Stephen R. Donaldson once wrote that the best way to emotionally destroy a man is to take that which he holds to be infinitely precious, break it, and give it back to him. Donaldson could have noted that the outrage can be made even more psychically damaging by NAMING THE RESULT after that person.

For example, take Yosemite National Park, detonate a dozen nuclear bombs within it, and then call the result "The John Muir Memorial Nuclear Wasteland." Imagine how Muir would feel at having his name used for such an abomination.

Another example: fill Walden Pond with sewage and industrial sludge, and call it "The Henry David Thoreau Cesspool."

How about a real life example: put a dam across the southwestern end of Glen Canyon, flooding the canyon and side-canyons a hundred miles upstream. Bury ten million plants, the habitation for a million animals, two dozen Native American cliff dwellings, and a dozen springs under water and silt. Call the result "Lake Powell."

John Wesley Powell would be outraged at what some blackguard villains have done to Glen Canyon. If the dead could come back to haunt the living, he has the ultimate motivation for doing so. I imagine that the ghost of Powell would feel so much rage and resentment that it would try to strangle to death the evil sociopaths responsible for the despicable act. The knowledge that the desecrated, ravaged, despoiled land he so loved was then named after him must cause his ghost to wail in futile, impotent fury.

When Glen Canyon was flooded, a vast ecosystem was destroyed.

When Glen Canyon was flooded, nine thousand years of American history, in the form of rock art, cliff dwellings, and sacred burial sites were destroyed.

When Glen Canyon was flooded, the loss of fresh water due to evaporation and soil submersion increased two orders of magnitude. The surface evaporation expanded by the square, and the soil leaching increased by the cube. The reservoir greatly DECREASED the amount of fresh water available to American citizens.

This crime, this atrocity was inflicted against every American citizen who has ever lived and who will ever live. Glen Canyon did not and does not belong to the goat-molesting bastards who flooded it; it did not and does not belong to the assholes who built marinas on its shore. Glen Canyon belonged and belongs to every American citizen as their birthright. Having it destroyed was a crime against humanity and against the millions of living things that had thrived there. The criminals responsible for destroying this precious American treasure deserve the vilification, spite, and hatred of every human being who has reverence and respect for beauty and magnificence.

The crime of flooding Glen Canyon was worse than burning down the Smithsonian Institute's vast collection of American historical artifacts. It is worse because Americans will continue to make history and historical artifacts; it would take hundreds of years to repair Glen Canyon, and it will never be as superbly awe-inspiring as it once was.

John Wesley Powell, if alive today, would hunt down and piss on the bastard who named the dead carcass of Glen Canyon after him. He would slap the bastard across the face with his glove and demand satisfaction with pistol or sword.

Who could blame him?