Powell of the Colorado by William Culp Darrah recounts one of the most daring and consequential exploratory expeditions in American history. In May 1869, Major John Wesley Powell—Civil War veteran, geologist, ethnologist, and geographer—set out from Green River, Wyoming, with a small party of nine men and four wooden boats to explore the largely unknown and perilous canyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers. These deep, twisting waterways cut through what are now Wyoming, Utah, and Arizona, forming a vast natural barrier that had long blocked central travel routes to the American West Coast.
At the time, much of the Colorado River system remained unmapped by Euro-American explorers. Powell’s expedition faced relentless dangers: violent rapids, towering canyon walls, extreme heat, food shortages, and the ever-present risk of death in uncharted waters. Several members of the party abandoned the journey before its conclusion, and the expedition ended tragically for others. Despite these hardships, Powell succeeded in completing the first recorded river passage through the Grand Canyon, producing invaluable maps, scientific observations, and geological theories that reshaped understanding of the American West.
Darrah’s work places Powell’s journey within its broader scientific, political, and cultural context. The book not only chronicles the physical challenges of the expedition but also examines Powell’s contributions to geology, particularly his insights into erosion and landscape formation, as well as his ethnographic observations of Indigenous peoples encountered along the river. Powell of the Colorado highlights how the expedition influenced later western exploration, federal land policy, and the emerging fields of American geology and anthropology.
Combining adventure narrative with historical analysis, Darrah’s account presents Powell as both a visionary scientist and a product of his time, offering readers a vivid portrait of exploration at the intersection of science, empire, and survival in the nineteenth-century American West.