POWELLS GREAT ADVENTURE

HE Grand Canyon was the culminating scene of one of the most stirring adventures in the history of American exploration.

For hundreds of miles the Colorado and its tributaries form a mighty network of mighty chasms which few had ventured even to enter. Of the Grand Canyon, deepest and hugest of all, tales were current of whirlpools, of hundreds of miles of underground passage, and of giant falls whose roaring music could be heard on distant mountain summits.

The Indians feared it. Even the hardiest of frontiersmen refused it.

It remained for a geologist and a school-teacher, a one-armed veteran of the Civil War, John Wesley Powell, afterward director of the United States Geological Survey, to dare and to accomplish.

This was in 1869. Nine men accompanied him in four boats.

There proved to be no impassable whirlpools in the Grand Canyon, no underground passages and no cataracts. But the trip was hazardous in the extreme. The adventurers faced the unknown at every bend, daily—sometimes several times daily—embarking upon swift rapids without guessing upon what rocks or in what great falls they might terminate. Continually they upset. They were unable to build fires sometimes for days at a stretch.

Four men deserted, hoping to climb the walls, and were never heard from again—and this happened the very day before Major Powell and his faithful half dozen floated clear of the Grand Canyon into safety.

TWO OF THE BOATS USED BY MAJOR POWELL IN EXPLORING THE CANYON Photograph by Geological Survey

MEMORIAL JUST ERECTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR TO MAJOR JOHN WESLEY POWELL It stands on the rim at Sentinel Point. Upon the altar which crowns it will blaze ceremonial fires Photograph by El Tovar Studio