50 Fun Facts About Colorado River

What has the Colorado River rarely done since the 1960s because farms and cities take nearly all its water?

Dams and diversions have dried up the river's last 100 miles, so it has failed to reach the sea in most years since the 1960s.

The Colorado River takes its Spanish name from which feature of its water?

Its reddish color came from the mud the river once carried in vast amounts; the name Rio Colorado first appeared on a missionary's map in 1701.

Which one-armed Civil War veteran led the first boat expedition through the Grand Canyon in 1869?

John Wesley Powell lost his right arm at the Battle of Shiloh, yet in 1869 he spent three months riding wooden rowboats through uncharted rapids.

Which European landmark was bought, shipped to Arizona and rebuilt at Lake Havasu City on the Colorado River?

London Bridge was bought by developer Robert McCulloch, who rebuilt its granite facing over a channel he dredged to draw tourists and home buyers to his new town.

Which California lake formed by accident when the Colorado River burst through an irrigation canal in 1905?

The Salton Sea filled a dry desert basin for two years while the entire river poured in, and it is now the largest lake in California.

Which much-photographed curve of the Colorado River lies just downstream of Glen Canyon Dam near Page, Arizona?

Horseshoe Bend is an entrenched meander where the river swings almost full circle, 1,000 feet below a cliff-edge overlook.

Which desert city draws about 90 percent of its water from the Colorado River through intakes in Lake Mead?

Las Vegas gets around 90 percent of its supply from Lake Mead and earns credits for the water it returns to the lake.

An entirely separate Colorado River, the longest wholly inside one US state, flows through which state capital?

Austin sits on the Texas Colorado, which runs from the plains near Lubbock to Matagorda Bay and never meets its western namesake.

About how deep has the Colorado River cut into the plateau at the deepest point of the Grand Canyon?

The canyon is about 1 mile deep from rim to river, and the rocks laid bare at the bottom are up to 2 billion years old.

Which tiny marine mammal, the most endangered on Earth, lives only in the sea beside the Colorado River's delta?

The vaquita, whose name is Spanish for little cow, is the smallest of all cetaceans and drowns in gillnets set illegally for another fish.

The Colorado River's delta lies at the head of which long, narrow sea on the Pacific side of Mexico?

The Gulf of California, also called the Sea of Cortez, would stretch far inland to the desert town of Indio if the river's silt had not walled off its northern end.

The Colorado River begins as a trickle at La Poudre Pass, on the Continental Divide inside which national park?

Rocky Mountain National Park holds the headwaters: a wet meadow at 10,184 feet where the mighty river starts out as a tiny stream.

Which president dedicated Hoover Dam in 1935, when the job was running two years ahead of schedule?

Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the dam on September 30, 1935, and a star map set into the terrazzo floor beside it records the sky at that moment.

Which town, built in 1931 to house Hoover Dam's construction workers, still bans gambling inside its limits?

Boulder City began as a strict federal company town where alcohol stayed illegal until 1969, and it is one of only two places in its state that prohibit gambling.

Arizona's governor sent National Guard troops in the 1930s to halt construction of which Colorado River dam?

Parker Dam was being built to feed a California aqueduct, and Arizona feared losing its water; it is also the world's deepest dam, with most of its height sunk below the riverbed.

Which state settled for the smallest share of Colorado River water because its leaders prized dam power instead?

Nevada took just 300,000 acre-feet a year, a fraction of its neighbours' shares, because officials assumed groundwater would cover future growth.

Which tributary, longer than the upper Colorado itself, joins the Colorado in Utah's Canyonlands National Park?

The Green River is the Colorado's largest tributary, so Wyoming and Utah objected in 1921 when Congress declared the shorter branch the main stream.

The bridge beside Hoover Dam is named partly for which NFL player who was killed serving in Afghanistan?

Pat Tillman left the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army; the arch that shares his name carries a highway about 890 feet above the river.

Before its dams, the Colorado River carried the second-most silt of any North American river, behind which one?

Only the Mississippi moved more: the Colorado once hauled up to 100 million tons of silt a year, most of which now settles in its reservoirs.

Which natural record later showed that the Colorado River was divided among states during unusually wet decades?

Tree rings revealed that the years used to set each share were probably the wettest in at least five centuries, so more water was promised than the river holds.

Which safety item did Hoover Dam's builders order by the thousand after workers improvised their own using tar?

Hard hats were ordered by the thousand after the men who dangled from the canyon walls dipped cloth hats in tar and let them harden; the factory-made kind were first called hard boiled hats.

Tunnels under the Continental Divide send Colorado River water east to which state capital for half its supply?

Denver sits on the dry side of the mountains: about 80 percent of its state's people live east of the divide, while 80 percent of the precipitation falls to the west.

From 1852 to 1909, which vessels hauled soldiers' and miners' supplies up the lower Colorado River from the sea?

Steamboats worked the desert river for more than fifty years, beginning with a 65-foot side-wheeler named Uncle Sam, until Laguna Dam blocked the channel.

Which Arizona city at an ancient crossing of the lower Colorado River does Guinness rank as the sunniest on Earth?

Yuma grew up where the channel narrows enough to cross, and the sun is said to shine there for about 90 percent of daylight hours.

Which giant endangered bird, released nearby in 1996, is sometimes seen on Navajo Bridge above the Colorado River?

The California condor, North America's largest land bird, disappeared from the wild in 1987 before condors were released again at cliffs near the bridge.

The heavily dammed Colorado River is often given which nickname that likens it to a great African river?

America's Nile suits a desert river that waters 5.5 million acres of farmland; each drop is said to be used about 17 times in a single year.

What repeatedly dammed the Colorado River in the prehistoric Grand Canyon, once to a height of 2,300 feet?

Lava flows from a volcanic field in northern Arizona built at least 13 natural dams, and the lake behind the highest stretched almost 500 miles upstream.

Scouts from which conquistador's hunt for the Seven Cities of Gold were the first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon?

Coronado sent García López de Cárdenas north in 1540; his party reached the South Rim, badly underestimated the canyon's size and left disappointed, with no gold.

Which Edward Abbey novel follows eco-saboteurs whose ultimate target is Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River?

The Monkey Wrench Gang, published in 1975, was so influential that monkeywrenching became a word for sabotage carried out to protect wild places.

David Brower, who called the drowning of Glen Canyon by a Colorado River dam his greatest sin, led which group?

The Sierra Club under Brower stopped two dams planned for Dinosaur National Monument, but Glen Canyon's dam was enlarged in exchange, and he saw the canyon only after the decision.

Which sandstone span, reached by boat across Lake Powell, ranks among the largest natural arches in the world?

Rainbow Bridge stands 290 feet high and is held sacred by neighbouring tribes, whose name for it means rainbow turned to stone; visitors can reach it by a two-hour boat ride.

Which Arizona launch point for Grand Canyon raft trips divides the Colorado River's Upper and Lower Basins?

Lees Ferry is named for John D. Lee, who ran boats across the remote crossing while hiding from the authorities after the Mountain Meadows Massacre; he was executed in 1877.

The 336-mile Central Arizona Project lifts Colorado River water uphill to Phoenix and which city near its far end?

Tucson lies near the end of an aqueduct whose 14 pumping plants lift the water as much as 2,900 feet along the way.

Before upstream dams, which natural phenomenon, known locally as El Burro, surged up the Colorado River's estuary?

A tidal bore, a wave driven upriver by the incoming tide, once stood up to six feet high here and travelled 47 miles inland.

Eusebio Kino, whose 1701 map first named the Rio Colorado, proved which region was a peninsula, not an island?

Baja California was drawn as an island on many European maps until Kino led an overland expedition there and found the land was joined to the continent.

Which president signed the 1921 resolution that renamed the Grand River as the upper Colorado River?

Warren Harding signed it after a Colorado congressman spent more than a decade arguing that a river named for his state ought to begin inside it.

Which interstate's final major section, opened in 1992, squeezes through Glenwood Canyon beside the Colorado River?

I-70 threads the gorge on 40 bridges and viaducts, with the eastbound lanes cantilevered out over the river for much of the way.

Which lodge beside the Colorado River on the floor of the Grand Canyon is reachable only by trail or boat?

Phantom Ranch opened in 1922 to a design by architect Mary Colter, and every building material except the rock had to be hauled down by mule.

Which tribe owns the glass-floored Skywalk that juts over the rim of the Grand Canyon near the Colorado River?

The Hualapai opened the curved walkway in 2007 on their reservation, where its glass deck hangs 70 feet out over a drop of 500 to 800 feet.

The cliff-edge finale of which 1991 film, set at the Grand Canyon, was actually shot above the Colorado River in Utah?

Thelma & Louise shot its Grand Canyon scenes beside Dead Horse Point State Park, and almost the whole road trip was filmed in California and Utah.

The concrete in Hoover Dam could pave a two-lane highway stretching from San Francisco to which city?

New York marks the far end of that imaginary road; engineers calculated that if the dam were poured in one go, the concrete would take 125 years to cool.

Which Utah town beside the Colorado River, gateway to Arches National Park, was the 1950s Uranium Capital of the World?

Moab boomed after geologist Charles Steen struck rich uranium ore nearby; long before that, it was one of the few natural places to cross the river.

Which federal agency built Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon Dam and most other big dams on the Colorado River?

The Bureau of Reclamation was created in 1902 to irrigate the arid West, and within five years it had begun about 30 projects across the Western states.

Hoover Dam plugs which gorge of the Colorado River, whose waters are now a designated National Water Trail?

Black Canyon takes its name from the dark volcanic rock of its walls, and a cave drilled there by the dam's builders is now known as Sauna Cave.

The 1922 compact dividing the Colorado River among seven states was signed at a lodge near which state capital?

Santa Fe hosted the signing at Bishop's Lodge, and the deal was promoted by Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, years before the great dam took his name.

What became of the three men who quit the 1869 Grand Canyon river expedition two days before it ended?

They vanished after hiking out of the canyon, sure the rapids ahead would kill them, while the boats they abandoned reached safety two days later.

Which type of bomber has rested on the bed of Lake Mead since ditching there during a research flight in 1948?

A B-29 Superfortress studying cosmic rays struck the mirror-smooth lake while flying low; all five crew climbed into life rafts and watched it sink.

Which endangered fish of the Colorado River system has been reported at six feet long and more than 100 pounds?

Pikeminnow were once a staple food fish along the river, but dams wiped them out of the lower basin and they were among the first species listed as endangered.

During the 1983 floods, engineers raised Glen Canyon Dam's spillway gates with emergency extensions made of what?

Plywood boards fixed atop the gates held back extra water while the spillway tunnels were being gouged out, losing thousands of tons of concrete and rock.

Up to 90 percent of the water flowing in the Colorado River starts out as what?

Melting snow from high ranges feeds the river each spring, with the surge usually beginning in April and peaking in May or June.