Vision and Place: John Wesley Powell and Reimagining the Colorado River Basin

The Colorado River Basins importance cannot be overstated. Its living river system supplies water to roughly forty million people, contains Grand Canyon National Park, Bears Ears National Monument, and wide swaths of other public lands, and encompasses ancestral homelands of twenty-nine Native American tribes. John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran, explorer, scientist, and adept federal administrator, articulated a vision for Euro-American colonization of the Arid Region that has indelibly shaped the basina pattern that looms large not only in western history, but also in contemporary environmental and social policy.
 
One hundred and fifty years after Powells epic 1869 Colorado River Exploring Expedition, this volume revisits Powells vision, examining its historical character and its relative influence on the Colorado River Basins cultural and physical landscape in modern times. In three parts, the volume unpacks Powells ideas on water, public lands, and Native Americansideas at once innovative, complex, and contradictory. With an eye toward climate change and a host of related challenges facing the basin, the volume turns to the future, reflecting on howif at allPowells legacy might inform our collective vision as we navigate a new Great Unknown. See more