Downtown Page, 1958.

If a clever photo editor removed the 1955 Cadillac, the “Parking Area” sign, and the Firestone store’s prominent display of tubeless tires and shiny bicycles, the image could easily be mistaken for a late 19th century mining camp just springing to life. It, of course, is not. The five tin buildings constituted the bulk of what was downtown Page in 1958.
The sign on the horizon beyond the spiffy Cadillac identified Page Jewelers. The business was owned by Ernie Severino, who was one of the new town’s earliest entrepreneurs. Earl Brothers and Bill Warner operated the Firestone franchise. The shop did not sport a full service automotive bay — or anything close to it, but sold refrigerators, toasters, percolators and other items of domesticity that folks plugged into Page’s unreliable electrical system. Other useful items were sold at Max Ward’s Rexall drugstore. Despite a mildly deceptive name, work clothes were the principal fashion at the Style Center, and footwear was gotten at Jones Shoe Shop.
Beyond the camera’s view finder, and housed in a much larger tin building, was Babbitt Brothers Trading Post. During construction, its manager, George Koury, collected grocery lists from Page housewives, filled the orders at the Babbitt outlet in Flagstaff, and delivered the coveted foodstuffs door to door.
Fronting the trading post were two gasoline pumps wearing the Chevron logo, but unattached to anything resembling a service station. Johnny Keisling’s pickup truck doubled as an office, and his pants pockets did duty as a cash register.
Nearby, Dr. Ivan Kazan, the town’s only physician, stitched cuts and dispensed medicine from an innocuous looking eight-foot-wide trailer house (“mobile home” had not entered the lexicon) — identical to the one he lived in next door.
Rudimentary as downtown Page was, it was a marked improvement over the earliest days when a construction company mess hall doubled as a restaurant, commissary, and post office — the mail spread atop long dining tables waiting retrieval.
Established in 1957 for the express purpose of housing construction workers building Glen Canyon Dam, Page was owned and administered by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation. Situated atop Manson Mesa overlooking the Colorado River, land for the town site was acquired in a swap with the Navajo Nation — and its isolation was nearly complete. Kanab, Utah, some 70 miles west, was the nearest town. Flagstaff, the nearest city of any consequence, was 160 miles south.
The town’s early residents were pioneers in every sense of the word. The water supply — it was hauled in from a well at the village of Coppermine on the Navajo Reservation — was laden with silt, and diesel-generated electricity was an on again, off again proposition at best. Television reception was nonexistent, and radio was spotty before the sun went down. There were no restaurants or movie theaters, and the sale of alcohol was prohibited. Streets were unpaved and most were lined by snow fencing covered with burlap bags in a futile effort to keep blowing sand from inundating everything in its path.
During the town’s earliest days, school was held in a war surplus troop carrier parked at the lip of the mesa. Soon, three adjoining tin buildings were erected. On Sundays the makeshift buildings were used for church services, and the various denominations rotated according to a complicated schedule.
Pioneering was, however, a short-lived adventure. Engineers at the Bureau’s Denver offices had designed a town as desirable as any in Arizona. Little by little, the plan eased off the drawing board and was put in place. Three hundred permanent homes were constructed on red sandy desert bladed into wide tree-lined thoroughfares snaking across the mesa. A city park, complete with a municipal swimming pool was built, and directly across the street a thoroughly modern school complex was erected.
Tin buildings were dismantled and hauled away, replaced by attractive business establishments on the town’s commercial boulevard. In the blink of an eye — or at least a comparative blink — Page sported a modern hospital, super markets, gas stations, restaurants, motels, a bowling alley, a drive-in theater, and 12 churches. The alcohol ban was lifted and even a tavern was built.
The dam was completed in 1964. Today, Page is a city of about 7,000 people largely dependent on tourist dollars generated by Lake Powell — the byproduct of Glen Canyon Dam.
— W. Lane Rogers. Photo courtesy of author.