John Wesley Powell

John Wesley Powell 1834-1902, American geologist and ethnologist, b. Mt. Morris (now part of New York City). The family moved to Illinois, where Powell joined the Natural History Society, making collections and serving as secretary of the society. After the Civil War, in which he lost an arm at Shiloh, he was appointed professor of geology at Illinois Wesleyan College, Bloomington. He led geological expeditions into Colorado and Utah in 1867 and 1868 and in May, 1869, began, under the direction of the Smithsonian Institution, a geographical and geological survey of the Colorado and Green rivers. In the course of this expedition his party passed by boat through the Grand Canyon , a hazardous feat first described in his Explorations of the Colorado River of the West (1875) and later in his Canyons of the Colorado (1895). He was later engaged in geological and ethnological explorations in Arizona and Utah. His efforts toward the reorganization of rival surveys in the West were a factor in bringing about the establishment (1879) of the U.S. Geological Survey, of which he served as director from 1881 to 1894. In 1879, Powell founded and became the first director of the Bureau of American Ethnology. He remained there for more than 20 years, and many of his contributions to ethnology appeared in its Reports.

Bibliography: See biographies by W. C. Darrah (1951, repr. 1969), J. U. Terrell (1969), W. E. Stegner (1954, repr. 1962), and D. Worster (2001); E. Dolnick, Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy through the Grand Canyon (2001).

Powell, John Wesley (1834–1902), reared in Illinois, after service in the Civil War, in which he rose to be a major but lost his right arm, he taught geology and led expeditions, the most notable being one which by boats explored, mapped, and obtained geologic data on the Green and Colorado rivers (1869). This and a second trip (1872) are reported in Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries (1875), revised as Canyons of the Colorado (1895), a scientific but colorful book. After more geographic and geologic work, he entered the U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey (1875) and wrote a precise, sociologically realistic Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the U.S. (1878). Under his administration (1881–94), the greatly expanded Survey issued many detailed maps and surveys clarifying Western topography, geology, irrigation, and ethnology. His scientific standards, concepts of government planning, and organization of bureaus helped shape U.S. reclamation and conservation policies. His “second opening of the west” is the subject of Wallace Stegner's Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (1954).

Powell, John Wesley (1834–1902) One of American's great explorers, J. W. Powell planned and led the first boat expedition through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. The exploration party consisted of ten men, and their means of transport was four small rowing boats. The boats were launched in the Green River, a tributary of the Colorado, in south-west Wyoming on 24 May 1869, and the expedition emerged from the mouth of the Grand Canyon three months later, on 29 August. On this trip, Powell made the first important geological observations of the geology of the canyon, and demonstrated that it originated by river erosion into rocks that had been slowly elevated.

As a result of his several geological expeditions to the Rocky Mountains, Powell became interested in, and made a special study of, the native peoples of the area and their languages. In order to curate his work with the native peoples, he founded and directed the Bureau of Ethnology within the Smithsonian Institution. Between 1874 and 1879, Powell directed the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, jointly carrying out both geological and enthnological field studies in Utah, Nevada, California, New Mexico, and Arizona. During this period, realizing that access to water imposed a limit on development of the western states, he made the first extensive studies of the water supplies available in the arid south-west of the United States. In 1879, the United States Geographical and Geological Survey was incorporated into the United States Geological Survey under the directorship of Clarence King. When King resigned his directorship in 1881, Powell was appointed his successor, carrying out the tasks associated with the directorships of both the Ethnological Bureau and the Geological Survey. He administered both offices until 1894, when he resigned the office of Director of the U.S. Geological Survey in order to devote more time to ethnological studies.

Brian J. Skinner