. Can somebody help out a brother here? If you remember, let me know.
The fact that there is no other development anywhere in this picture makes it that much better. I like that North Navajo Drive is still dirt. Vista Avenue is to the right in this picture and today, the Page hospital sits across the street (Vista Ave) to the right of the photo. Did I mention that I like the pickup truck on the far right side?
-Mike
A History of Glen Canyon Dam and Page Arizona 