John Powell's gripping account of his 3-month 1869 expedition to explore the Colorado River territories. Introduction by Wallace Stegner. Penguin Nature Library.

The Exploration of the Colorado River

History

John Wesley Powell

Americas

University of Chicago Press

Excerpt from The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons: Formerly Titled: Canyons of the Colorado N my return from the first exploration of the canyons of the Colorado, I found that our journey had been the theme of much newspaper writing. A story of disaster had been circulated, with many particulars of hardship and tragedy, so that it was currently believed throughout the United States that all the mem bers of the party were lost save one. A good friend of mine had gathered a great number of obituary notices, and it was interesting and rather ﬂattering to me to discover the high esteem in which I had been held by the people of the United States. In my supposed death I had attained to a glory which I fear my continued life has not fully vindicated. The exploration was not made for adventure, but purely for scientific purposes, geographic and geologic, and I had no intention of writing an account of it, but only of recording the scientific results. Immediately on my return I was interviewed a number of times, and these interviews were published in the daily press; and here I supposed all interest in the exploration ended. But in 187 4 the editors of Scribner's Monthly requested me to publish a popular account of the Colorado exploration in that journal. To this I acceded and prepared four short articles, which were elaborately illustrated from photographs in my possession. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons: Formerly Titled: Canyons of the Colorado (Classic Reprint)

Science & Math

Earth Sciences

Forgotten Books

Dust jacket notes: "One hundred years ago, ten men in four boats swept down the raging Colorado River on the first trip through the Grand Canyon. Major John Wesley Powell led the epic journey, over rapids considered impassable, to chart the unexplored river and its surrounding canyons. On August 30, 1869, thirteen weeks after the expedition left Green River Station in Wyoming Territory, the one-armed Major, with only two boats and six survivors, emerged from the canyon to find men fishing with nets for their remains. Down the Colorado contains John Wesley Powell's dramatic journal of 1869, edited and introduced by Don D. Fowler; it is as exciting today as it was when portions first appeared in Scribner's Magazine, ninety-five years ago. Drawings and photographs, the work of Powell's contemporaries, enhance the text. To reveal fully the beauty of the Grand Canyon country and the thrill of a Colorado River trip, Eliot Porter has contributed a 48-page gallery of four-color photographs. Dr. Porter, America's foremost photographer of nature and author of In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World and The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado, has made several river trips to gather the breathtaking illustrations for this book. His epilogue is a memorial to Glen Canyon, which today lies drowned and lost; it is also a tribute to the river that stills roars through Marble and Grand canyons. In Eliot Porter's vivid words and pictures, the exhilaration of moving waters springs to life...'"

DOWN THE COLORADO. John Wesley Powell; Diary of the First Trip Through the Grand Canyon, 1869.

New York: Dutton, 1969

“One of the most significant and seminal books ever written about the West, . . . the classic statement of the terms on which the West could be peopled.”—Wallace Stegner (from the introduction). 
John Wesley Powell's arid lands report was the first to argue that the American West could not support a conventional system of agriculture and that its lands could not sustain unlimited development. He recognized that water was a more precious resource than land, that rainfall could never support agriculture in the region, and that controlled irrigation offered the best use of its natural resources.
Years of drought have proved the value of his advice, which was not well received by an expansionist nation. Despite opposition from the timber, cattle, and mining industries, Powell's work led to the first assessments of the available water supplies and to the consolidation of government surveys and policies under one administration.

The Arid Lands

WALLACE STEGNER

John, Vernon

Bison Books

Powell was a civil war officer who later took a teaching position at Illinois Normal University. He was by nature an explorer and spent considerable time tramping the upper Midwest. In the summer of 1867, he and some of his students made a field trip to the headwaters and tributaries of the Green River. Intrigued with the country, he returned in 1868, wintered there, and decided to mount an expedition to explore the course and navigability of the river. On May 24, 1869, Major Powell and a small band of men launched four boats to begin what would be a 99-day expedition from known territory in Wyoming to known territory in Nevada. Between the two settlements lay some 1000 miles of what Powell called "the Great Unknown." He and his men basically had to invent expedition river running. The boats, stout and heavy, were off-the-shelf navy longboats with sharp cutwaters, meant to be rowed bow-first on the sea rather than down rock-studded rivers. Powell's discovery run, fraught with excitement and tragedy, proved that the river originating in northwest Wyoming was the same river that ended in the Gulf of California, that it went through the Grand Canyon, and that it could be traveled by boat. As they came down the river they took periodic observations of latitude and longitude, elevations, and estimates of distance that allowed mapmakers to show the river's course. In 1871-1872 Powell led a second expedition over most of the same route. Several accounts of the expeditions were published in government documents and popular publications of the time and were read avidly by those who planned to try the river later.

Down the Colorado: Diary of the First Trip Through the Grand Canyon

Promontory Press

The Canyons of the Colorado

Travel

United States

Outdoor Printing

The great unknown of the Southwest is conquered by a one-armed man and his crew of adventurers, placing the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon on the map of the American continent. It is a journey no human being had ever made before. Dangerous rapids, narrow canyon walls offering no escape, terrifying river waterfalls, capsized boats, near drowning, lost equipment and disillusioned men are dramatically described by John Wesley Powell, leader of this adventurous party. In this first recording as an audio book, Powell powerfully describes the spectacular beauty of the landscape, the fascinating lives of the indigenous people and the courageous efforts of the expedition party.

The Exploration Of The Colorado River and It's Canyons

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