In the fall of 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower touched a telegraph key in the White House Cabinet Room to trigger a dynamite blast 1,900 miles to the west, marking the start of construction on the Glen Canyon Dam.

More than six decades later, conservation advocates and environmentalists are hoping the Biden administration will set an implosion in motion — albeit a metaphorical one — this time mothballing the 710-foot dam on the Colorado River in northern Arizona.