Dams GCNP: a review of the formalities 1946-51

In the story I have been telling about Bridge Canyon dam, the major emerging theme is that the dam, justifiable on its own, became inextricably wound up in the project to bring Colorado River water to the Phoenix area. Inextricably and fatally; first because, as a team, Bridge and the CAP would only be authorized together. Second, since in the 1960's the dam's central role in financially supporting grander water-import schemes became ever more obvious.

Thinking back, it is hard for me to recapture the sense of frenzy water induced in developers then. Southern California had long depended on water brought from the Colorado, the Owens Valley, and northern California. Denver largely depends on water tunneled under the continental divide. In the 1960's, the dreamers wanted more northern waters, from California, the Columbia Basin, and even Canada's Rocky Mountains. There was talk of capturing part of the Great Lakes. And Texas' High Plains, sucking up their aquifer, babbled about the Mississippi. At the end of the decade, a National Water Commission was created to embrace the whole scene. However, this flood of water megalomania subsided in the next decade, due to many factors: I can think of the lessening impulse of population growth, the political obduracy of people living in potential source areas, national attention being captured by environmental concerns as well as other national issues--and, unquestionably, the crippling of Reclamation's power and future by losing the Grand Canyon cash cows.

That was not the scene in 1946-52; the future was seen in a rosy glow of eternally escalating national growth and wealth. Perhaps it was easier to let the Supreme Court decide the water issue, when there was Marble dam, and more broadly, the tremendous waterworks for the upper Basin, to plan and build. There was plenty else to do, if Bridge and the CAP had to be put on hold, which did not mean there was no activity. But before we go over what Reclamation was doing after the excitement of 1949-52, I need to review the scaffolding of congressional documents Arizona used to try to build success. First, the facts:

S. 2346 introduced 18 Jun 1946 by McFarland & Hayden; 79th Congress; Democratic;.

S. 433; 29 Jan 1947; 80th Congress -- Republican, with Democratic President Truman.

Hearings held

S. 75; 5 Jan 1949; 81st Cong; Democratic and Truman re-elected

Hearings held

Reported on 3 Aug 1949 by Senate Comm. on Interior and Insular Affairs

Passed by the Senate 55-28.

S. 75; re-introduced 8 Jan 1951; 82nd Cong; Democratic; bill reported 12 Mar 1951; also HR1501 (15 Jan)

Passed the Senate 7 Jun 1951; referred to House Comm. on Interior and Insular Affairs.

Died then, as the Supreme Court was given the task of adjudicating the water dispute.

The committee report of Aug 1949 scotched all previous argument over whether the hydropower was needed, since demand "will continue to grow far beyond present means of supply". Glen Canyon dam was given a boost, for power, silt trapping, and river regulation. The report argued the need for water in Arizona was great enough that authorization should proceed, with judicial action on water rights moving concurrently. California dissented, using hyperbole (grandiose project, excessive costs, unprecedented subsidies, admittedly infeasible…), numbers, and ridicule. It favored constructing Bridge which "has no physical relation to the central Arizona project".

Senate passage in the 81st Congress set the stage for the 82nd. Again, there was a committee report; it used much of the previous one's language. Glen was again boosted; it "should and will be authorized and constructed at an early date as a separate and distinct project". The report did note that the Indian protections were worked out with and agreed to by the Hualapai. The Park Service was given credit for the language that Bridge's height was to be "not more than" 1877' (back to Kanab Creek). The tunnel was thoroughly dropped, California having made special fun of it.

Neither report spends any time on the scenic and recreation aspects, mentions the Grand Canyon, or refers to the decade-long debate over the dam's impact. 

Here is how all these bills start: "Authorizing the construction, operation, and maintenance of a dam and incidental works in the main stream of the Colorado River at Bridge Canyon, together with certain appurtenant dams and canals, and for other purposes". In S2346, this main focus on Bridge is stated as to construct a dam "to an elevation of 1877 feet", with a tunnel and main canal from the reservoir above the dam. That was 1946 (and repeated in S433 of 1947); Arizona still liked the tunnel from Bridge best; an all in-state project. 

The arguments and reports of 1947-8 brought change: the 1949 bill, S75, authorized 1) a dam not less than 1877 feet", 2) "a related system of main conduits and canals, including a tunnel and main canal from the reservoir above the dam". Indeed, the tunnel was specifically deferred until Congress appropriated money for it, while in the same sentence an aqueduct from Lake Havasu was authorized pending the tunnel's construction. Injury was added to insult when the list of costs included the Lake Havasu pumping plants and the Granite Reef aqueduct, but not a $ for that "tunnel and main canal" from Bridge's reservoir.

Only in the 1951 bills do we get 1) a dam not more than 1877 feet" (from "of" to "not less than" to "not more than"; Victory! for the Park; yes??), and 2) a related system of main conduits and canals, including a main canal and pumping plants for diverting and carrying Colorado River water from Lake Havasu". Deleted from even a mention, the tunnel bubble from Bridge reservoir has evaporated, leaving behind it the concept of linkage as still central. Possibly, people still thought of the dam as providing power to pump the water out of the Colorado, and certainly, Reclamation intended that power revenues would be used to help pay for the waterworks. And though, later on, optimum operation of the dam would preclude its power being planned for pumping water -- thus breaking even that link --, revenue generation would remain, and become the fatal Achilles heel,--as the legislation's purposes put it, the dam was for the "sale of electrical energy as a means of making the project herein authorized a self-supporting and financially solvent undertaking".

The purposes from first bill to 1951 Senate passage were "first", river regulation, navigation, & flood control; second, for irrigation and domestic water uses; third, for power.  

S433, 1947, added "a dam on the Gila River in New Mexico"; later on, this was specified as Hooker dam, which would have flooded the Gila back into the Gila Wilderness. An unneeded water-waster, it has never been built, but remained in CAP legislation through enactment in 1968, an indicator of Arizona's affection for its sister state.

After the Do-Nothing Republican 80th Congress, McFarland and Hayden got serious in 1949. Glen Canyon damsite was protected and reserved for the upper basin. As far back as 1946, in response to Los Angeles' attempt to link Glen and Bridge, Reclamation claimed it was in favor of building them together, and conscious of the silt problem, planned to go after Glen. In fact, Reclamation did some work in 1947, particularly in trying to determine the sequencing of Glen and a dam in Marble Canyon. In 1949, Reclamation was having trouble coordinating its upper and lower basin offices over Glen, the Boulder City office going so far as to say that Salt Lake City's work was of no value to it, and disputing over high Marble could be before there was significant head loss at Glen. In any case, work had to be suspended due to lack of funds. Glen Canyon dam is not mentioned in the 1946-7 bills. 

Section 14, written by the Interior Dep't, was added to the S75 version reported from the Committee by McFarland on 3 Aug 1949. It is the longest section, and dealt with Indians, at Hualapai instigation, as I wrote in my 8/8/10 entry. There is no mention of a specific tribe. In response to continued dissatisfaction expressed by Hualapai lawyers, more changes were made before S75 was reintroduced in 1951 and passed by the Senate. The section first gave the U.S. tribal lands as needed for the project, unless the tribe agreed to sell. Next, and the section of most bother, the Secretary was to determine compensation, in money, property, or rights to electric energy. To this 1949 amendment was added the right for the Indians to sue for more money if they were dissatisfied. The Secretary was empowered to decide in some cases how to dispose of the compensation, and in the case of cemeteries, to relocate the graves. 

GCNP River boundary 26: corrections

After reviewing the Park boundaries, I found I needed to fix 6 of my TIF river boundary maps to thicken the Park boundary (I used my brush stroke red2 at size 20) where necessary and make certain corrections.

Here is a list of the maps affected (The N & S indicate which half of the prinitable JPG version the correction would be on when the printables are redone, if ever.):

34-35 N vtsw: thicken  (36113a2)

35-37N wpse; thicken  (36113a3)

41-42N trav: add NP line on Shivwits  (35113g4)

45-47N dvls: thicken (Twin pt)   (35113h6)

49-50N cmbf: remove incorrect NP line up in corner  (36113a8)

50- S snpw: NP line was wrong; had to be moved to 2 miles north, then east.  (36113b8)

I also went into the JPEG list of half maps set up for printing and deleted the uncorrected ones. Replace only if necessary, since that require tilting and cropping the TIF maps.

I also removed all working copies of the tif group, so there is only one full correct set on my computer (and backed up, too)

As of Sep 2010, GCNP Boundary: Summary, including questions (added to, 9/24)

This entry will list each boundary segment by letter, name, boundary sharer, and entry date(s) -- all in 2010 --; then summarize any relevant comments, and in particular, describe any open questions, ambiguities I found, possible disputes, and a brief comment if the boundary might be changed to bring about a more complete GCNP. I use abbreviations for two comments I find apply to several items:
Natural-Line Ambiguity Ameliorated By Friendly Sharers(NLAABFS);
Needs Congressional Correction (NCC)

Introductory entries were made July 12-14. Here are the official map and the segment index map, which better shows the boundary sharers.

A Start and The Colorado River Navajo, Hualapai   Jul 16

  Congress placed the entire water surface from the Paria to the Grand Wash Cliffs in the Park; some bureaucrats, lawyers, and others want to ignore the law.

  Also, the point is introduced here, in connection with the Paria junction, that placing boundaries on natural features, whether in words or on maps, inevitably leads to varying ambiguity on the ground. This is countered by the sharers being friendly  and cooperative; thus obviating the need for fencing, should that even be possible. This is the doctrine of natural-line ambiguity ameliorated by friendly sharers(NLAABFS), which applies with greater or less force on almost every segment.

B Marble Canyon east         Navajo                     Jul 18-23

  My definite view is that the Park boundary comes to the left bank, that the Navajo boundary comes down to the water's edge, and the wet-foot/dry-foot doctrine applies. The U. S. gov't (NPS) never demonstrated the amount of national interest necessary to justify use of the qualifying clause in the 1934 Navajo boundary Act.

C Ancient relic Navajo       Jul 24

  A matter of historically based amusement, that shifting from latitude/longitude to legal section lines (from unsurveyed to surveyed) may have scraped some Park into Navajo land. No matter, the boundary is now well defined.

D NPS Village and rim Kaibab NF         Sep 1, 10

  Is it acceptable that a 320-acre error by map drafters becomes the law? Apparently.

  One assumes that the NPS and FS were partners in setting the line that was only defined with reference to a road survey, and that there is no disagreement. 

E Havasupai Havasupai         Sep 5

 All quiet on this front, in spite of NLAABFS, and oddities in some of the line descriptions.

F Hualapai Hualapai         Sep 6

 Congress put the river surface, to the south bank, in the Park. The Hualapai have claimed to the river centerline; NPS to a highwater line. Both are wrong, as I will argue fully in a later entry.

G West end, the wattle Hual,BLM,LMNRA       Sep 9

 An unthought-through addition, I blush to say, that needs congressional correction (NCC). There is NLAABFS along the fluctuating shoreline of Lake Mead, where the wet-foot/dry-foot doctrine rules. For the time being, G is being correctly defined on maps.

H,I West end & Shivwits LMNRA, BLM         Sep 9

 As with G, H was carelessly defined, NCC, has NLAABFS, and is as correctly drawn as matters.

I Shivwits LMNRA, BLM         Sep 12

 Clear enough in principle, but resulting in mapping differences over odd details, though probably made irrelevant by NLAABFS. 

NCC to include plateau top.

J Andrus-Parashant, Whitmore LMNRA         Sep 13

 In spite of its weird history, the line is well-defined by the "Boundary on Canyon Rim" notation on the Act map after dropping from the Shivwits rim. The canyon rims are fairly obvious, and NLAABFS. Incorrect maps do exist, however, as traps for the unwary.  

NCC to fill out Esplanade and incised canyons.

K GCNMonument #2 LMNRA, BLM, KNF      Sep 16

 The boundary has been contested but stable for 70 years, except for the Coconino Plateau going to the Havasupai. It is now a combination of section lines and NLAABFS. Does upper Toroweap Valley NCC?

L, M Kanab Canyon, Rim Kaibab NF         Sep 17, 19

 Primarily there is NLAABFS with the usual discrepancies in details between different maps. The Act map's notation "Boundary on Canyon Rim" is more puzzling than useful here. 

The argument, however, would not usefully be over different interpretations of the map lines, but how to add the rest of Kanab to the Park, NCC

N Kaibab Plateau Forest KNF         Sep 20

 A long-settled matter; partially NLAABFS.

O P Marble Canyon west KNF, BLM, Glen NRA   Sep 20

 Boundary on the rim including side canyons as shown on Act map;  NLAABFS.

GCNP Boundary: O, P Marble Canyon west: KNF, BLM

These two Segments define the west boundary of the Park along Marble Canyon; O is shared with Kaibab National Forest, P with BLM lands in House Rock Valley. Here is the official map:

The map instruction puts the boundary in both Segments on the Canyon rim. 

GCNP Boundary: N Kaibab Forest Park

There are those who hate the idea of a loggable tree being in a National Park. Or a shootable deer. And thats the story of the Kaibab Plateau's magnificent forest and animal populations. Just as in Kanab's story, the first idea was a Park for the Canyon, but instead the Forest came first, and when the Park did struggle to get born, the Forest Service and its utilitarian friends had the upper hand. Here is the original GC Forest Reserve in red, and the 1908 GCNM marked by green diagonals.

You can see what a deep cut was made in the northern boundary to put the boundary on the rim, and thus most trees in the Forest. And notice too, on the eastern end, Segment O, Marble Canyon, and how its boundary was pushed downstream. 

First anniversary review

September 20 is the first anniversary of this blog. Since I have pontificated at several points about what I am trying to do, I will skip any sermon here and just note that I have about 110 entries. 

What I thought might be worthwhile would be to group entries into categories, to make locating themes and historical lines easier, and remind myself of what I have worked on. The categories are more or less alphabetical; I have grouped what are sometimes called "Indians" together. If there is a - between two dates, then all the entries in that range are on that subject. (2) indicates there are two entries on that date. 

I am continuing on the Park boundary segments until they are done (another week or so), although there is much more to say about most of the topics listed.

ABC's: Basic considerations     2009 Sep 26

Archeohistory (pre whitefolks) 2009 Sep 26

Boundary segments, Park 2010 Jul 12 - 24, Sep 1 - 17 (continuing)

Boundary mapping, River 2010 Feb 7 - Mar 7, Apr 4, 30, May 11, 19

Dams 2009 Sep 22

2010 Apr 4 - 30, May 2 - 7, 16, 17, 29 - Jul 6, Aug 2, 8

GC, the National Park 2009 Sep 20, 22, Nov 1, Dec 2(2), 3, 5(2) - 28

2010 Jan 7, 18(2), 22 - 31, Mar 20, 21

Havasupai 2009 Sep 21(2)

2010 Jan 5, 6, Feb 8

Hualapai   2009 Sep 27

Southern Paiute 2009 Sep 29, Oct 20

Maps & reflections 2009 Sep 28, Oct 23 (3), Dec 3,

Miners 2009 Oct 2, 4, Nov 30

GCNP Boundary: L & M: Kanb Canyon is a Forest; updated 9/20/10

Lets start with a joke. The map below is from the current Kaibab National Forest map centered on Kanab Canyon. The light green is KNF, with the darker green the Wilderness established within KNF. The light orange-tan is BLM, with the darker orange BLM's share of the Kanab Creek Wilderness. The light brown at the bottom is the current National Park, including the Colorado River.

The red line is the boundary of the first GCNMonument set up by Roosevelt in 1908. An earlier post showed how the Forest out of which the GCNM was carved was much more generous in recognizing Kanab's features than the Monument. But it got much worse when the Forest Service and some local stockmen bent Arizona's legislators' ears about the great grazing country that would be lost if the boundary from GCNM were not pared down even further. And so the 1919 GCNP line swept all of Kanab and most of the Tapeats drainage right out of the Park (The 1919, 1927, and 1927 lines are my approximations; see below). It kept in the National Forest all the magnificent redwoods and dougfir and cedar that fill Kanab from rim to rim, making them available --- oops, sorry, thats the NORTHwest. Well, it is true there are trees here and there in Kanab, fine candidates for a Forest Service Scraggly Trees National Forest. And it is true some horses and cows did wander around, messing up the creek, doing in the vegetation, and mooing at the rock art -- until the Forest Service realized grazing was even a bigger joke than the timber.

Anyway, the next chapter was in 1927 when NPS managed to re-coup a bit, squeezing Thunder River and the Tapeats Ampitheatre out of the Forest Service's grasp (blue line).

GCNP Boundary: The Canyon, the Kaibab, and the Strip

We are midway in our traverse of the northern boundary of the Park, and it seems worthwhile to meditate a bit over the setting. Here is the ever-useful Auto Club of Southern California's "Indian Country":

The green line I added in the west bounds the drainage into the Canyon from Toroweap Valley west to the Grand Wash Cliffs. Most of it is part of the so-called Grand Canyon - Parashant NM -- though half of that item drains west over the GWC and down into Lake Mead and Nevada. A thrice-strange anomaly.

This part of Arizona, north and west of the Colorado is the Strip, because of its placement often considered remotest Arizona and even a colony of southern Utah. To me of more importance is that it is the North Side of the Canyon, its hinterlands, its northern backcountry approaches, its topographic setting. Largely federally administered (the biggest exceptions being the Kaibab Paiute lands and settlements along the paved highways, 89A, I15, Az389), it is nevertheless a coherent geographic region without a regional administration, being split among two NPS units, BLM in St. George, and the North Kaibab district of the Kaibab National Forest. 

Kaibab NF is of course the USFS descendant of the original attempt to mark out the Grand Canyon, the 1882 Powell-Harrison GCNP proposal. Just for fun, I have marked that proposal's corners with red crosses. Now lets dream for a little of what would have happened had the GCNP and the Park Service been created before the Forest Service.  Some of the timbered lands would surely have been later cut out of it and placed under USFS. Maybe some of the plains north and south of the river would have been passed onto a Grazing Service.  Perhaps the Havasupai would have gotten their plateau lands back 80 years earlier. And cannot we suppose that much of Marble and Kanab Canyons, explored by the young NPS, would have been permanent parts of the Park? 

Instead, with the Forest Service in place a decade before NPS, eastern Grand Canyon National Park has had to be pulled, hacked, wrenched, bit by mingy bit out of a National so-called Forest to make boundary Segments D, L, M, N & O. And nowhere is the illogicality more illogical than in Segment L across the Canyon's major tributary: Worthy of its own Park, Kanab Canyon, with its Esplanade and side canyons, rising to its own upper rim, is, above the GCNP line, the captive of graziers, foresters, hunters, and uranium miners. 

Back with our meditative speculations, is it even conceivable that had there been an NPS at the Canyon before the railroad came to GCVillage, more attention would have been given to the North Side? Now always an administrative step-child, instead it could have been GCVillage's co-equal, center of a robust North-o-centric administration focussed on the wild and back-country qualities of the Strip, and on working with other agencies along the Park's approaches. Think of the innovative thinking that could happen were there a North Side GCNP office in Fredonia, with a coherent vision of the Canyon from Marble Canyon's overlooks all across the Strip to the Shivwits and its canyons, building cooperative relationships with BLM and the FS for the presentation of the Canyon and the Strip to the public.

GCNP boundary K: A Haunted Monument

The second Grand Canyon National Monument was a haunted creation. Discovered and coveted by enterprising NPS staff in the 1920's for its myriad displays of how vulcanism has affected the Canyon and for the plunging view from Toroweap, encompassing parts of three more plateaus the Canyon has dug into, it was an object of loathing by stockmen and dam-builders from the day President Hoover proclaimed it in Dec 1932. Take a look at this contested space:

We start in 1932 with the red line drawn around about 273 Kac (thousand acres). The area stockmen, with Senator Hayden of Arizona leading the charge, spent the next 8 years trying to pass a law to take land out of the Monument. Their goal was the proposed black line running from west to east. It would have removed almost all of the affected grazing lands, about 150 Kac. The legislation failed, but President Roosevelt took action in 1940 by issuing an executive order removing the lands north of the brown line, a line NPS preferred, leaving the Monument at 197 Kac. However, that boundary did not satisfy opponents, and from the 1950's to 1973, there was pressure to remove the three areas A, B & C, indicated by diagonal lines, about 38 Kac. That effort was thwarted by the 1975 Park Enlargement Act, although the Act did repatriate the plateau southeast of the blue line to the Havasupai. The Act also fixed the Park boundary on the Colorado's south bank. Then in 1999, President Clinton restored a kind of Monument status by proclaiming Grand Canyon - Parashant NM, its eastern boundary indicated by green. This gave the upper end of Toroweap (or Tuweep) Valley recognition, even if not Park status.

So for the moment, Segment K (between the red marks) of the Park follows the boundary set for the Monument in 1940, as shown on the Park Act map:

The citation for Roosevelt's order setting the boundary is Proclamation 2393, 3 CFR 150 (1938-43) reprinted in 54 Stat. 2692 (Apr 4, 1940).

GCNP boundary J: Andrus, Parashant, and Whitmore Canyons

One of the major themes in any political history of Grand Canyon National Park is how often an effort to improve the boundaries ends up highlighting and satisfying the demands and objections of resource exploiters: dam-builders, graziers, loggers, motorized/commercial recreationists, etc. Drawing Segment J, between the Shivwits east rim and the western boundary of the second GCNMonument, brought local stockmen to the fore.

To begin at the end, here is the official 1975 Park Act map for Segment J:

Next here is the boundary/property map NPS-DSC prepared later in 1975 for GCNP, based on its understanding of the vagueness above:

Well, they tried, and with not a lot of detail to go on. They gave a sweep to the northwest horn, like the Act's map. And some of their line is on the rim, giving the Act some reality. 

GCNP Boundary: I: Harmony on the Shivwits (mostly)

Several different proposals were put forward for extending GCNP downriver from 1966 through early 1973, when Senator Goldwater accepted the idea of going all the way to the Grand Wash Cliffs, and introduced his bill with a boundary that also included the Sanup Plateau up to the Shivwits' upper rim. Most of this addition came from Lake Mead NRA (south of the light blue line), with some parts in Boundary Segment H & I coming from BLM (the crosses mark the segment limits). 

  

The "complete Park" advocates had arrived in 1969 at a proposal that followed the dashed black line, corners marked by red crosses; LM boundary in dark blue.

As shown, in fact our proposal took in the turkey wattle, and went to Snap Point, with much other land as well, in spite of our supposedly tying the boundary to the Canyon's drainage. Quite possibly, when NPS-DSC drew up the map for Goldwater's bill, it approximated our 1969 west end, though Goldwater's bill added almost none of the top of the Shivwits, while we wanted to add all its jutting peninsulas and some of the hinterland as well. 

GCNP boundary (add'l info, 9/13): More maps; More problems;

Sep 11: UPDATE:

And a day later, still more on the miniscule Coconino Plateau (CP) addition. Perplexed by my error, I went back through the maps of proposed GCNP boundaries I have that were drawn up, on NPS or congressional request. Several, but not all, of the maps show the number of acres proposed to be added or deleted. The CP addition appears in several of these, and in every case it is  640 acres (= one full section, or two half sections)*. But as I wrote in the Sep 10 entry below, the maps all show a 960-acre addition. 

The CP addition is shown on proposals from the 1950's. On the several maps until 1969, it is very clearly two sections wide by one-half section deep = 640 acres.  As late as Dec 1969, NPS was listing 640 as the number for the CP. Very good. 

Then:

March 70: 3 sections wide by one section deep. Would = 1920 ac.
   But there are no indications in the archives of a desire or decision for more than 640.

Aug 70, 3 wide still, but not quite a full section deep. Listing still says 640 acres.

Mar 71, 3 wide, a full one deep. 640 acres.

Jul 71, 3 wide, not quite one deep. 640 acres.

Aug 71, the same.

Feb 73, the Goldwater bill,not quite three wide; not quite one deep. 640

Nov 73, Senate passed: three wide, half a section deep. 640 acres

Mar 74, Udall bill: not shown

Jul 74, House subcommittee passed: three wide, half deep.

Oct 74, bill as passed the Senate: three wide, half deep. 640

Dec 74, final bill: three wide, half deep 

And this is what is shown on the BLM, FS, and NG maps. I frankly have no memories of any talk about this addition. So if there is something in the archives that explains these changes, and it is not just careless mapping, it will have to wait until I come to write about the 1975 Act's twenty-year history. As for how to reconcile the 640 acres on the legislative process maps with the 960 acres actually added to the Park, well, the map rules, and the as-passed map leaves off the listing of acreages.

*Sep 13: ADDITIONAL INFO: I dug out the 23 Jan 1975 memo on the newly authorized acreage of GCNP, sent by the NPS (DC) Assoc. Dir. for Legislation to the Western Regional Director. The Coconino  Plateau (tract 32) is listed as 640 acres. 

Sep 10:

Today, I added three up-to-date map sources: The 2006 BLM Arizona Strip (and south); the Tusayan District of the Kaibab National Forest (1982/2003); the National Geographic's Grand Canyon East and West (2009 copyrighted), which they say are based on USGS data plus information from other agencies. Lets call the three maps:  BLM, KNF, and NG. 

Right away, in checking boundary segment D between the Park and the Kaibab NF, I found that I had mismeasured the 1975 Coconino Plateau addition; it is 3 half-sections, not 2. The correction of the 1 Sep entry stands now corrected.

I made some other checks. Segment B along Marble Canyon on BLM & NG both show, wrongly as I have written, the Park boundary ¼ mile up from the river on the east, as far as Navajo Bridge. KNF shows the east side of Marble, correctly, on the east bank of the river.

NG, astonishingly, shows the river between the Park and the Hualapai as no-man's-land (a battle zone?), with the Park on the north side. On other parts of the boundary, NG has a purple band for emphasis and a dash-dot line (------- --) for accuracy. Along the river, however, they put in no such line. No explanation I have found so far. BLM comes down decisively in what the sainted Morris Udall called the "goomwah", by putting the boundary in the middle of the river.

BLM and NG do not quite agree on the north line of the wattle, and both seem a little shy of 2 miles for the line going north across the river to Pearce Canyon. The bigger problem, as I wrote, is that Fort Garrett Point, not Snap Point, should be the route up onto the Shivwits. 

NG makes it clear that the drainage with Rampart Cave in it is a separate one, and the Canyon's last, downstream from Cave Canyon.

GCNP Boundary: H I: The Shivwits (revised 11 Sep 2010) ADDITION 27 SEP 2010

The lands defined by the three boundary segments H, I, and J were for the most part from Lake Mead NRA. Had the logical step been taken, the Park boundary would have been drawn to put all of LMNRA east of the Grand Wash Cliffs in the Park. However, significant parts of these Canyon features -- the Shivwits Plateau, Parashant-Andrus Canyon, Whitmore Canyon and vicinity -- were not added to the Park. Strangely, the administration of the non-GCNP Canyon lands was left with LMNRA in Boulder City. That complexity has been compounded by the 1999 proclamation of Grand Canyon - Parashant National Monument, divided between BLM in St George Utah and LMNRA, although the NPS ranger for that area is headquartered at the BLM office. Just to make life even more confounding, the northwestern half of the GC-PNM has nothing to do with the interpretation and protection of the Grand Canyon. Nor with the Parashant, for that matter.

Here is the official 1975 Act map. From the west, segment H is the straight east-west line followed by the bump. Segment I is the wiggly stuff trying to follow a rim. J is the east end including that horn that sticks up northwest below "Boundary". But there is a problem. 

GCNP Boundary: G: EMBARRASSMENT ON THE west end wattle; 9/27/10 CORRECTION

The GCNP boundary segments in the extreme west are dumb.
CORRECTION: Well, no it is not a correction, for it is dumb, but I have remembered/realized to my horror, that I am the dumb one. This Segment G and the one north of the river, Segment H, officially appeared in 1969 on a map drawn by NPS for, I believe, Senator Case, based on the proposal Martin Litton and I worked up for the Sierra Club in March 1966, and that the Club Board approved in 1968. 

Segment F, on the south side of the river, is, at least, well defined. It lies between Lake Mead National Recreation Area (LMNRA) on the west, along the 1964 LMNRA boundary on the south, the Hualapai Reservation on the east, and the south bank (water's edge) on the north. BUT.

I would like to think that had we been less occupied by other additions and subtractions, we might have taken a hard look at this landscape and our goals, and come up with a more Canyon-oriented line. I would like to think that had we had someone to work with in Senator Goldwater's office with the kind of good will and smarts that we found in Representative Morris Udall's, this boundary would have been drawn well in the first place. The facts are that I had six or seven years to think about the boundary's details.

The facts are that in the years from 1967 through 1972, a number of proposals were offered with more or less the aim of going down river from the GCNP to include lands that would have been affected by Bridge Canyon dam plus some other acreage in the vicinity. Those friends of the Canyon who were advocating as complete a Park as possible thought that at least all of the Canyon in LMNRA should be shifted from the Boulder City administration to the Park.

At Dec 1972 and Jan 1973 meetings at his home, Senator Goldwater agreed to our idea of going to the Grand Wash Cliffs. Unfortunately, he turned the details over to his aide T. Emerson. When we (John McComb of the Sierra Club & I) came up to Emerson and offered our help in drawing the map, he stiffed us. Again in 1973, before the Goldwater bill was introduced, Emerson refused our help. Now, I dont believe for a minute that Emerson got out the maps and figured out where the boundary should be. My guess is that he passed it on to NPS and its Denver Service Center. This may be true, but it is not generous. What I did not do was get out the new 15' topo maps in 1973-4 and do my homework. Some kind of apology is in order.
The turkey wattle is what we got south of the river:

GCNP Boundary: B & F: A comment on the NPCA Grand Canyon report

NPCA & the Park boundary; a case to the point

The National Parks and Conservation Association (NPCA) released last month a report on GCNP, covering a number of park-related matters. Their section on the Park boundary along the Colorado with the Hualapai and Navajo indicates a lack of familiarity with important information about some of the same issues I have been writing about. Here are my comments in purple, following their text in black.

GCNP Boundary: F Hualapai (part 1)

When Congress legislated and passed, and the President signed, the Grand Canyon National Park Enlargement Act of 1975, the Park boundary from river mile 164.8 to mile 273.1 was set on the south bank of the Colorado River, as this piece of the official map (113 20 021B, Dec 74, produced by NPS' Denver Service Center) shows.

Note well that the Act set the Park boundary; it did not change the Hualapai boundary, which remained what it had been since the military reservation of 1881. To quote the confirming Executive Order of 4 Jan 1883, that boundary has its                                                                                    

"Beginning at a point on the Colorado River "

and it ends by going

"north 30 miles to the Colorado River, thence along said river to the place of beginning."

Simple, yes? The 1975 Act cleared up the ambiguity in the E.O. by specifying that "on", "to", and "along" the Colorado mean the south bank. It took no Hualapai land.* 

GCNP Boundary: E Havasupai

The most significant change in the Grand Canyon National Park Enlargement Act of 1975 was the enlargement of the Havasupai Reservation to include lands, particularly on the plateaus above Havasu/Cataract Canyon, that should have been included when the reservation was recommended by the governing army in the 1880's (See my entries in Sep 2009.) Approximately 185,000 acres were repatriated to Havasupai sovereignty from the Kaibab National Forest and Grand Canyon National Park and Monument. Here is the official map, with the Reservation diagonally striped (the labels refer to the pre-1975 areas, and see the 1967 map at the end of this entry.

The map was made more exact by wording in the Act itself that the map 

"shall delineate a boundary line generally one-fourth of a mile from the rim of the outer gorge of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River"

and

"shall traverse Havasu Creek from a point on the rim at Yumtheska Point (west side) to Beaver Falls to a point on the rim at Ukwalla Point" (east side). (My parentheses.)

GCNP Boundary: D This is a test... (No 100% for me; correction on 9/10/10)

Segment D of the Park boundary is shared with the Tusayan district of the Kaibab National Forest. In 1908, when the first GCNM was proclaimed, the Forest was the Coconino; the name was soon changed to Tusayan NF in a boundary change, and still later was combined with the Kaibab north of the Canyon, as it remains today. 

Segment D can be considered in two parts: On the east, it follows section lines; on the west, it had a more interesting career. Here is how the GCNM boundary appeared in the years after 1908 as GCNP legislation began its decade-long trek through Congress:

(The dashed and diagonal lines are not relevant here. Also, the western end is truncated because in 1975 that section of the Park and Forest was repatriated to the Havasuapai.)