![]() Those western myths and legends are hard to deal with but must be understood for what they are before a solution to the arid west can be found and implemented. ![]() It takes a good hard look at why western policies are the way they are, where the water wars came from and how politics can both help or destroy the solutions. And over 90% of homesteaders failed sometimes fatally. Then came the dry decades preceded by a terrible winter leaving people frozen in their homes, cattle frozen by the hundreds in their pastures. A school of thought promoted the idea rain followed the plow so all homesteaders had to do was stake a claim and put in a crop.ĭuring the wet years in the 1870s this worked. The land laws were written for this type of farming. This was still only 60% done in 1952! Yet, his influence did create the USGS and set it on a course to map the country.Ī major concern was that the country had formed its ideas and beliefs about farming in the eastern part of the country where rainfall was enough to make farming profitable. His career was centered on trying to give people a better understanding of the arid regions beyond the hundredth meridian.Ĭentral to Powell's plan was the topographical mapping of the entire U.S. He was concerned that people thought it was something it wasn't and their mistaken ideas too often ended in tragedy. Powell loved the Plateau area of the West. Both men had itchy feet and went off exploring. Powell grew up much as John Muir did and gained an education in much the same manner. Geological Survey (USGS) and Irrigation Survey. His career spanned the late 1860s when he mapped the Colorado region to 1894 when some Senators finally pushed him out of his work with the U. John Wesley Powell gained fame as the first man to run the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. That said it is not difficult to read, just slow if you want to think about what is packed into this book. It was written in the 1950s and is a scholarly work. Geological Survey (USGS) and Irri This book is not an easy read. He also was a cofounder and inaugural attendee of very first meeting to consider the creation of a Society for the increase & diffusion of geogrphic knowledge - The National Geographic Society.īeautiful, Pulizer-winning biography of JW Powell and a magnifiscent literary tour de force. John Wesley Powell not only led the historic Explorations of the Grand, Green and Colorado Rivers and their Canyons, explored the blank areas of the western US, but founded the US Geological Survey & Bureau of Ethnicity. Stegner is a beautiful writer and you'll love this book. No one can claim sufficient understanding of the expansion of the West in the late 19th & early 20th centuries without having read this. He also was a cofounder and inaugural attendee of very first On my top 10 of 10,000. ![]() ![]()
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