Lake Powell

Lake Powell is a reservoir on the Colorado River in Utah and Arizona, lying mostly in southern Utah with a smaller portion in northern Arizona. It holds 24,322,000 acre-feet of water when full, second in the United States only to Lake Mead downstream, though Lake Mead has fallen below it in volume, depth and surface area several times in the twenty-first century. The reservoir was created by the flooding of Glen Canyon behind the Glen Canyon Dam and lies within Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, established in 1972 and managed by the National Park Service; about two million people visit each year. It is named after John Wesley Powell, a Civil War veteran who explored the river in three wooden boats in 1869. It stores water for the Upper Basin states under the Colorado River Compact, which requires them to deliver a minimum of 7,500,000 acre-feet a year to the Lower Basin. Between 1963 and 2018, sediment carried in by the Colorado and San Juan rivers reduced its storage capacity by an average of 33,270 acre-feet a year.

Where it is

Lake Powell is a natural landmark near Page, in Coconino County. It is one of the natural landmarks in this database, and appears in the statewide ranking of Arizona attractions.

How this ranking was reached

No official visitor count is published for Lake Powell, so its score rests on public interest and tourism significance, and is capped below the level a measured attraction can reach. That is why the medium confidence above is not higher. The weighting is explained in full on the methodology page, and every axis is broken out under Facts and sources at the foot of this page.

Note on the data: No official visitor count is published for this attraction.

Sources

• Public interest: Wikimedia pageviews (en.wikipedia, human traffic), 2024
• Coordinates and designations: Wikidata(opens in a new tab)
• County: U.S. Census geography via FCC Area API, resolved from coordinates

Record last verified 2026-08-12.