9298

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9298
• Author: Water Education Foundation.
• Title: Colorado River Project
• USFW Year: 1999.
• USFW - Doc Type: Symposium Proceedings.
• Copyright Material: NO

and the Iron Mountain regions of Missouri, collect-
ing samples of shells, minerals and general history
objects.
These naturalist studies were interrupted by the
Civil War, in which he enlisted in 1860. It was at the
battle of Shiloh that he lost his right arm. Even then,
he waited only until his wound healed before
returning to the battle, where he obtained the rank of
Major. In 1865 he left the service and accepted a
professorship position at Illinois Wesleyan University
in Bloomington.
In 1869 he embarked on his most ambitious river
boat trip, the 1,000-mile journey down the unex-
plored, uncharted Colorado River. On May 24th, he
and his nine-man crew embarked from Green River,
Wyoming, down the Green River to the confluence
of the Grand River and on down to the mighty
Colorado, whose silty waters earned it a pre-Glen
Canyon Dam description of "too thick to drink and
too thin to plow."
By the time the crew reached the mouth of the
Virgin River, its number had shrank to six and he had
lost one boat to the many rapids he encountered
along the way. Major Powell returned to Illinois in
triumph and raised money for a second river expedi-
tion in 1871. He was now a famous man.
He has gone on to do so much in other areas it'~
difficult to detail it all: author of the 1878 Report on
the Arid Lands of the United States to the Secretary of
the Interior, serving as the second director of the
USGS; development of that much-used, universal

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measurement for water, the acre-foot; founder of the
National Geographic Society.
Yet our vision of Powell from today's viewpoint
obscures the controversy that his "iews on water and
irrigation and Western development generated. The
Colorado River we know today is much changed
from the river Major Powell explored 130 years ago.
And the West now supports a much larger population
and greater expanse of irrigated agriculture than he
envisioned all those years ago.
Powell's 1878 Arid Lands Report is a classic of good
sense and caution. The boosters refused to listen.
When he realized that he could not resist the greedy
and corrupt, Powell resigned his government posts
and gave his giant energies to writing. He died in
Maine in 1904.
John Wesley Powell provided one of the last
warnings about intelligent development of the
American West that could have made a difference.
His view was simple: if you don't plan the future of
an undeveloped country, you invite inequalities of
distribution, environmental destruction and failure.
We're delighted Mr. Powell has made the long
journey back to our time to give his insight to you -
the leaders on to day's water issues as you embark on
the 21st Century task of dividing the waters of the
Colorado River.

Participants of the Colorado River Project
Symposium held September 16-18, 1999 in
Keystone Colorado

SYMPOSIUM
PROCEEDINGS
SEPTEMBER 1999

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