GREEN RIVER, UT — Glen Canyon was covered by Lake Powell in the 1960s.
The canyon, prior to Lake Powell, will be remembered in an exhibit at the John Wesley Powell River History Museum starting May 4.
But, this isn’t like any other museum exhibit you’ve seen. The title of the exhibit, “Glen Canyon: A River Guide Remembers,” sets the tone for the year-long exhibit.
Ken Sleight will be the highlight of the exhibit and will attend the opening reception at 5:30 p.m. on May 4.
Ken Sleight was one of the first guides in Glen Canyon during the infancy of the river running industry.
That was in the mid-1950s, just as the Glen Canyon Dam blueprints jumped from the drawing board to remote desert terrain. The pulse of the Colorado River through the canyon would soon be halted by a cement wall and Glen Canyon backfilled with water.
Ken knew the condition of the canyon was terminal. He used every ray of daylight to memorize every detail of the canyon before inundation: to learn its 125 side canyons, to observe Native American ruins and mining relics, and to immerse himself in the lives of seminal guides who preceded him like Dave Rust, Bert Loper, and Moki Mac.
Now 88 years old, Ken and a team of Glen Canyon curators open the archives to create this unique exhibit.
With historic landscape photographs, First American artifacts, boats and other gear, passenger portraits and journals, guides’ handwritten-packing lists, and more, this is an exhibit as simple, gritty, and rich as a trip through Glen Canyon with Ken. Within the walls of the John Wesley Powell River History Museum, Glen Canyon lives again.
To say Ken Sleight is a legend is an understatement. The character “Seldom Seen Smith” in Edward Abbey’s Novel “Monkey Wrench Gang” was loosely based on Sleight. “It was Glen Canyon that changed my whole life,” he says. “It made an environmentalist out of me.”
The exhibit will continue through March, 2019.
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