For 55 years, the waters of Lake Powell in Southeastern Utah have submerged Glen Canyon. Drowned with it are ancient features and sacred sites now known only to memory. For 55 years, legendary river runner Ken Sleight has thought about these places as he once knew them, when the river ran wild.
“Knowing at my age - going on 90 now - I felt like it was only thing I could do now to try to preserve the Glen Canyon would be maybe to preserve some of the artifacts. And that’s what we did,” Sleight said.
Sleight and a large team of writers, artists, friends and neighbors put together an exhibit to remember Glen Canyon before its damming in 1963. It’s open at the John Wesley Powell River History Museum in Green River, Utah until the end of March.
“I feel like for a lot of people, when they think of Ken Sleight, they think of Glen Canyon,” said Ryann Savino, one of the lead curators of Glen Canyon: A River Guide Remembers. “It’s pretty remarkable that for so many years it’s been so big and important to him, and he’s continued to speak about it, write about it – be an advocate for Glen Canyon. So as far as living river runners and river historians and legends, Ken is the truest person to tell the story of Glen Canyon.”
Sleight started his river guiding career in Glen Canyon in 1955, just as the dam’s blueprints were coming together. He ran trips until there was no river left to run, and this experience turned him into a well-known activist for the protection of wild places. At the exhibit, curators sought to re-create a classic Ken Sleight river trip, modeling its course after a 1959 journal entry of one of his passengers.
“We start at Hite which is river mile 162.3. This is a pump that was used in Glen Canyon. And you can pump it,” Savino said.
Journeying down the river, we meet other legendary characters of the canyon. There’s Bert Loper, who lived in Glen Canyon in a cabin he called the hermitage. Jean Field Foster, who did her best to document artifacts and features before the waters rose.
“Each day we have a different theme, similar to how [you would] on a river trip. You know, maybe you’re going to go past a cabin so you’re going to talk about that historical person,” Savino said.
There are activists like Katie Lee, river runners like Georgie White and Dave Rust – considered the first outfitter in the region. And then there’s the canyon itself.
One of the highlights of the Glen Canyon exhibit, for Sleight, is a photograph blown up to cover an entire wall. It shows Rainbow Bridge – spanning over 200 feet long and nearly 300 feet high. It’s a place of incredible sacred significance to many Indigenous people – including the Dine, the Hopi, San Juan Southern Paiute, Kaibab Paiute, and White Mesa Ute.
“Years ago, when they started putting the water up to Rainbow Bridge National Monument – I didn’t like that at all,” Sleight said. “A bunch of us brought suit against the government to keep the waters out of Rainbow Bridge National Monument. They had the water going up under the arch. ‘Course I was fearful the additional water underneath might topple the arch itself. I still believe it.
“Just the idea of having a huge picture of Rainbow Bridge at the exhibit delighted me very much. It told the visitors to the museum how important Rainbow Bridge was.”
“You know we decided early on that we wanted the exhibit to be more about experiencing it as it was and not focusing on what all has been lost,” Savino said. “Although that is the underlying current. You get through the exhibit and you think ‘that’s incredible’ and ‘oh wait, I can’t see this anymore, this is all underneath a reservoir.’ Hearing Bob Quist and Ken [Sleight], and Stuart Reeder – they were talking one day about getting to Hidden Passage, which is this one side canyon. They talking about how it was so muddy. ‘Oh, do you remember that mud? And the little blue gills would be nipping at your toes? It was exciting and felt happy but underlying it all - there was a sense of loss with it all.”
“I think that we’ve tried to put the word out - over and over and over again – how much has been lost,” Sleight said. “And, why destroy something so beautiful has been the message all the time. They can bring up other reasons not to have the dam, or they can bring up a lot of reasons for the dam, but the one essential thing was it was so beautiful. So beautiful. To do what they did with it was a real travesty. Already a lot of people, writers and so forth have noted that same thing – of how beautiful it was, and why they did it. And I still don’t know why.”
Sleight dreams about the water receding, side canyons returning. Like Glen Canyon itself, he hopes the exhibit will see another life soon. The team is currently working on an online exhibit, and hopeful for other physical spaces to show the artifacts.
Glen Canyon: A River Guide Remembers is open until Saturday March 23rd at the John Wesley Powell River History Museum in Green River, Utah.
