terrain July/August 2020
47
T
he middle part of this story is the best known. In 1869, a one-armed Civil War major named John Wesley Powell led a ragtag expedition of 10 mountain men and ex-soldiers in four wooden rowboats down 1,000 miles on the Green and Colorado rivers. The crew became the first Americans to pass through what was then called Big Canyon. While camped at the Little Colorado River, Powell described it as the "great unknown", and he later renamed it Grand Canyon. The three-month trip came with many hardships and exhausting portages. By the time the expedition emerged from the Grand Wash Cliffs, near present-day Lake Mead, there were only six emaciated men in two boats. The three who left the expedition and hiked overland, a few days before, would never be seen again. And the story of this first descent soon became an American legend. The basics of this adventurous story were all that I knew when I became a raft guide in California at age 20. The details remained scant when I put down Powell's book after 50 dull pages - other than recognizing that the author really enjoyed topographic descriptions. At the time, running whitewater seemed way more interesting. Years later, I was a transplanted teacher living in St. Louis. When some friends and I began exploring the Powell route with kayaks and rafts, I decided it was time to learn the full story. Along the way, I discovered a few things. First, if you skip the opening 100 pages of Powell's book, it gets pretty interesting. Second, Powell had an eventful latter life. After the 1869 river trip, he returned for another expedition in 1871-72. Powell later managed several geographic surveys of the West. He became the second director of the US Geological Survey. He started the Bureau of American Ethnology and recorded many aspects about Native American cultures and languages before the destruction from
TOP:
Commemorative stamp of the 1869 expedition.
LEFT:
John Wesley Powell at age 35. (NATIONAL PARK SERVICE)
OPPOSITE:
Red Canyon on Green River.
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