This plaque is located at the outside of the Glen Canyon Dam Power Plant. It is only accessible from the tour, which goes into the power plant. Therefore, the coordinates are for the Carl Hayden Visitor Center, where the tours start from.
The waymarked plaque reads as follows:
"GLEN CANYON DAM
Colorado River Storage Project
Dedicated by The First Lady
Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson
September 22,1966
United States Department of the Interior
Stewart L. Udall, Secretary
Bureau of Reclamation
Floyd E. Dominy, Commissioner"
Being Texans, and big fans of Lady Bird Johnson, Blasterz were happy to see a Texas connection here.
For more on "Lady Bird" Johnson, see her biography here: (
visit link)
"Mrs. Johnson was born Claudia Alta Taylor in the East Texas town of Karnack on December 22, 1912, and died at her home in Austin on July 11, 2007.
Her father, Thomas Jefferson Taylor, was owner of a general store. Her mother, Minnie Pattillo Taylor, died when Claudia was five years old. Legend has it that a nursemaid said Claudia was "as purty as a lady bird;" the nickname stuck for life.
Mrs. Johnson graduated from Marshall High School in 1928 and attended Saint Mary's Episcopal School for Girls in Dallas from 1928 to 1930. She then entered The University of Texas at Austin, from which she graduated in 1934 with a Bachelor of Arts in history and a Bachelor of journalism.
She met Lyndon Baines Johnson,the tall, ambitious man whom she would marry, when he was a Congressional secretary visiting Austin on official business. They were engaged just seven weeks after their first date and married in November, 1934.
. . . .
Lady Bird Johnson stood by her husband on the fateful November day in 1963 on which Lyndon Johnson became the 36th President of the United States after the assassination of John Kennedy. Her official White House biography notes that her gracious personality and Texas hospitality did much to heal the pain of those dark days. She created a First Lady's Committee for a More Beautiful Capital and then expanded her program to include the entire nation. She was also highly involved in the President's war on poverty, focusing in particular on the Head Start project for preschool children."
One of the most haunting photos of 23 Nov 1963 was taken on board Air Force One, where LBJ, flanked on one side by his wife and on the other by a bloodstained and shocked Jackie Kennedy, takes the oath of office as President of the United States.
Lady Bird Johnson is universally beloved, in Texas and throughout the country. She is truly one of our great Texas Women.
In 1966, she attended a ceremony to dedicate the Glen Canyon Dam and Power Plant. The photo credit for the picture of her that day belongs to the US Bureau of Reclamation.
From the Bureau of Reclamation website: (
visit link)
"On September 22, 1966, the nation’s First Lady, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, dedicated Glen Canyon Dam and Powerplant." This is why the plaque is at the powerplant, instead of in a more publicly-accessible location.
A longer history of the Colorado River Storage Project and the construction and operation of the Glen Canyon Dam is here: (
visit link)
(Blasterz have edited for length)
"Glen Canyon Dam Construction History
The authorization of the Colorado River Storage Project Act by Congress on April 11, 1956 initiated the construction of Glen Canyon Dam . . . The first dynamite blast in Glen Canyon occurred on October 15, 1956 when President Dwight D. Eisnehower pressed a telegraph key from Washington D.C. to set off the explosion signaling the beginning of construction.
. . .
When Reclamation engineers and geologists began looking for a suitable location . . . Glen Canyon proved to be the perfect location, although because it was such a remote site, it presented some unique construction challenges. . . . a bridge had to be built to allow trucks to deliver material and equipment across the canyon. . . .
In 1957, Reclamation constructed a government camp close to the dam site . . . to house construction workers and their families . . . This community was later called Page in honor of Reclamation Commissioner John C. Page. . . . Page became an incorporated town on March 1, 1975.
In order to construct the dam, . . . A coffer, or temporary dam, was constructed upstream of the dam site to redirect the river through two, 3000 foot-long, 45 foot diameter diversion tunnels dug through the walls on each side of the canyon. . . . and concrete placement began in June 1960. The concrete was transported in 24-ton capacity buckets via an aerial tramway strung across the canyon from a concrete mixing plant constructed nearby.
Work on constructing the dam continued 24 hours a day until on September 13, 1963, the last of over 400,000 buckets of concrete was placed. . . . Glen Canyon Dam began impounding water in March 1963 when the diversion tunnels were closed and Lake Powell was born. . . . it took 17 years for Lake Powell to completely fill for the first time. . . .
Installation of the powerplant equipment began after the dam was completed and the first hydroelectric power was generated on September 4th, 1964. By 1966, all eight generators had been installed and were working at full capacity. On September 22, 1966, the nation’s First Lady, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, dedicated Glen Canyon Dam and Powerplant. Reclamation also constructed a switchyard at the dam, two 345 kilovolt (kV) transmission lines to Phoenix, Arizona and a 230 kV line to Farmington, New Mexico. . . .
On either side of the dam are spillway tunnels constructed through the canyon walls measuring 48 feet in diameter at the intake point reducing in size to 41 feet in diameter. These spillways are used to release large quantities of water that exceed the combined release capacity of the powerplant and river outlet works. The spillways were used in 1983 . . . The extremely high water releases through the spillways caused cavitation damage in which the concrete in the tunnels was eroded. Subsequent redesign and reconstruction of the spillways incorporated new state-of-the-art technology in which “air slots” were built into the tunnels to eliminate the potential for cavitation. . . ."