WSP04994

• File Number: 8221.110.J
• Description: Juniper-Cross Mountain Project
• State: CO
• Basin: Yampa/White
• Date: 7/6/1981
• Title: The Echo of Echo Park: The History of National Park Development and Water Resource Nondevelopment in Northwest Colorado
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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One congressman took to the Congressional Record and called the
statements of project opponents "false and malicious propaganda" in
leading people to believe that the river ride was safe and follow~
up with the complaints of a California couple on the extreme hazards
and dangers that they faced. (51)

While some accounts referred to such trips as flirtations with
suicide and others spoke of wonderous thrills, the Sierra Club or-
ganized. several rafting trips to better acquaint people with the
project site. Actually, David R. Brower, executive director of
the Sierra Club and a leader in the opposition to Echo Park described
to a Senate COmmittee in 1954, the potential of river running through
the project area: "With good business administration, an expanded
boat concession ,in Dinosaur probably has a potential something like
this...twenty campsites would be occupied each night, and about that
many trucks and buses would be busy shuttling boats and people to
the starting points. About 70,000 persons could thus see parts of
Dinosaur from the river each summer season, perhaps spending about
$10 per day for transportation and meals on the river..."(52)

However, Brower's vision of the use of rafting through the Dino-
saur National Park area was not to be. What a dam and fear could not
do to river rafting potential, National Park Service regulations
did. Rafting through Dinosaur 1S severely limited and regulated.
Campsites are assigned and permits are required. Regulations pro-
hibit the same person from rafting down the river twice in one season
and park rangers cite rafters who don't wear life jackets and who
attempt to run the river without a permit. Although substantially
more applications for permits are received, the number of persons
that can raft the rivers through Dinosaur is limited to about 15,000
to 17,000 (53) people per year, a number substantially lower than
the 70,000 envisioned by Brower in 1954.

ECHO

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ECHO

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ECHO

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ECHO

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ECHO

Following the lead of General U. S. Grant III, opponents to
Echo Park and Split Mountain Reservoirs quickly seized upon the
theme of alternate dam sites, most prominent of which was Cross
Mountain.

Grant was an engineer in the Army Corp of Engineers and later
retired to become president of the American Planning and Civic As-
sociation. He did a study on optional alternatives and his conclu-
sions were used and reused by several environmental organizations.
Although his studies were elaborate, Grant summed up his position in
Congressional testimony by saying "I recommend omission from this
list and from further consideration the Echo Park Reservoir and
bringing forward from second to first priority the Gray Canyon and
Cross Mountain reservoirs." (54)

The Cross Mountain Reservoir of that time period, had the dam
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