… was established by President Lyndon Johnson on this date in 1969. It became part of Grand Canyon National Park in 1975.
In the 1960s Marble Canyon was the site for a proposed dam as part of the Central Arizona Project. Another even higher proposed dam, Bridge Canyon, would have been constructed at the other end of the canyon. Arizona’s congressional delegation, Republican and Democratic, pushed hard for the project and condemned the Sierra Club for its objections. For example, this 1966 speech from the usually admirable Morris K. Udall attacking David Brower and the Sierra Club and defending the dams. The Sierra Club even charged Udall with using the IRS to hinder the conservation group. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall also supported both dams, as of course did Senators Hayden and Goldwater.
Fortunately the environmentalists, the California delegation and the Navajo Nation were sufficiently opposed that congressional approval became impossible and the Marble Canyon and Bridge Canyon dams were withdrawn from the legislation in 1967. And Interior Secretary Udall may have been converted; it was he who put Marble Canyon on President’ Johnson’s plate in the last hours of the Administration.
