> **JOHN WESLEY POWELL AND THE GRAND CANYON**

America\'s most famous red rock formation is located in Arizona, and is
the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon was sculpted by the downward movement
of the Colorado River through it, and contains towering buttes, mesas,
and valleys. Visitors to Grand Canyon National Park can view old lava
flows, hills of volcanic debris, and igneous rock.

Before construction of the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams along the
Colorado, scientists estimated that the average flow of the river,
during a typical June month, might be around 85,000 cubic feet per
second (cfs). (Peak flows, on a number of occasions over the previous
4,000 years, might have reached over 250,000 cfs. As the primary river
of the Southwest, the river drains about 242,000 square miles of land,
from the states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah,, New Mexico Arizona, Nevada,
and California. The headwaters are located in Rocky Mountain National
Park. It passes through the Grand Canyon, beginning at Lee's Ferry and
dropping 2,200 feet before it reaches the end of the Canyon, at the
Grand Wash Cliffs, 277 miles away. Since the building of the dams, the
river\'s flow rates have dropped to around 30,000 cfs and the water
temperature has dropped from as warm as 80 degrees F to an average 42
degrees F, which has driven native fish to endangerment or extinction,
and the introduced rainbow trout has compounded this loss. The red silt
and sediments that gave the river its color and name are trapped behind
the Glen Canyon Dam in the bottom of Lake Powell.

The first Europeans to see the canyon were members of the exploration
party headed by explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, in late 1540.
Because it was so very difficult to gain access to the canyon, it was
not fully explored for more than three hundred years. Several
expeditions by the United States Army began about 1850, but the first
passage by an American through the Canyon was accomplished by John
Wesley Powell in 1869.

![](media/image1.jpeg){width="1.4861111111111112in"
height="1.5555555555555556in"}John Wesley Powell was a child of the
frontier, growing up on a subsistence farm in Wisconsin He showed an
early interest in geology, botany, and Native American culture. He
became a self-taught teacher in order to finance his scientific
education. While he was teaching in Illinois, the Civil War broke out,
and Powell enlisted in the Union Army, studied fortifications, and
became a friend of Ulysses S. Grant. He was in charge of the ditch
construction for the siege of Vicksburg. It was during the Battle of
Shiloh that his right arm was shattered by a miniball. Even after the
amputation, with the care of his wife, Emma Dean, he participated in the
battles of Atlanta and Franklin.

He left the service, as a major, in 1865, and accepted a position as a
professor of geology and curator of the museum at Illinois Wesleyan
University. River trips before the Civil War and a field trip with
students to the Rocky Mountains in 1867 inspired Powell to begin plans
to explore the canyons of the Colorado River. Frontiersmen and fur
trappers had navigated the upper parts of the river, but no one had ever
completed exploring the river to its mouth (now under Lake Mead). Powell
had four wooden boats built that he hoped would withstand the rumored
rapids, whirlpools, and falls. To his lead boat, the Emma Dean, he had a
captain's chair lashed to the deck and, from there, he handled the
tiller and filled his notebooks with his observations.

![](media/image2.jpeg){width="2.577777777777778in" height="4.0in"}On May
24, 1869, he and his nine recruits headed down the Green River with the
cheers of well-wishers ringing in their ears. By the time they reached
the end of their expedition, three members were dead, two boats were
smashed, and most of their provisions were lost or were unfit to eat.
The scientific expedition had changed to one of survival. Three months
and six days later, on August 30, 1869, they came out of the Grand
Canyon and were greeted by four fishermen who had been watching for
floating debris from the "ill-fated John Wesley Powell Expedition."

Among Powell's accomplishments on this first trip, was the discovery (by
an American explorer) of the last unknown river in the United States,
known as the "Dirty Devil," and the mountains it skirted, named the
Henry Mountains. With his constant climbing and careful map making, he
had shown the wide drainage of the Colorado River, and described the
river as the daughter, not the mother, of its tributaries.

Powell convinced Congress of the importance of continued research in the
West and was granted \$10,000.00 to establish the Geographical and
Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region. In the summer of 1872,
he completed a second descent of the Colorado River, returning with more
data.

Afterwards, he resigned from his university position and went to work
for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He published his
combined findings in [The Exploration of the Colorado River and its
Canyons]{.underline}. It included information on the Native American
tribes and the observation that the nation needed a single government
agency to oversee exploring, mapping, and inventorying the river' s
natural resources.

Among his many accomplishments, Powell helped organize the United States
Geological Survey and became its second director. He set the standard
and began the huge job of drawing and publishing quality maps of the
United States, including the topographical maps used by today's hikers.
He also served as the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology from 1880 until
his death in 1902. The last part of his life was spent on philosophical
and ethnographical writing. (he coined the word "Amerind" to distinguish
American Indians from the natives of India.)

His understanding of the aridity of the West was ignored by most of the
people moving to the Great Plains, where they had been assured that
"rain follows the plow." The lack of water west of the hundredth
meridian had been understood by Powell. He had stated that the West
could not be changed even if all the surface water between the Columbia
River and the Gulf of Mexico were to be used. He could not have known of
the water stored in aquifers. (The region's groundwater is projected by
some current experts to be depleted within the next one hundred years.)
Consequently, his vision and insight needs to be heeded. His proposals
for laws to protect the West were partially addressed by the creation of
the Bureau of Reclamation in 1902; his warning that there is too little
water to irrigate all the land remains largely ignored to this day.

Displaying intelligence, creativity, and enthusiasm, this self---made
man of science put his love of his country and his belief in serving the
public good foremost in his life. He died on September 23, 1902, in
Haven, Maine, and is buried in

Arlington National Cemetery.