Long before Temple Bar Marina had paved parking lots and modern docks, it had a rudimentary pier and a floating store. That was the early 1950s at one of Lake Mead’s most remote outposts, a place that even today travelers describe as the lake’s best-kept secret. The America250 initiative is a moment to celebrate the way some places refuse to lose their character, and at Temple Bar Marina, a proud part of the Adventures Unbound family, the early-resort character is still very much intact.

The History

Temple Bar is located on the Arizona side of Lake Mead within the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, a protected area managed by the U.S. National Park Service. The reservoir itself was created after the construction of Hoover Dam, which was completed in 1935, filling the Colorado River canyon to form one of the largest reservoirs in the United States. The recreation area was first designated as the Boulder Dam Recreation Area in 1936 and was later renamed Lake Mead National Recreation Area in 1947, making it the first national recreation area in the U.S. park system.

The name Temple Bar refers to a “bar” of land, a raised estuary sandbank, that sits near a striking rock formation known as Temple Butte. Long before it was a marina, the area was home to a French company operating a placer mine near the rock formation in the 1890s. After Hoover Dam transformed the river corridor in the late 1930s, the first guest cabins at Temple Bar appeared in 1947, marking the start of the marina’s modern era as a recreation destination.

The early days were charmingly improvised. The floating store that served visitors in the early 1950s, along with the rudimentary dock that anchored the operation, captured the spirit of a marina that was building itself in real time. The creation of Lake Mead also submerged several historic river landings and ferry crossings along the Colorado, and steamboats that once carried supplies up the river from the Gulf of California are now part of the underwater history of the lake.

The Connection

The lands around Temple Bar belong to the deep history of the Southern Paiute, Chemehuevi, Mojave, and Hualapai peoples, who lived and traded along this stretch of the Colorado for generations. Their stewardship of the river is the foundation everything else rests on, and the steamboat trade that ran from 1852 to 1909 connected this corner of the Arizona desert to a much larger Southwestern trading economy.

Temple Bar today is known for its quiet stretches of shoreline, its dark skies, and the kind of stargazing that has become harder to find anywhere near Las Vegas. The remote location that made it a challenge to develop in the 1940s is the same quality that makes it one of the most peaceful corners of the lake today. The cabins are simple, the marina is no-frills, and that is exactly the point.

For more America250 stories from across our properties, visit Adventures Unbound’s America250 page.