The 50th anniversary of the event was celebrated Thursday on top of the dam - 710 feet above the Colorado River. The dam was one of four in the Upper Colorado River Basin to receive the go-ahead when then-President Eisenhower signed the Colorado River Storage Project Act.
"It was an engineering marvel," Utah Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert told about 60 dignitaries gathered amid heavy security at the dam, located in northern Arizona just south the Utah line.
Herbert credited Utah's pioneer spirit for helping to create the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which allowed for the storage and distribution of water in the Colorado River Basin.
"From a Utah perspective, we are an arid state, averaging 13 inches of rain a year," Herbert said. "We know the challenge from our pioneer heritage that dictated they make the desert bloom like a rose. Their vision literally made it blossom."
"We need to have the same kind of vision" today to ensure that quality of life continues into the future.
The four dams - Flaming Gorge on the Green River in eastern Utah, Glen Canyon on the Colorado, Navajo Dam on the San Juan River in New Mexico and the Wayne N. Aspinall Dam on the Gunnison River in west-central Colorado - together store 30.6 million acre-feet of water and generate 4.1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year.
"It's hard to think these days they knew when they put the Colorado River Compact together, the impact they would have on the economic development in the upper states," said Mark Limbaugh, assistant secretary of the interior.
For all those economic pluses - from power generation to world-class recreation - the dams continue to be controversial, especially among environmentalists who lament the loss of, among other scenic wonders, Glen Canyon, which was covered by Lake Powell.
