John Wesley Powell

American explorer

• Born: March 24, 1834
• Birthplace: Mount Morris, New York
• Died: September 23, 1902
• Place of death: Haven, Maine

Powell led the first party of exploration to descend the gorges of the Green and Colorado Rivers by boat, stimulating interest in the geology and scenic wonders of the Grand Canyon. He also helped to establish the concepts of large-scale damming and irrigation projects as the keys to settlement and agricultural survival in the arid lands of the American West beyond the one hundredth meridian.

Early Life

John Wesley Powell was the son of a circuit-riding Methodist minister who supplemented his income by farming and tailoring. In 1841, when Powell was about seven years old, the family moved from New York to Ohio. The abolitionist views of the Powell family were not well received in Ohio, and John Wesley had such a difficult time at school that he was eventually placed under the direction of a private schoolmaster. This proved a significant experience, for the young Powell accompanied his tutor on biological field trips and developed a strong interest in both biological and physical science. The family eventually moved on to Illinois, where John Wesley grew to maturity. He spent several years combining a career as a teacher in Wisconsin and Illinois with sporadic attendance at several colleges, including Wheaton, Oberlin, and Illinois College. During this period he undertook extensive natural history excursions and ambitious journeys by boat down the Illinois, Des Moines, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers from St. Paul all the way to New Orleans.

When the Civil War came, Powell immediately enlisted as a private in an Illinois volunteer infantry company. He rose quickly through the ranks and became a student of military engineering and fortifications. He met and became a friend of General Ulysses S. Grant and eventually commander of his own battery in an Illinois artillery unit. He led his battery into the fierce struggle at the Hornet’s Nest in the Battle of Shiloh, where he was hit by a Minié ball, requiring the amputation of his right arm. Despite his injury he continued in service, seeing action and carrying out important duties in a number of major campaigns and rising to the rank of brevet lieutenant colonel.

After the war, Powell returned to Illinois and became professor of natural history at Illinois Wesleyan College, later moving to Illinois Normal University at Bloomington. By this time he had become accustomed to taking his students into the field as part of their training, but he was increasingly obsessed with the desire to reach further afield. He was particularly drawn by the glamour and mystery of the trans-Mississippi West and began to assemble the ingredients that would allow him to make his first major expedition into that area.

Powell was instrumental in the establishment of a state natural history museum in Bloomington, and as its first curator he secured funding from several governmental and private sources to undertake a collecting expedition into the West. His friendship with General Grant enabled him to arrange for low-cost rations from army posts and for military protection for part of his trip. In 1867, the expedition, including students, amateur naturalists, teachers, and family members, set out from Council Bluffs on the first of Powell’s major expeditions. The summer was spent examining the country and collecting specimens in the Colorado Rockies, and Powell remained after most of his party returned east and journeyed along the Grand River in Colorado.

During the following summer, Powell returned to the Rockies with an expedition of twenty-five people, sponsorship from various Illinois state institutions, and encouragement from officials of the Smithsonian Institution, who were intrigued by his plans to explore among the rivers and high peaks of Colorado. After time collecting specimens in the Middle Park region, in late August Powell and six of his party made the first ascent of Long’s Peak. They then moved into the White River basin, intending to follow it down to the Green River and on to a winter reconnaissance of the Colorado River.

By then Powell had become thoroughly captivated by Western adventuring and scientific exploration and was obsessed by the unknown mysteries and legends of the Colorado. He had actively promoted his ideas and successfully publicized his activities and plans and had something of a reputation as an explorer and scientist, as well as good connections in the political and scientific communities. Although this five-foot-six, bearded veteran with only one arm hardly looked the part of the great explorer, Major John Wesley Powell was on the threshold of one of the great Western adventures.

Life’s Work

The gorges of the Green and Colorado Rivers were among the few remaining unexplored areas on the North American continent. The legends that had been constructed out of the tales of Indians, mountain men, and other sources told of a region of enormous waterfalls, vicious whirlpools and rapids, and enormous rock cliffs that offered no escape or refuge from the punishment of the river. Essentially Powell and his men would plunge into a river descent of nearly nine hundred miles with no real idea of what terrors and adventures lay before them. Back east, Powell made the best preparations he could. A Chicagoan built four small wooden boats, one sixteen feet long of pine, the other three twenty-one feet, of oak, with watertight compartments. Powell secured some financial support from a variety of public and private sources, although most of the meager financing came out of his own pocket. He assembled a varied group of nine companions, and on May 24, 1869, after several weeks of training, they set off down the Green River toward the Colorado.

The explorers were on the river for ninety-two days. Their small vessels plunged through turbulent rapids, foaming cataracts, and towering canyon walls that at least matched most of the myths and legends. Two boats were lost, one expeditioner deserted early, and three others were killed by Indians as they gave up on the river journey and attempted to climb out of the Grand Canyon. A confidence man surfaced who claimed that he was the only survivor of a wreck beneath a falls that had claimed the lives of the other members of the expedition, and newspapers across the country reported that Powell’s party had been defeated by the river. By the time they in fact surfaced at a Mormon settlement below the canyon, Powell and his men had explored the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon and had discovered the last unknown river and mountain range in the American West. Powell’s prodigious expedition marked him immediately as an American hero and one of the great explorers in the nation’s history. It also meant that he could attract support and financing for further activities.

Powell returned to the Colorado two years later and retraced his original steps, now with the sponsorship of the Smithsonian Institution and the Department of the Interior. This expedition was a more determinedly scientific endeavor, operating as a survey group, the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Rocky Mountains, and they undertook a careful study, survey, and mapping of the canyon country.

Powell became fascinated with the question not only of how the region—its canyons, plateaus, and mountains—looked but also of how they had been formed. He undertook additional Western expeditions and employed men who explored the high plateaus of Utah, the Colorado Plateau, Zion and Bryce canyons, and the Henry and Uinta mountains. The work of Powell and his associates introduced the idea of vast processes of uplift and erosion as responsible for the topography of the canyon and plateau country. They helped to popularize the geological concept of “base level of erosion.” Powell’s findings and ideas were published as Explorations of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries (1875; revised and enlarged in 1895 under the title Canyons of the Colorado ).

Powell’s interest in the topography and geology of the Western regions led him naturally to a concern about the management of its lands. In 1878 he published A Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States , which has been described as among the most important works ever produced by an American. Powell rejected both the concept of the inexhaustibility of natural resources and the idea that the West was the “Great American Desert” and not capable of supporting substantial settlement. Powell’s familiarity with the West had convinced him that its lands and climate west of the one hundredth meridian were simply not suitable for development under policies that had been shaped by the conditions in the eastern regions. The arid lands of the West required a different strategy, and the key was water management.

Powell argued that the arid regions would not support the traditional family farm on the eastern model and that the lands of the West should be categorized and utilized according to their most efficient uses for grazing, lumbering, mining, farming, and other purposes. Water should be considered a precious resource to be allocated by the community for the benefit of society in general rather than a privileged few. Government should undertake large-scale damming and irrigation projects so that the arid regions could be “reclaimed” and become productive. Powell’s ideas represented a significant departure from the conventional wisdom regarding land use and the West, and his prestige as an explorer and scientist, coupled with his office as director of the United States Geological Survey from 1881 to 1894, put him in a position to be enormously influential in shaping the establishment in 1902 of the United States Bureau of Reclamation, which helped to make water management one of the major components of the early conservation movement.

During his Western expeditions, Powell had become fascinated by the cultures of the Indian tribes of the region, and it is characteristic of the man that he became a student of anthropology and headed the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution during the same period that he led the Geological Survey. In 1880 he published his Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages .

Major Powell’s retirement in 1894 was brought about partially because of physical ailments and partially because of his frustration in trying to get his ideas implemented. Ironically, his death in 1902 coincided with the passage of the Reclamation Act , which institutionalized many of his theories concerning land and water management.

Significance

Powell’s career was significant on several fronts. As an explorer, his journey down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1869 ranks as one of the epic American adventures. His scientific background and interests prepared him for important accomplishments in mapping, surveying, and studying the geology of the plateau and canyon country, and for long service as director of the United States Geological Survey. During the same period, he headed the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. Powell became most interested in the problems of proper management and utilization of the lands in the arid West and was convinced that intelligent water management was the key to its development. He is one of the fathers of the concept of “reclamation” of arid lands through the construction of dams and irrigation projects.

Bibliography

Bartlett, Richard A. Great Surveys of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962. A comprehensive treatment that includes the work of Powell.

Darrah, William C. Powell of the Colorado. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1951. A useful scholarly biography. Well researched, drawing on some unpublished sources, but rather colorless. Includes illustrations.

Exploring the American West, 1803-1879 (National Park Handbook no. 116). Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1982. This 128-page booklet is profusely illustrated and contains several photographs of Powell and his survey. The text is by William H. Goetzmann.

Fradkin, Philip L. A River, No More: The Colorado River and the West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. Focusing upon the Colorado River and its tributaries, Fradkin discusses the federal land and water policies that shaped much of the West. Powell’s role in the evolution of these developments is considered.

Goetzmann, William H. Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book is the standard general treatment of the role of exploration in the American West. Contains a chapter dealing with Powell’s life and career.

Powell, John Wesley. Seeing Things Whole: The Essential John Wesley Powell. Edited by William de Buys. Washington, D.C.: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2001. A collection of Powell’s writings, including selections from A Report on the Lands of the Arid Region, and writings expressing his ideas about civilization, western settlement, and allocation of natural resources. The selections are annotated and have introductions placing them within the proper context.

Savage, Henry, Jr. Discovering America, 1700-1875. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. A very readable survey that is particularly good on the nineteenth century explorations.

Schwartz, Seymour I., and Ralph E. Ehrenberg. The Mapping of America. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1980. An enormously detailed and lavishly illustrated history.

Stegner, Wallace. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954. The standard biography. Stegner brings a novelist’s gifts to his compelling narrative. Illustrations juxtapose early artists’ renderings of the Grand Canyon with some of the first photographs of the region.

Wild, Peter. Pioneer Conservationists of Western America. Missoula, Mont.: Mountain, 1979. A brief, breezy, superficial account that contains a chapter on Powell’s explorations and theories.

Worster, Donald. A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Thorough, detailed account of Powell’s life from his childhood through his years directing the Bureau of American Ethnology.