Carl Hayden Visitor Center

On the west rim of Glen Canyon Dam, a building cantilevered above the gorge offers what may be the most dramatic vantage point in the Page area: a floor-to-ceiling glass wall looking straight down into the canyon, with the massive concrete arc of the dam filling the frame and Lake Powell stretching into the distance behind it. This is the Carl Hayden Visitor Center, and it is named for one of the most consequential political figures in Arizona history. Carl Hayden was born in Tempe in eighteen seventy-seven, when Arizona was still a territory.

He was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in nineteen eleven, taking his seat in nineteen twelve when Arizona became a state, and he served in Congress for the next fifty-six years without interruption, eventually becoming president pro tempore of the Senate. But in Arizona he is remembered most for water. Hayden was an obsessive advocate for Arizona's share of the Colorado River.

He co-sponsored the legislation that became the Colorado River Storage Project, authorizing Glen Canyon Dam and a cluster of related reservoirs across the basin. The bill passed in nineteen fifty-six. By the time Hayden retired from the Senate in nineteen sixty-nine, the dam was complete and Lake Powell was filling.

The visitor center was dedicated in his honor in nineteen sixty-eight. Today its exhibits cover dam construction history, Colorado River hydrology, and the continuing challenge of managing water across the arid Southwest.