The houseboat marina is located in Page, once one of America's newest towns.  Founded in 1957, it served originally as a housing community for those working on the Glen Canyon Dam and their families.

Steve and I both enjoy taking Dam tours so that is how we started our day. Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1964, taming the waters of the Colorado River and creating massive Lake Powell, a popular recreation area along the Utah/Arizona border. Lake Powell is about 186 miles long and attracts almost 3 million visitors a year (it certain has attracted us).
We purchased our $5 tickets at the Carl Hayden Visitor Center. We also watched informational videos and read over displays about the entire dam process.
Our tour guide, Hannah, informed us that when the dam was first built, it was designed for tourists to guide themselves. Wild thought.
This beautiful hall, the only one like it, greeted guests, as they began their tour, armed with a guidebook.
Numbers, like this #2, informed the wandering tourists. This marks the tunnel (above) that will take us to the Crest of the Dam. Wild.


This concrete arch dam has a crest length of 1,560 feet. It contains 4,901,000 cubic yards of concrete. The dam is 25 feet wide at the crest and 300 feet wide at the maximum base.




Construction started in 1956 and was completed in 1964. The dam was dedicated in 1966. Lake Powell took 17 years to fill to full pool. The lake has a storage capacity of 27,000,000 acre-feet, making it the second largest man-made reservoir in the United States. It was constructed to allow electrical power generation, store water for the arid southwestern United States, and provide recreation opportunities for all. Fun facts from a very fun tour.
Next stop was to learn a bit more about the man for whom the Lake is named. The Powell Museum celebrates the life and achievements of Major John Wesley Powell, the man credited with leading the first group of white men through the Grand Canyon in 1869. In addition to interpreting the history of Powell, the museum also serves as an information center for Page. Interestingly the building was originally built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as a concrete testing lab for the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. Today, it houses the museum’s collections, archives, and exhibits.
We learned more about John Wesley Powell’s 1,000-mile, three-month adventure, officially called the Powell Geographic Expedition. We also learned so much more about Powell himself, and the amazing people who surrounded him.
This replica of Powell's boat, the Emma Dean, starred in Disney's 1960 film Ten Who Dared. 
Filmed here, it tells the story of Major John Wesley Powell as he leads an expedition through the Grand Canyon to chart the Colorado River. Very cool.
We also learned of modern marvels like Georgie White Clark, a river-running guide in the Grand Canyon. She was the first woman to run the Grand Canyon as a commercial enterprise, and she introduced several innovations and adjustments to the way that guides ran the Colorado.
We even got to experience a Trading Post, which not only sold anything from daily use commodities to artistic Navajo textiles, handmade pottery and art, but were gathering places for the community.
And the dinosaurs... so dang awesome.
We both thought this was a fun detour through history. This historic avenue, "the street of little motels" originally provided living quarters for the workers building the Glen Canyon Dam and has retained its historic flavor with a row of non-franchised, privately owned motels.