When it comes to nostalgia, though, Page’s can’t run too deep. Age-wise, as American communities go, the city is a relative toddler. Founded in 1957, the small city (pop. 7,500) sprang up atop Coconino County’s Manson Mesa as a settlement for the construction crews (and their families) working on the nearby Glen Canyon Dam.

The roughly 17-square-mile area that Page occupies today was Navajo Nation-owned, secured in a land exchange with the Navajo tribe. Originally called Government Camp, the name was later changed to Page to honor John C. Page, who had served as the U.S. Commissioner for the Bureau of Reclamation in the 1930s and ’40s. He was deeply involved in the early planning and politicking that resulted in the massive Glen Canyon Dam being approved and constructed. 

Page, Glen Canyon Dam, and Lake Powell—the body of water that the dam created—are tightly interwoven in their history and current identity. Since the dam’s construction, the city of Page, in essence, has become the gateway to the enormously popular Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Lake Powell, attracting more than four million annual visitors. Today, Glen Canyon and Lake Powell are both managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The region was made for tourists and outdoor enthusiasts. “International tourism factors very heavily into our economy,” Martinez explains. “Maybe 50 percent of the millions of visitors here annually are international in their origin. But we also attract domestic tourists—we have a big draw from Utah, California, and Nevada, as well as local traffic here from within the state.”
 
With that level of visitor firepower, it’s easy to understand why Page’s economic development has largely been focused on tourism, to the exclusion of most other economic drivers.

“We’ve always been a lake-oriented, seasonal tourist community, just because of Lake Powell and, historically, that’s where we’ve focused our growth,” Martinez confirms. 

Still, with some recent changes in city management, Page is trying to gradually alter that paradigm, at least somewhat. To assess what can be done to diversify Page’s appeal, the city has recently hired a full-time business development specialist who’s based at the local Coconino County Community College.
 
“And we’re also trying to bring in some [business development] incubators and accelerators,” Martinez adds. “We want to make sure that we’re looking at some diversification of our businesses and our community makeup. Right now, we’re relying almost solely on tourism, and that doesn’t make me very comfortable.” 
Among the steps Page’s city managers are taking, Martinez describes their efforts to work on a “smart city” initiative, to build a more robust fiber infrastructure into the community, a necessity for attracting new businesses.
 
“I can envision us becoming a hub of sorts—a tech center,” he says. “Who wouldn’t want to work a tech job in Page and be able to then grab a boat and spend some time on Lake Powell?”
 
That’s not to say that the more traditional business support initiatives are taking a back seat, however. Page’s tourism-centered retail is still king. “The bottom line,” Martinez says, “is that there’s nothing more important to us than our existing small businesses. They’re the backbone of our community.”

Young says that the Page city government has been very supportive of their efforts to grow. “We’ve been able to reach out to the city and ask them for guidance and best practices, and for the most part, they’ve been very helpful. It’s nice having such a good relationship with them,” she says. “The entire economic development team in Page has really been doing a lot to grow business here.”

Young’s operations manager Deron “DeJay” Lister concurs. “The next expansion for us is launching a boat-rental company. We’re diversifying our portfolio and really grabbing onto business that’s coming to Page,” he notes, admitting that it’s not an easy path forward. “We do need to diversify beyond just tourism. And through studies we’ve done with Northern Arizona University and our own local college, we’ve speculated on what industries would do well here in Page—but it’s a process. For our location being as remote as it is, I would say we’re on track and growing fairly well. As a part of that growth, though, we need to focus on business retention and upgrades to current businesses.”
 
Martinez echoes Young and Lister’s sense of direction for Page. “Our No. 1 goal right now is to strengthen our small businesses,” he states. “Like everybody else, we’re in recovery mode from the pandemic and we’re not completely out of the woods just yet. Our mission is to continue to provide support to our small businesses, and there’s nothing else that we’re looking at until we know that they’re safe and doing well.”

• The city of Page was named for John C. Page, a 1930’s Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. The city was planned and developed for the workers building the Glen Canyon Dam in 1957.
• At an elevation of 4,300 feet atop Manson Mesa and overlooking Wahweap Bay of Lake Powell, Page has become a major resort area. The National Park Service estimates that the Page/Lake Powell area had 4.3 million visitors in 2019.
• Lake Powell has 1,960 miles of shoreline, which is longer than the entire west coast of the continental United States. There are 96 major canyons to explore, as well as Rainbow Bridge National Monument that can be explored via watercraft.
• Located in the center of “Canyon Country,” Page is just a short drive from the North or South Rim of the Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion National Parks, Monument Valley and Canyon De Chelley.
• A broad range of community facilities are located in Page, including museums, a community center, library, recreation center, visitor center, golf course, parks and sports complexes.
• There are around 40 lodging facilities with roughly 3,000 rooms, not including RV parks and camping. There are multiple meeting facilities with the largest of these seating approximately 400 people.
• Weather in Page is temperate with an average yearly maximum temperature of 72 degrees and an average yearly minimum temperature of 47 degrees. Average yearly total precipitation is 4.78 inches.
  

Source: cityofpage.org