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In 1869, Major John Wesley Powell set out on a remarkable mission - to explore and study the uncharted canyons and waters of the Green and Colorado Rivers. Powell, a geology professor and one-armed Civil War veteran, began the journey with nine novice oarsmen and four wooden boats. As they entered the canyonlands, Powell wondered, "What shall we find?"
By the time Powell's party reached this section of the river in July, one boat had been smashed, and provisions were low. But he found a unique landscape that drew national attention. Powell's journal describes a "weird, grand region" of naked rock with "cathedral-like buttes towering hundreds or thousands of feet, cliffs that cannot be scaled, and canyon walls that shrink the river into insignificance".
It was a voyage of scientific discovery, but also one of the world's greatest adventures. Today's adventurers run the river in relative safety in rubber boats, but they see a wild landscape that has changed little since Powell's time. Please ask for more information about such trips at any park visitor center.
The map on the right shows Maj. Powell starting out above the Flaming Gorge, on the Green River in Wyoming 24 May, 1869. They arrived at the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers on 16 July, 1869. They were in the Grand Canyon 25 August, and the expedition ended 30 August, 1869 where the Virgin and Colorado Rivers meet east of what is now Las Vegas.