Page, Arizona

High-resolution image (260 Kb)

This isolated community near the northern Arizona border is of special interest because of its origin and location. Unlike other towns in the area, Page was created in 1957 to house workers and their families during the construction of nearby Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. Its 44-square-kilometer (17-square-mile) site was obtained in a land exchange with the Navajo Indian tribe. The town is perched atop Manson Mesa at an elevation of 1,311 meters (4,300 feet) above sea level and 183 meters (600 feet) above Lake Powell.

After the dam was completed in the 1960s, the town grew steadily to today's population of 6,200. Because of the new bridge and roads built for use during construction, it has become the gateway to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Lake Powell, attracting more than 3 million visitors per year. Page is also the home of two of the largest electrical generation units in the West. Glen Canyon Dam has a 1,288,000-kilowatt capacity when fully online. The other power plant to the southeast is the Navajo Generating Station, a coal-fired steam plant with an output capability of 2,250,000 kilowatts.

Astronaut photograph ISS006-E-28359 was provided by the Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory at Johnson Space Center. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA-JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.