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Flaming Gorge Dam
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Flaming Gorge Dam
Flaming Gorge Dam is a concrete thin-arch dam on the Green River, a major tributary of the Colorado River, in northern Utah in the United States. Flaming Gorge Dam forms the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, which extends 91 miles (146 km) into southern Wyoming, submerging four distinct gorges of the Green River. The dam is a major component of the Colorado River Storage Project, which stores and distributes upper Colorado River Basin water.
The dam takes its name from a nearby section of the Green River canyon, named by John Wesley Powell in 1869. It was built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation between 1958 and 1964. The dam is 502 feet (153 m) high and 1,285 feet (392 m) long, and its reservoir has a capacity of more than 3.7 million acre-feet (4.6 km3), or about twice the annual flow of the upper Green. Operated to provide long-term storage for downstream water-rights commitments, the dam is also a major source of hydroelectricity and is the main flood-control facility for the Green River system.
The dam and reservoir have fragmented the upper Green River, blocking fish migration and significantly impacting many native species. Water released from the dam is generally cold and clear, as compared to the river's naturally warm and silty flow, further changing the local riverine ecology. However, the cold water from Flaming Gorge has transformed about 28 miles (45 km) of the Green into a "Blue Ribbon Trout Fishery".[citation needed] The Flaming Gorge Reservoir, largely situated in Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, is also considered one of Utah and Wyoming's greatest fisheries.
Contrary to its namesake, Flaming Gorge, the dam actually lies in steep, rapid-strewn Red Canyon in northeastern Utah, close to where the Green River cuts through the Uinta Mountains. The canyon, for which the dam is named, is buried under the reservoir almost 20 miles (32 km) upstream. Red Canyon is the narrowest and deepest of the four on the Green in the area (Horseshoe, Kingfisher, Red and Flaming Gorge), which made it the best site for the building of a dam. Flaming Gorge, on the other hand, was named by John Wesley Powell on his 1869 expedition down the Green and Colorado rivers for the "brilliant, flaming red of its rocks [when the sun shone upon them]."
Flaming Gorge Dam is one of six that make up the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP), a massive system of reservoirs created in the upper Colorado River Basin by the Bureau of Reclamation from the 1950s to the 1970s. The project itself was the indirect result of a system of agreements signed by the seven U.S. states and two Mexican provinces in the early 20th century dividing the flow of the Colorado River among them. Among the terms stated in the 1922 Colorado River Compact reserved 7.5 million acre-feet (9.3 km3) for the Upper Basin states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico and an equal amount for the Lower Basin states of Arizona, Nevada and California. Due to the Colorado's high year-to-year variations in flow, the upper basin could not fulfill the lower basin's allotments in dry years, and much water was wasted during wet years because of the lack of a means to impound it.
Well before the CRSP's inception in 1956, the Bureau had begun to look for suitable reservoir sites along the upper Colorado and tributaries such as the Green, San Juan and Gunnison Rivers. One of the earlier proposals was called Echo Park Dam, at the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers within the Dinosaur National Monument in northwestern Colorado. The Sierra Club, led by David Brower, rallied against the proposal in the media and later in the courts. When the Bureau backed down from the Echo Park proposal, it was seen as one of the environmentalism movement's early victories – but it came with a compromise. A dam would still be built on the Green River, just 50 miles (80 km) upstream near a brilliant red-rock canyon called Flaming Gorge. A common misconception is that the building of the controversial Glen Canyon Dam was part of this "compromise for Echo Park", but in reality the Bureau had always planned to build a dam at Glen Canyon regardless of the outcome of the Echo Park debate.
Apart from impounding the Green River, Flaming Gorge Dam also carries U.S. Route 191 over the river.
The building of Flaming Gorge Dam started just a few months after the CRSP was approved in Congress, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower pressed a button on his desk in the White House and set off the first blast in Red Canyon. Site preparations and geologic inspections continued as Dutch John, the company town that provided housing for the workers, was completed just northeast of the dam site by 1958. More than 3000 people would inhabit Dutch John at the peak of construction. The main contract for dam construction was awarded to Arch Dam Constructors, a conglomerate of Peter Kiewit Sons, Morrison-Knudsen Company, Mid-Valley Utility Constructors Inc. and Coker Construction Company. Actual construction at the dam site did not begin until late 1958 when work began on the diversion tunnel that would send the Green River around the dam site in order to clear it.
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Flaming Gorge Dam
Flaming Gorge Dam is a concrete thin-arch dam on the Green River, a major tributary of the Colorado River, in northern Utah in the United States. Flaming Gorge Dam forms the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, which extends 91 miles (146 km) into southern Wyoming, submerging four distinct gorges of the Green River. The dam is a major component of the Colorado River Storage Project, which stores and distributes upper Colorado River Basin water.
The dam takes its name from a nearby section of the Green River canyon, named by John Wesley Powell in 1869. It was built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation between 1958 and 1964. The dam is 502 feet (153 m) high and 1,285 feet (392 m) long, and its reservoir has a capacity of more than 3.7 million acre-feet (4.6 km3), or about twice the annual flow of the upper Green. Operated to provide long-term storage for downstream water-rights commitments, the dam is also a major source of hydroelectricity and is the main flood-control facility for the Green River system.
The dam and reservoir have fragmented the upper Green River, blocking fish migration and significantly impacting many native species. Water released from the dam is generally cold and clear, as compared to the river's naturally warm and silty flow, further changing the local riverine ecology. However, the cold water from Flaming Gorge has transformed about 28 miles (45 km) of the Green into a "Blue Ribbon Trout Fishery".[citation needed] The Flaming Gorge Reservoir, largely situated in Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, is also considered one of Utah and Wyoming's greatest fisheries.
Contrary to its namesake, Flaming Gorge, the dam actually lies in steep, rapid-strewn Red Canyon in northeastern Utah, close to where the Green River cuts through the Uinta Mountains. The canyon, for which the dam is named, is buried under the reservoir almost 20 miles (32 km) upstream. Red Canyon is the narrowest and deepest of the four on the Green in the area (Horseshoe, Kingfisher, Red and Flaming Gorge), which made it the best site for the building of a dam. Flaming Gorge, on the other hand, was named by John Wesley Powell on his 1869 expedition down the Green and Colorado rivers for the "brilliant, flaming red of its rocks [when the sun shone upon them]."
Flaming Gorge Dam is one of six that make up the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP), a massive system of reservoirs created in the upper Colorado River Basin by the Bureau of Reclamation from the 1950s to the 1970s. The project itself was the indirect result of a system of agreements signed by the seven U.S. states and two Mexican provinces in the early 20th century dividing the flow of the Colorado River among them. Among the terms stated in the 1922 Colorado River Compact reserved 7.5 million acre-feet (9.3 km3) for the Upper Basin states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico and an equal amount for the Lower Basin states of Arizona, Nevada and California. Due to the Colorado's high year-to-year variations in flow, the upper basin could not fulfill the lower basin's allotments in dry years, and much water was wasted during wet years because of the lack of a means to impound it.
Well before the CRSP's inception in 1956, the Bureau had begun to look for suitable reservoir sites along the upper Colorado and tributaries such as the Green, San Juan and Gunnison Rivers. One of the earlier proposals was called Echo Park Dam, at the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers within the Dinosaur National Monument in northwestern Colorado. The Sierra Club, led by David Brower, rallied against the proposal in the media and later in the courts. When the Bureau backed down from the Echo Park proposal, it was seen as one of the environmentalism movement's early victories – but it came with a compromise. A dam would still be built on the Green River, just 50 miles (80 km) upstream near a brilliant red-rock canyon called Flaming Gorge. A common misconception is that the building of the controversial Glen Canyon Dam was part of this "compromise for Echo Park", but in reality the Bureau had always planned to build a dam at Glen Canyon regardless of the outcome of the Echo Park debate.
Apart from impounding the Green River, Flaming Gorge Dam also carries U.S. Route 191 over the river.
The building of Flaming Gorge Dam started just a few months after the CRSP was approved in Congress, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower pressed a button on his desk in the White House and set off the first blast in Red Canyon. Site preparations and geologic inspections continued as Dutch John, the company town that provided housing for the workers, was completed just northeast of the dam site by 1958. More than 3000 people would inhabit Dutch John at the peak of construction. The main contract for dam construction was awarded to Arch Dam Constructors, a conglomerate of Peter Kiewit Sons, Morrison-Knudsen Company, Mid-Valley Utility Constructors Inc. and Coker Construction Company. Actual construction at the dam site did not begin until late 1958 when work began on the diversion tunnel that would send the Green River around the dam site in order to clear it.
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