Brief by Ed Quillen
Geography – September 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
Back when I was editor of the Summit County Journal in Breckenridge (1977-78), I ran into a problem with nomenclature concerning that county’s largest body of water. The chamber of commerce liked to call it “Lake Dillon,” but I preferred “Dillon Reservoir.”
In my view, lake should be reserved for natural bodies of water, and Dillon had been built by the Denver Water Board to store Western Slope water to be delivered by the Roberts Tunnel that emerges near Grant on U.S. 285.
There are people who object to Lake Powell for the same reason — it’s not a natural body of water. It’s a reservoir formed by Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River in northeastern Arizona, and it should be called Powell Reservoir.
And there are those, like Edward Abbey, who have argued that the name dishonors the memory of Maj. John Wesley Powell, who led the expedition that floated the canyons of the Colorado River in 1869 and 1871. As he put it in Desert Solitaire: “The impounded waters form an artificial lake named Powell, supposed to honor but actually to dishonor the memory, spirit, and vision of Major John Wesley Powell, first American to make a systematic exploration of the Colorado River and its environs. Where he and his brave men once lined the rapids and glided through silent canyons two thousand feet deep the motorboats now smoke and whine, scumming the water with cigarette butts, beer cans, and oil, dragging the water skiers on their endless rounds, clockwise.”
But Powell also believed in building dams and putting rivers to work — he was the first director of the U.S. Irrigation Survey — so it’s hard to say that a reservoir would dishonor his career.
At any rate, there’s now an organized effort underway to change Lake Powell to Glen Canyon Reservoir. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names has a rule that two hydrologic features in the same watershed should not have the same name.
And it turns out that long before Glen Canyon Dam construction began in the 1950s, there was a Lake Powell in Colorado River drainage. It’s right at the top of the river in Rocky Mountain National Park, just southwest of the point where Larimer, Boulder, and Grand counties meet.
Powell passed through there in 1868 on the first recorded climb of 14,255-foot Long’s Peak. His party, which also included William N. Byers (founder of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver), suffered several reversals on their trek from Hot Sulphur Springs and Grand Lake to the summit, but reached it on Aug. 23.
So with that older Lake Powell, the new one needs a new name, and Glen Canyon Reservoir would fit. That’s the logic behind the application filed in January by Nancy Jacques of Durango, who had the support of the Glen Canyon Institute, Living Rivers, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, and the Utah Environmental Congress, among others.
Writing in the August-September edition of the Canyon Country Zephyr, Bill Bernat of the Glen Canyon Institute encouraged wide use of the new name, since the Geographic Board’s policy is that “well-established geographic names should not be changed unless there is strong public support for the change.”
In Colorado, two peaks bear his name — one near the lake, and another in the Eagle’s Nest Wilderness Area in Summit County. In Central Colorado, there’s a Powell Creek in Chaffee County, northwest of Buena Vista, but we have no idea whether it was named for the explorer, or for some early ranch family, or for someone else. –Ed Quillen
