Great Surveys of the American West

Great Surveys of the American West PDF

Author: Richard A. Bartlett

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1980-12-01

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 9780806116532

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After the Civil War, four geological and geographical surveys, later called the Great Surveys, Undertook the massive task of finding out what lay west of the hundredth meridian in the vast American wilderness. Parties led by Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden, medical doctor turned geologist, Clarence King, aristocrat and intellectual, John Wesley Powell, conqueror of the Colorado River, and Lieutenant George M. Wheeler, determined military man and scientist, roamed over the wild country during the years 1867-79, observing, analyzing, mapping, and at the end of each season, returning to Washington to publish their results. For the first time in book form, Richard A. Bartlett has recreated for the reader the hardships, both physical and financial, the discoveries, and the high adventures of the bold, headstrong, and often brilliant men of the Great Surveys as they climbed the Rockies, explored the Yellowstone, or battled the Colorado.

A River Running West

A River Running West PDF

Author: Donald Worster

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 688

ISBN-13: 0195156358

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John Wesley Powell, the great American explorer and environmental pioneer, embodied the energy, optimism, and westward impulse of the young United States. "A River Running West" is a gorgeously written, magisterial account of this towering figure, a true story of undaunted courage. 42 halftones. 7 maps.

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian PDF

Author: Wallace Stegner

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1992-03-01

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 1101075856

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From the “dean of Western writers” (The New York Times) and the Pulitzer Prize winning–author of Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety, a fascinating look at the old American West and the man who prophetically warned against the dangers of settling it In Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, Wallace Stegner recounts the sucesses and frustrations of John Wesley Powell, the distinguished ethnologist and geologist who explored the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon, and the homeland of Indian tribes of the American Southwest. A prophet without honor who had a profound understanding of the American West, Powell warned long ago of the dangers economic exploitation would pose to the West and spent a good deal of his life overcoming Washington politics in getting his message across. Only now, we may recognize just how accurate a prophet he was.

The Promise of the Grand Canyon

The Promise of the Grand Canyon PDF

Author: John F. Ross

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2019-05-07

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0143128957

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“A convincing case for Powell’s legacy as a pioneering conservationist.”--The Wall Street Journal "A bold study of an eco-visionary at a watershed moment in US history."--Nature A timely, thrilling account of the explorer who dared to lead the first successful expedition down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon—and waged a bitterly-contested campaign for sustainability in the West. John Wesley Powell’s first descent of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1869 counts among the most dramatic chapters in American exploration history. When the Canyon spit out the surviving members of the expedition—starving, battered, and nearly naked—they had accomplished what others thought impossible and finished the exploration of continental America that Lewis and Clark had begun almost 70 years before. With The Promise of the Grand Canyon, John F. Ross tells how that perilous expedition launched the one-armed Civil War hero on the path to becoming the nation’s foremost proponent of environmental sustainability and a powerful, if controversial, visionary for the development of the American West. So much of what he preached—most broadly about land and water stewardship—remains prophetically to the point today.

John Wesley Powell

John Wesley Powell PDF

Author: James M. Aton

Publisher: Bonneville

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13:

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Beautifully tells the multidimensional stories of John Wesley Powell's life, from childhood, through his famous and exciting explorations of the Colorado River and his later administrative life.

The Arid Lands

The Arid Lands PDF

Author: John Wesley Powell

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2004-01-01

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780803287815

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?One of the most significant and seminal books ever written about the West, . . . the classic statement of the terms on which the West could be peopled.??Wallace Stegner (from the introduction). John Wesley Powell's arid lands report was the first to argue that the American West could not support a conventional system of agriculture and that its lands could not sustain unlimited development. He recognized that water was a more precious resource than land, that rainfall could never support agriculture in the region, and that controlled irrigation offered the best use of its natural resources. Years of drought have proved the value of his advice, which was not well received by an expansionist nation. Despite opposition from the timber, cattle, and mining industries, Powell's work led to the first assessments of the available water supplies and to the consolidation of government surveys and policies under one administration.