- ANTONE PIERUCCI
- Posted On
This Week in History: Powell’s Grand Canyon expedition
At the end of America’s Civil War, hundreds of thousands of veterans, both blue and gray alike, set out to lose themselves in the continent’s vast western wilderness.
Large tracts of the country – ostensibly territory of the United States – had never felt the tread of one of its citizens.
This was especially the case in the southwest, where endless deserts and arid high mountain ranges barred all but the foolhardy from entering.
The foolhardy and the scientifically curious, that is. Of course, in the late 1860s, the two were not mutually exclusive.
The American government had been funding exploratory expeditions into the heartland and farther afield since at least Lewis and Clark.
Even as the country raced headlong into civil war, government-subsidized parties mapped out new stretches of wilderness in the Rockies and Sierra Nevada Mountains.
In 1853, America purchased a stretch of land from Mexico in the southwest, completing what today is our border with that country.
It’s true, the conflict between the states put exploration on a bit of a hiatus, but the moment it ended, things went back to normal. The transcontinental railroad got under way and new routes through the southwest were added to the country’s expanding consciousness.
Gradually, the task that had started half a century before was finally ending – fewer and fewer corners of the map remained “unknown territory.”
One stretch that obstinately kept its secrets closed to western exploration was the stretch of land west and south of the Colorado River.
In the late spring of 1869, one man set out to pierce the veil of this mysterious territory and finally bring southeastern Utah and northern Arizona into the national fold.
His name was John Wesley Powell.
Described by his sister as the homeliest man she had ever met, others more tactfully compared the 5-foot, 6-inch, one-armed bearded man as a sort of Socrates of the American West.
Today we know him as a founder of the National Geographic Society and a leading American scientist, anthropologist, and geographer of the 19th century. And to think – he never even graduated from college.
Then again, a college degree mattered little to the band of 11 men who followed the short, tough-looking man of 35 that spring of 1869.
Even with one arm missing – an injury of the recent Civil War – his men knew that Powell had a stubborn tenacity that made him a match in physical endurance to any man among them.
On May 4, 1869, Powell’s team cast their four flat-bottomed boats into the raging waters of the Green River and started a mission of a lifetime.
Following twisting, tortuous rivers, negotiating the rough and dangerous rapids, Powell’s expedition made its way down through the high plateaus of eastern Utah.
They were carried through the heart of towering rocks, which at times completely enfolded them in their embrace, the men working furiously under a noontime shadow cast by their mass.
Whenever they could, the expedition would stop, giving Powell and others of the party time to scramble as best they could up the cliffs to take readings of wind, atmosphere and other measurements they thought necessary to fully record this new territory.
Over the three months and 900 miles they travelled down the rivers, Powell’s expedition almost ran out of rations, and had one of their boats brutally crushed against a cliff wall and consumed beneath the foaming green folds of the river.
As they entered what would become known as the Grand Canyon, a sort of mutiny occurred, forcing the team to come to terms with their dire situation. A tally was taken. Three men determined to clamber out of the canyon and take their chances in the desert, rather than remain on the river for an indeterminate number of additional weeks.
Those three men were never seen again – at least not alive. They fell victim to the agitated bands of American Indians, which by then were fed up with incursions onto their lands.
Those who chose to remain on the river with Powell didn’t have far to go. On Aug. 29, 1869, having beheld the vast majesty of the Grand Canyon in all its splendor, Powell’s expedition exited the canyon and entered open country once more.
He and his men had become the first Americans to explore the length of the Grand Canyon and lower stretches of the Colorado River.
One more corner of the map marked, measured and tallied as part of America’s growing domain.
Antone Pierucci is curator of history at the Riverside County Park and Open Space District and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.
