The Wahweap Marina and parts of Lake Powell in Arizona, foreground, and Utah, background, are pictured on Monday, July 18, 2022. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
It’s the origin story and home of the prehistoric Patayan people. It’s the deliverance of 40 million Americans and Mexicans in need of water. A time capsule of Earth’s heaving layers — a place to touch the rock of a billion years before. It’s a collection of campsites and rapids that draw folks out of the humdrum of their lives into its canyons.
It’s the child of the Never Summer mountains and an elder of the Sea of Cortés. A political beast caught between red tape and time. A thing to be tamed. A thing to be freed.
As the headwaters of the Colorado River flow out of the never summer mountains, the high meadows and alpine forests of the region are bathed in verdant new life. but here, human inference begins with the grand ditch, a 14-mile diversion that directs between 20 and 40 pe cent of the range’s annual snowpack out of the Colorado River and into eastern Colorado. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
As the headwaters of the Colorado River flow out of the never summer mountains, the high meadows and alpine forests of the region are bathed in verdant new life. but here, human inference begins with the grand ditch, a 14-mile diversion that directs between 20 and 40 pe cent of the range’s annual snowpack out of the Colorado River and into eastern Colorado. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
But the multitudes of the mighty Colorado River run like tributaries toward the one thing that it has always been: the hardest working river in the West.
In 1901, A man from Michigan — who was said to be able to crush an apple in the palm of his hand — set his strength on what would be the first attempt of wrangling the Colorado River into modern industrialization.
According to Kevin Fedarko’s reporting in “The Emerald Mile,” Charles Rockwood, an engineer, cleaved a new channel into a dried arroyo system on the Western banks of the river in California and pointed the water toward the Salton Sink. The water flowed, the people flocked and the crops thrived in what was once desert, but was now called the Imperial Valley.
“Water Is King,” the local paper heralded. “Here Is Its Kingdom.” And so it ruled. Just five years later, the largest flood in the history of the Southwest on record erased the fields, the farms, and the fervor. Four-fifths of Mexicali and a downright fortune for the times were washed away and reclaimed by the Salton Sea.
Just as it gives, it takes away. Today, the Salton Sea and Imperial Valley are resigned to the dusty commandments of the worst drought the Colorado River Basin has seen in over 1,200 years.
Over the past 120 years, the Colorado River has been yoked and subdued, often with results similar to the Imperial Valley floods. It seems to hold a power over us that we’ll never be able to reach; that we’ll never be able to harness. There have been catastrophic floods — like those of 1983 — and droughts that provoke calls to prayer and threaten power pool levels at Hoover and Glen Canyon dams. In every season, every year, the river tasks itself to run as it always has. And although people (with their mettle, and money) constructed the modern-day Colorado River Basin as we know it, people are still at its mercy. But more so, these days we are at the mercy of our own history of abuse.
— Lauren Steele
As the river flows west, the well-documented labyrinths and wildlife of Glen Canyon emerge from the waters of Lake Powell in Utah — a bittersweet token of chronic drought. little flowers and frogs offer a glimpse into what this canyon looked like before Glen Canyon dam was built. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
As the river flows west, the well-documented labyrinths and wildlife of Glen Canyon emerge from the waters of Lake Powell in Utah — a bittersweet token of chronic drought. Little flowers and frogs offer a glimpse into what this canyon looked like before Glen Canyon dam was built. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
The Colorado River as it flows through Cataract Canyon in Southern Utah. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
Kelby Iverson checks an alfalfa field on his property in Hurricane, Washington County, on Friday, Sept. 9, 2022. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
Dave Evans poses for a photo while he wraps up a day of baling hay on his property in Duchesne on Wednesday, July 27, 2022. Across the arid stretches of Utah — from Duchesne in the north to Hurricane in the south — agriculture taps into the dwindling resources of the Colorado River and its tributaries. Currently, agriculture accounts for 85 percent of Utah’s water use. The state has the highest water use per capita rate in the Colorado River Basin. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
Dave Evans walks over to talk to his father, Hugh Evans, while they bale and stack hay on their property in Duchesne on Wednesday, July 27, 2022. Across the arid stretches of Utah — from Duchesne in the north to Hurricane in the south — agriculture taps into the dwindling resources of the Colorado River and its tributaries. Currently, agriculture accounts for 85 percent of Utah’s water use. The state has the highest water use per capita rate in the Colorado River Basin. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
Kelby Iverson, a farmer in Hurricane, Utah, farms alfalfa and raises beef cattle to support his family of eight. Since they first started irrigating land in Southwest Utah more than 100 years ago, his family has enjoyed some of the oldest water rights, which Iverson wants to safeguard. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
Kelby Iverson, a farmer in Hurricane, Utah, farms alfalfa and raises beef cattle to support his family of eight. Since they first started irrigating land in Southwest Utah more than 100 years ago, his family has enjoyed some of the oldest water rights, which Iverson wants to safeguard. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
The Bureau of Reclamation received decades of funding for Colorado River development, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs, largely responsible for tribal water infrastructure projects, “was never funded to the point where it would actually be successful,” says Dan McCool, an author and professor emeritus at the University of Utah, who researches tribal water rights. today, 1 out of 3 Navajo Nation residents still don’t have safe drinking water. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
Freda Castillo waits for the water she hauled from Kayenta, Arizona, to fill the underground cistern that supplies her mother’s home 35 miles away on the Navajo Nation. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
Eric Balken, Executive Director of Glen Canyon Institute, is accompanied by Dimitri Littig on a hike in Lake Canyon, a side canyon off of Lake Powell near Bullfrog, Utah. last summer, the institute and a coalition of groups released a report on what they’ve called “Glen Canyon dam’s big plumbing problem.” the report found that the dam can’t physically release enough water to meet downstream delivery obligations at the elevation 3,440 feet, a fundamental flaw for dam use at lower water levels. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
As the levels of Lake Powell continue to recede, Glen Canyon Dam becomes less and less capable of operating — a problem for water users and for the electrical grid of the Colorado Basin writ large. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
As the levels of Lake Powell continue to recede, Glen Canyon Dam becomes less and less capable of operating — a problem for water users and for the electrical grid of the Colorado Basin writ large. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
After decades of dry riverbeds being the norm in Mexico, a series of treaties has resulted in water returning to the Colorado River Delta in Mexico for ecological restoration. But for cities like Tijuana and farmers in Baja California, like Manuel Machado Gerardo, 78, the returns don’t amount to much. “It’s sad. And it’s people who are responsible for the lack of conservation. Mostly the government.” | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
After decades of dry riverbeds being the norm in Mexico, a series of treaties has resulted in water returning to the Colorado River Delta in Mexico for ecological restoration. But for cities like Tijuana and farmers in Baja California, like Manuel Machado Gerardo, 78, the returns don’t amount to much. “It’s sad. And it’s people who are responsible for the lack of conservation. Mostly the government.” | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
A coalition of nongovernmental organizations including The Nature Conservancy and the Sonoran Institute have put that water to use replanting native flora and trying to restore stretches of the river to its former glory. Tomás Enrique Rivas Salcedo, a restoration specialist for the Sonoran Institute, says that water returns have brought hope. “Nature is working,” he says. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
At its terminus in Baja California, Mexico, the Colorado River, now stretched beyond its limits, reaches for the sea. But like mother nature’s version of Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” their reach isn’t enough. The last time the Colorado met the Sea of Cortès was March 2014. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
Jose Lopez shows the slight water flow he receives at his home in the Los Laureles neighborhood of Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
Jason Fitz and Frank Schwab join forces to recap the draft in the best way they know how: letter grades! Fitz and Frank discuss all 32 teams division by division as they give a snapshot of how fans should be feeling heading into the 2024 season. The duo have key debates on the Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, New Orleans Saints, Los Angeles Rams, New England Patriots, Las Vegas Raiders and more.
The first electric vehicle I ever drove was a Tesla Roadster in 2011. It was with great anticipation that I slid behind the wheel of the 2025 Acura ZDX Type S. Sure, it's a midsize SUV, but it wears the Type S moniker, a name reserved only for the most fun-to-drive in the Acura stable. On launch, the ZDX will be available in A-Spec and Type S trims -- both of which come equipped with a 102 kWh battery.
