By Sam Liebl The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation burned what it could not move and flooded what it could not burn. By the spring of 1968, the residents of Iola, a town 12 miles west of Gunnison, had been forced out. The Blue Mesa Dam was complete, and the impounded waters of the Gunnison River rose closer to the new reservoir’s maximum capacity, inching toward what engineers call “full pool.” When Blue Mesa Reservoir froze that spring, a diver brave enough to descend below the ice would have found little more of Iola than discarded beer cans, charred bedsprings and ...
