Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons - Hardcover

Powell, J. W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226677028 ISBN 13: 9780226677026

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1957

Synopsis

When geologist Powell and his party of explorers first assayed the Colorado in 1869, it was North America's longest stretch of uncharted river. This is the story of that three-month, thousand-mile excursion, told in the words of the men who negotiated and mapped the river, through their journals, accounts, and letters. Black-and-white illustrations.

About this title

About the Author:

John Wesley Powell completed his famous expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers in 1869. But his life as one of America's great men of science was only just beginning. As an Indian commissioner, he became a student of the Paiute and Ute tribes, an interest that led in 1879 to the birth of the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology, where he was director for 23 years. That same year he would be instrumental in the founding of the US Geological Survey, an agency which he would head just two years later. At 47 he was perhaps the most powerful and influential scientist in America. His ideas for harnessing water in the West inspired the birth of the Bureau of Reclamation and, in 1888, he joined 32 scientists and prominent Washingtonians to establish the National Geographic Society. After his death in 1902 at the age of 68, he continued to influence government science: He donated his brain to research. It's preserved today at the Smithsonian Institution.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1957
• ISBN 10: 0226677028
• ISBN 13: 9780226677026
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 156