Major John Wesley Powell – Surveyor, cartographer, explorer, geologist, ethnographer and botanist

Written By Kari Campbell

Highsmith, C. M., photographer. Grand Canyon, Arizona. United States Arizona Grand Canyon, None. [Between 1980 and 2006] [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

This Memorial Day, thousands of tourists will be visiting the Grand Canyon, which became a national park in 1919. As with many other national parks, surveyors played a vital role in preserving this spectacular landscape for everyone to enjoy.

In 1857, the War Department assigned Lt. Joseph Christmas Ives to explore the area and determine if the Colorado River would be useful for military purposes. He became the first European American known to reach the Grand Canyon and discovered that the river was unnavigable for military purposes. He appreciated the beauty of the canyon, but found that “The region is, of course, altogether valueless. It can be approached only from the south, and after entering it there is nothing to do but leave.”[1]

Later, it was a Civil War veteran who would explore the Grand Canyon more fully and whose maps, writings and images would spark the imagination of readers throughout the world.

John Wesley Powell

(ca. 1890) Major John Wesley Powell. , ca. 1890. [?] [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

John Wesley Powell was born in 1834 in Mount Morris, New York, the fourth child of English immigrants. The family continually moved westward, and during one of their homesteads in Ohio, Powell had the good fortune to be instructed by George Crookham, an amateur naturalist and scholar who encouraged Powell’s interest in science, history, and literature. The family finally settled down in Boone County, Illinois (named after Daniel Boone, surveyor), and Powell became a schoolteacher in 1852. For brief periods when he was not teaching, Powell continued his studies at area colleges, but never earned a degree.  His interest in exploration continued, and he managed to get financing for several expeditions along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, where he collected fossils and studied the natural history and geology of the regions.[2]

In 1861, Powell enlisted in the Union Army at age 27 as a topographer, cartographer, and military engineer and quickly advanced to a second lieutenant. At the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, Powell was struck with a Minie ball (hollow projectile) in his right arm. Unfortunately, field surgeons had to amputate Powell’s left arm at the elbow. He recuperated and returned to active duty in 1863 and was promoted to the rank of major.[3]

After the war, Powell taught natural sciences at Illinois Wesleyan University and later at Illinois State Normal University. In 1867, he became the curator of the Illinois Natural History Society Museum.

Itching to explore

Beaman, E. O., photographer. (1871) Before the start at Green River City, Wyoming. Wyoming Green River, 1871. ?. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Soon after he was appointed as curator, he used his position to begin explorations in earnest. The first was a specimen-collecting expedition to Colorado where he (and his crew including his wife Emma Dean, ornithologist), climbed Pikes Peak and explored part of the Rocky Mountains.

This expedition whetted his appetite and in 1869, he began an expedition to explore previously unmapped areas along the Colorado River and study the geology and native flora and fauna.  Powell’s 10-man party included fellow Civil War veterans, hunters, and trappers. This trip was beset with disasters. One of the boats sank in a rapid, taking with it scientific instruments and nearly one quarter of the party’s provisions. Later, the party had to abandon a second boat and what was left of their provisions spoiled. Three of the party decided they’d had enough and left, trying to make their way to a distant settlement but were killed by members of the Shivwits band of Paiutes who believed them to be trespassers. Soon after, Powell halted the expedition and returned to Ohio.

Successful second expedition

Hillers, J. K., Fennemore, J., photographer. (1872) Grand Canyon, Colorado River, looking west / Hillers. Arizona Colorado Colorado River Grand Canyon Mexico, 1872. [April] [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress.

Nevertheless, Powell’s expedition got the attention of the U.S. Government and in 1871, he began a second expedition to map the Colorado River backed by an appropriation from the Congress and the Smithsonian. His 11-man crew included trained scientists and a succession of photographers: E. O. Beaman, who stayed with the party until January 1872, James Fennemore, who worked with Powell on the Kaibab Plateau surveys, and John K. (Jack) Hillers who was the photographer of the last leg of the journey through the Grand Canyon. Powell also hired 17-year-old Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh as a boatman and as the artist for the expedition[4]. This expedition produced the first reliable maps of the Colorado River.

Powell’s insistence on photography and map-making would lay the groundwork for how the Grand Canyon became a national park 30 years later. Dellenbaugh published several books of his own photography, and later Powell published his own writings as series in a popular magazine and also published a work entitled: Report of the Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and its Tributaries (Smithsonian Institution).

Tau-Gu, Chief of the Paiutes overlooking Virgin River with JW Powell, age 39. Circa 1873 Photograph presumably by explorer Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh.

These popular works, as well as Powell’s ethnological works Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages, with Words, Phrases, and Sentences to Be Collected in 1877 and Indian Linguistic Families of America, North of Mexico in 1891, helped expand popular understanding of the value of the Grand Canyon and its indigenous people. “Unlike most white men of his era, John Wesley Powell had tremendous respect for Native Americans, an insatiable curiosity about their language and institutions, and a belief that they had a right to live their lives according to their own traditions. It was because of this interest and empathy that during all his years in the West, when other scientific teams felt they needed military escorts, he never even carried a gun”[5].

Director of USGS

In 1881, he was named director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). He advocated strict water resource conservation based on his exploration of the American West’s river systems and geology. He published Report on the Lands of the Arid Regions of the United States in 1878 where one of his ideas was to draw state boundaries according to watershed areas. While he was the director of the USGS, Powell emphasized mapping and helped influence the call for nationwide 1:24,000-scale topographic maps. He resigned from the USGS in 1894 due to opposition to his water resource conservation efforts from western politicians.[4]

Powell’s surveying maps and writings about the beauty of the Grand Canyon and its people were foundational to the nearly 30-year push to create a national park. Though he didn’t live long enough to see the creation of the park, it was designated as a forest preserve by President Benjamin Harrison in 1893, nine years before Powell’s death.[6]

Thank you, veterans and surveyors

On this Memorial Day, we thank all of the veterans who put their lives and limbs on the line to protect our fragile democracy. We also thank the intrepid surveyors whose work helped create the national parks we enjoy to this day.

Kari Campbell
Previous

AEC Firms embrace RFID
Next

Owning fossil history with oral tradition and science