Why It's Called The Wesley

The most common question at our front desk, after "where is the coffee," is "who is Wesley?"

Fair question. There is no Wesley on the deed. Neither of us is called Wesley. It is not a family name, and it is not a made-up boutique word chosen because it tested well.

It is a middle name. It belongs to a man who lost an arm in a war, ran an unmapped river with the one he had left, and gave the canyon under Lake Powell its name. The lake was named for him. The street we sit on was named for the lake. And when we bought a tired motel at 150 North Lake Powell Boulevard and had to decide what to call it, the answer had been sitting on the street sign the whole time.

Fringio / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

The man

John Wesley Powell was born in 1834 in western New York, the son of a Methodist preacher who named him after the founder of the church. [1] He grew up in the Midwest, taught school, collected rocks and shells, and rowed the Mississippi alone for the fun of it.

Then the Civil War. Powell enlisted with the Union, and at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862 a musket ball hit his right forearm as he raised it to signal a charge. The arm was taken off below the elbow. [2] He went back to the war anyway and finished it as a major.

He was thirty-five, one-armed, and a geology professor in Illinois when he decided to do the thing nobody had done: run the Green and Colorado Rivers through the last blank space on the map of the United States.

The river

On May 24, 1869, Powell and nine men put four wooden boats into the Green River at Green River Station, Wyoming. [3] The lead boat was a sixteen-foot pine pilot boat he named the Emma Dean, after his wife. He rode it strapped into an armchair bolted to the deck so he could see the water ahead.

Three months and about a thousand miles later, six of them came out the bottom of the Grand Canyon. One boat had been wrecked in the first month. Three men had walked out rather than face the rapids below and were never seen again. Powell had lost most of his instruments and nearly all the food.

Along the way, he named things. Flaming Gorge. The Dirty Devil. Bright Angel Creek. And a long, quiet stretch of the Colorado in what is now southern Utah, where the river slid between sandstone walls past hanging gardens and side canyons full of cottonwoods, which he called Glen Canyon. [4]

He went on to run the U.S. Geological Survey for thirteen years and to argue, mostly unsuccessfully, that the arid West should be settled slowly and carefully around its water. [5] That argument is still going on. You can hear it in every conversation about the lake.

The dam, the lake, and the town

Glen Canyon is gone now. It is under about four hundred feet of water on a good year and a good deal less this year.

In 1956 the federal government started building Glen Canyon Dam across the Colorado, and in 1957 it built a construction camp on a mesa above the site to house the crews. That camp became Page, Arizona. [6] The town was named after John C. Page, a Reclamation commissioner, which is why the town is not called Powell and the lake is.

Our building went up in those first years, as housing for the dam crews. [7] It is the first hotel in Page and it is older than the town's charter. Over the following decades it was the Page Boy Motel, then the Lake Powell Canyon Inn, and it slid, the way old motels do. We wrote about that when we bought it.

The dam was finished in 1963. The reservoir that rose behind it and drowned Glen Canyon was named Lake Powell, for the man who had named the canyon it covered. [8] The main road through the town that had been built to build the dam became Lake Powell Boulevard.

We are at number 150.

Patrick Pelster / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Why not just call it the Powell?

We thought about it. There is already a Powell Museum in town, or there was. There is a Lake Powell Resort. Half the businesses on the boulevard have Powell in the name. Adding one more felt like borrowing.

Wesley was the part of him nobody uses. It is quieter. It sounds like a person, not a landmark. And it lets the building be named for the man rather than for the reservoir, which matters to us, because the man spent the last third of his life warning that the West would run out of water if it kept pretending otherwise. Naming a hotel after his lake, in a year the lake is at 22 percent, would feel like leaving the sign up.

So: The Wesley. Not a first name. The middle name of the man the lake and the street are named for.

Where to find him in Page

The Powell Museum on Lake Powell Boulevard has closed, and the Glen Canyon Conservancy, which ran it and holds the collection, is moving the exhibits around its other locations. [9] Here is where his story lives now, all within a few minutes of us.

Carl Hayden Visitor Center at the dam. Five minutes by car. The story of the dam, the river, and the people who lived in this country long before Powell came down it. Free.

Glen Canyon Conservancy, two doors down from us. The Conservancy's store and the three-dimensional map of the whole Glen Canyon country. Ask about a map talk. Every direct booking at The Wesley includes a one-dollar donation to the Conservancy, which you can decline when you book.

Our lobby, we hope. We are working with the Conservancy to bring pieces of the Powell collection into the building so the public can keep seeing them. That is a hope, not a promise, and we have learned the hard way not to print promises about this building until they are bolted to the wall. When it happens we will say so here.

The part that is actually about you

We did not name the hotel after Powell because we are history people. We named it after him because the thing he did, going down the river to see what was actually there instead of trusting the map, is the thing every guest who comes to Page is doing in a smaller way.

You drove a long way to stand on the rim at Horseshoe Bend, or to walk into a slot canyon, or to see a lake that was a canyon sixty years ago. That is the whole reason this town exists and the whole reason we are rebuilding this building instead of a newer one somewhere easier.

Wesley went to look. So did you. Welcome.

Go deeper

• USGS: the 1869 Powell Expedition, the agency he ran, on the trip that made him.

• Glen Canyon Conservancy: Powell Museum and Glen Canyon Archives for the collection and where it is on view now.

• NPS: John Wesley Powell for a short, well-sourced biography.

• Powell's own account, The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, is out of copyright and free to read online. It is better than any summary, including this one.

FAQ

Who is The Wesley named after?
John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War veteran and geologist who led the first recorded expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers in 1869 and named Glen Canyon. Lake Powell and Lake Powell Boulevard, our street, are both named for him.

Is The Wesley a historic building?
It was built as housing for the crews constructing Glen Canyon Dam in the late 1950s, which makes it the first hotel in Page and older than the town itself. It later operated as the Page Boy Motel and the Lake Powell Canyon Inn.

Is the Powell Museum in Page open?
No. The Powell Museum has closed. The Glen Canyon Conservancy holds the collection and is rotating exhibits through its other locations, including the Carl Hayden Visitor Center at the dam and its store on Lake Powell Boulevard.

Why is the town called Page and not Powell?
Page was named for John C. Page, a commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, when the dam construction camp was founded in 1957. The lake was named for Powell when the dam was finished in 1963.

Where can I learn about John Wesley Powell in Page?
The Carl Hayden Visitor Center at Glen Canyon Dam, the Glen Canyon Conservancy on Lake Powell Boulevard, and, when the pieces arrive, our lobby.

Book direct

We are the only boutique hotel in Page, at 150 North Lake Powell Boulevard, two doors from the Conservancy and five minutes from the dam. Renovated rooms are open and bookable now, and more come online every few weeks.

Book direct for our best rate. Two night minimum, free cancellation up to seven days out. Direct only.

Check dates at thewesleyaz.com or call (928) 612-3300.

Adam Walz and Micah Thomas, owners. We are in Page most weeks for the renovation. The people on our front desk are the ones who actually live here.

Footnotes

1. John Wesley Powell, born March 24, 1834, Mount Morris, New York; father Joseph Powell, a Methodist preacher. Britannica and NPS biographies, verified September 2026.

2. Powell was wounded at Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing) in April 1862; his right arm was amputated below the elbow. Emerging Civil War, NPS, verified September 2026.

3. The 1869 Powell Geographic Expedition departed Green River Station, Wyoming Territory, on May 24, 1869, with ten men and four boats: the Emma Dean, Maid of the Canyon, Kitty Clyde's Sister, and No Name. USGS and Wikipedia, verified September 2026.

4. Glen Canyon was named by Powell during the 1869 expedition. NPS Glen Canyon and USGS, verified September 2026.

5. Powell served as the second director of the U.S. Geological Survey, 1881 to 1894, and argued for careful water-based settlement of the arid West. USGS, verified September 2026.

6. Glen Canyon Dam construction began in 1956; Page, Arizona was established in 1957 as a construction camp and named for Reclamation Commissioner John C. Page. USBR and City of Page, verified September 2026.

7. The building at 150 N Lake Powell Blvd was built to house Glen Canyon Dam workers and is the first hotel in Page.

8. Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1963 (power generation from 1964, dedication 1966); the reservoir was named Lake Powell in Powell's honour. USBR and NPS, verified September 2026.

9. The Powell Museum at 6 N Lake Powell Blvd has closed and the building was listed for sale; the Glen Canyon Conservancy is rotating exhibits among Carl Hayden Visitor Center, Navajo Bridge Interpretive Center, and its Flagship Store, and moving the 3-D map to the store. Lake Powell Chronicle and canyonconservancy.org, verified September 2026.