Saving Grand Canyon
Dams, Deals, and a Noble Myth
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- €36.99
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- €36.99
Publisher Description
2020 Winner of the Southwest Book Awards
2020 Spur Awards Finalist Contemporary Nonfiction, Western Writers of America
The Grand Canyon has been saved from dams three times in the last century. Unthinkable as it may seem today, many people promoted damming the Colorado River in the canyon during the early twentieth century as the most feasible solution to the water and power needs of the Pacific Southwest. These efforts reached their climax during the 1960s when the federal government tried to build two massive hydroelectric dams in the Grand Canyon. Although not located within the Grand Canyon National Park or Monument, they would have flooded lengthy, unprotected reaches of the canyon and along thirteen miles of the park boundary.
Saving Grand Canyon tells the remarkable true story of the attempts to build dams in one of America’s most spectacular natural wonders. Based on twenty-five years of research, this fascinating ride through history chronicles a hundred years of Colorado River water development, demonstrates how the National Environmental Policy Act came to be, and challenges the myth that the Sierra Club saved the Grand Canyon. It also shows how the Sierra Club parlayed public perception as the canyon’s savior into the leadership of the modern environmental movement after the National Environmental Policy Act became law.
The tale of the Sierra Club stopping the dams has become so entrenched—and so embellished—that many historians, popular writers, and filmmakers have ignored the documented historical record. This epic story puts the events from 1963–1968 into the broader context of Colorado River water development and debunks fifty years of Colorado River and Grand Canyon myths.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a year that marks the Grand Canyon National Park's centenary, this thoroughly researched and documented study from Pearson, a West Texas A&M University history professor, revisits the persistent struggles to keep the park dam-free. But beyond this specific focus, his work also captures key pivot points in the changing national mood, particularly from the general optimism of the early 1960s, when "no dream seemed too farfetched," to the more contentious tone that followed John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination. Noting that the political tumult of the mid-'60s included the "rise of modern environmentalism," Pearson emphasizes the Sierra Club's role in opposing development of the park. After the Sierra Club issued a series of "Battle Ads" challenging the construction of dams within the park, the IRS revoked the club's tax-deductible status. Though Pearson concludes by describing how, in 1968, legislation was passed to keep dams out of the Canyon, he warns that it is still "far, far, too early to pronounce dead." Nature-loving readers will find value in his insights both into a specific conservation milestone and into the broader sweep of the environmentalist movement's history.