United States
Page, Arizona exists because of a dam and has flourished because of what the dam created. When the Bureau of Reclamation began construction of the Glen Canyon Dam in 1956, they needed a base camp for the workers who would spend a decade plugging the Colorado River with 4.9 million cubic metres of concrete. The town that sprang up on the mesa above the construction site was named after John C. Page, a former commissioner of the bureau, and its original character was purely utilitarian — rows of government housing, a commissary, and the relentless desert sun of the Colorado Plateau. Today, the dam has impounded Lake Powell — a sinuous, 300-kilometre reservoir that fills the canyons of the Colorado like water poured into a maze — and Page has become the gateway to some of the most photographed landscapes in the American Southwest.
Horseshoe Bend, five minutes south of Page, is the single most iconic viewpoint in Arizona — and possibly in the entire American West. The Colorado River executes a nearly perfect 270-degree turn around a sandstone mesa 300 metres below the rim, creating a horseshoe-shaped meander of such geometric perfection that it appears designed rather than eroded. The viewpoint, reached by a short walk from a parking area, drops visitors at an unfenced cliff edge where the vertigo is real, the scale is disorienting, and the play of light on the river — jade green against the rust and cream of Navajo Sandstone — changes character with every passing cloud. At sunset, the canyon walls ignite in shades of orange and crimson that defy the camera's ability to record them faithfully.
Antelope Canyon, located on Navajo Nation land just east of Page, is the landscape photographer's holy grail. This slot canyon — carved by flash floods through Navajo Sandstone over millions of years — is a subterranean cathedral of flowing stone walls that seem to have been sculpted by wind and water into organic forms of extraordinary beauty. Between late March and early October, when the midday sun strikes the canyon at the correct angle, shafts of light penetrate the narrow opening above and illuminate the sandstone in bands of orange, violet, and gold that shift and pulse as the sun moves. Upper Antelope Canyon, the wider and more accessible section, and Lower Antelope Canyon, deeper and more intimate, are both managed by Navajo guides who control access and ensure the fragile sandstone is protected.
Lake Powell, the reservoir formed by Glen Canyon Dam, extends its tentacles into over 90 side canyons that together create nearly 3,200 kilometres of shoreline — more than the entire Pacific coast of the contiguous United States. Boat tours navigate through narrow canyons of striated sandstone where the water reflects the rock walls in shimmering patterns of red, white, and blue. Rainbow Bridge, accessible by boat from the lake, is one of the world's largest natural bridges — a sandstone arch sacred to the Navajo people that spans 84 metres and rises to a height that could accommodate the Statue of Liberty beneath its curve.
Page is visited by Tauck on American Southwest itineraries as a land component. The ideal visiting window is April through October, with late spring and early autumn offering comfortable temperatures (summer highs regularly exceed 40 degrees Celsius) and the optimal light angles for Antelope Canyon photography. All visits to Antelope Canyon require Navajo Nation permits and guided tours — advance booking is essential, particularly during the peak photography hours around midday.