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Dina Freedman ReportingOver 40 years ago a dam created a reservoir known today as Lake Powell and that water filled a canyon rich with history. A film debuting tonight provides a glimpse into the history of Glen Canyon.
If you've spent any time in southern Utah at beautiful Lake Powell, or maybe you've only seen pictures, you know the walls are high and the lake is deep. The lake is a man-made one, and before it was a built, there was a beautiful canyon. Tonight at the Broadway theatre in Salt Lake, you can learn all about it.
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Pictures and film from long ago, show what it looked like before Lake Powell came to fruition.
W.L. Bud Rusho, Filmmaker: "The beautiful canyon was unimportant at the time, at the time there was no national environmental policy act which didn't come into effect until 1969. So before that, engineers had no obligation to appraise what would be covered up."
It was John Wesley Powell that came here in 1869 in his boat to discover a beautiful place full of alcoves and trees; it was that greenery that led him to give the area a name.
"Glen Canyon Remembered", Narration: "From which of these features shall we select a name, we decide to call it Glen Canyon."
Bud Rusho worked with the Bureau of Reclamation in the 1960's and was part of the Lake Powell Project, but what he didn't realize then, was that once the dam was built, future generations of Utahns would never see the beauty underneath the water.
Bud Rusho: "It was very interesting to watch the dam being built, but I never, you know, just couldn't imagine that the canyon was going to go, gone. Glen Canyon had almost no rapids, you could boat down it in a small raft and camp on the shore and this beautiful green vegetation contrasting with the red rocks, very very pretty."
He made the movie using footage from the bureau and put it together at his home, but tonight he wants to share it with everyone.
Bud Rusho: "A lot of them are going to say, 'I wish I could have been, had seen Glen Canyon before it was covered.' I've heard that so many times. I hope tonight they get a pretty good taste of what Glen Canyon was."
Petroglyphs and archeological sites are now underwater, but this historic video gives you a view of what was there before the lake. The film is a little over an hour long and is narrated featuring writings of Powell and some of the early Mormon pioneers.
