Page, Arizona

Street of the Little Motels

These mid-century motels once housed the workers who built the Glen Canyon Dam.

Walk along 8th Avenue in the Old Quarter of Page, Arizona, and you’ll stroll down a street lined with motels. When compared to the newer accommodations that have popped up throughout the city, they don’t look like much. But spend the night in one of these motels, and you’ll be sleeping in one of the apartments once used by construction workers who built the nearby Glen Canyon Dam.

Page is a relatively new city. It was founded in 1957, after starting out as a government camp for the construction of the massive Glen Canyon Dam. For seven years (1956 through 1963) large numbers of construction workers were housed temporarily in Page as construction on the dam, Rainbow Arch Bridge, and associated projects progressed.

Since the construction’s completion, Page has steadily grown from a town into a city and is now major tourist destination for the area’s stunning visual landscapes and vistas, such as Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Lower and Upper Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and a variety of other beautiful natural features in the region.

As a result, many new hotels and lodging establishments have been built in and around Page in recent years. However, the first motels that were constructed date back to the original development boom of the mid-to-late-1950s when construction of the dam and related projects were taking place.

These quaint mid-century motels are in many ways the historical foundation for Page. Today, several of them remain in operation and they are recognized with historical signage, street banners, and a special street name and designation: “Street of the Little Motels.”