JOUR 455/555 and JW Powell

Expedition

John Wesley Powell as he appears at
the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
E. C. Messer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Powell#/
media/File:John_Wesley_Powell.jpg
public domain

Introduction

In 1868, John Wesley Powell organized an expedition to explore the Colorado River from one of its tributaries in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming southward to its union with the Gulf of California in Mexico. Powell's 10-man party included hunters, trappers, and fellow Civil War veterans.^[1]

The expedition began at Green River Station, Wyoming, on May 24, 1869. The party had four small boats, one of which sank in the Lodore Canyon rapids. The party lost scientific instruments and about a quarter of their provisions, but recovered some barometers used to measure cliff elevation.^[1]

The party entered the Grand Canyon on August 5, at a point that Powell named four days later, writing,

The walls of the cañon, 2,500 feet high, are of marble, of many beautiful colors, often polished below by the waves. As this great bed forms a distinctive feature of the cañon, we call it Marble Cañon.^[1]

Powell named many other features of the Grand Canyon during the voyage, including Silver Creek, which he later renamed Bright Angel Creek.^[1]

The party experienced several problems in the Grand Canyon. They lost a lot of their remaining food because of spoilage and another boat nearly sank. Powell kept a journal, and noted that his crew's morale was low.

On August 28 three party members quit and traveled to the nearest American settlement 75 miles away. They may have been killed by members of the Shivwits band of the Paiute people who may have believed that the crew members were encroaching on Indian territory. Powell stopped the expedition next day at the meeting of the Virgin and Colorado rivers, a site now covered by Lake Mead.^[1]

Powell returned to the Colorado River two years later with an 11-man crew funded by Congress. That journey included several scientists. It began on May 22, 1871 and ended on September 7, 1872.

Powell and his crew created the first reliable Colorado River maps.^[1]

Sources:

[1] McNamee, G. L. John Wesley Powell: American Explorer, Geologist, and Ethnologist. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Wesley-Powell

Map and Video

Highlight a date on the map to find out more about Powell's expedition, observations made by members of his crew about the weather, the condition of their boats, and their rations, and why some of his crew never returned home.

Sources:

[1] American Experience/WGBH. John Wesley Powell's First Expedition Down the Colorado River. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/
americanexperience/features/
canyon-john-wesley-powells-first-expedition/

Follow John Wesley Powel's expedition at:

United States Geological Survey. 150th Anniversary: J.W. Powell's Perilous River Expedition. https://eros.usgs.gov/image-gallery/story-maps/150th-anniversary-jw-powells-perilous-river-expedition

Watch the U.S.G.S video commemorating the Powell expedition at:

United States Geological Survey. John Wesley Powell, Canyon Geologist. https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/john-wesley-powell-canyon-geologist

Media Guide for United States Geological Survey. John Wesley Powell, Canyon Geologist. http://denisemeeks.com/journalism/jour_555/ powell/powell_media_guide.pdf

Map used with written permission of
American Experience/WGBH

More About Powell

Aton, J. M. (1994). John Wesley Powell. Boise State University Western Writers Series. https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/
viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=wws

Di Roma Howley, K. (May 23, 2019). Green and Grand: John Wesley Powell. Eos Earth & Space Science News. https://eos.org/features/green-and-grand-john-wesley-powell-and-the-west-that-wasnt

Hein, R. (December 26, 2018). John Wesley Powell: Explorer, Thinker, Scientist and Bureaucrat. WyoHistory.org. https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/john-wesley-powell-explorer-thinker-scientist-and-bureaucrat