Customer Reviews

Beyond the Hundreth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wallace Stegner combines the adventure of John Wesley Powell's historic running of the Colorado River and the story of government science. Powell's river running is a dramatic yarn, and Stegner draws on his strengths as a historian to debunk some of the exaggerations of Powell's own writings. Stegner has quite a way with words and brings Powell's story to life. The second half of the book is somewhat dry, but it is an important document of the history of government-funded science in this country. (Powell played an important role in government science.) He does an excellent job of enlivening the characters, and the history has important implications today. While this is not Stegner's best book, it is a good read, especially for fans of the American West.

Stegner is a prolific historian of the American West, as well as a prolific author of fiction. To my mind, his nonfiction is always a notch better than even the best of his fiction; to my mind, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian is the best of the lot.

To be sure, my view that this one is his best is likely colored by my impression that it treats the most important issues dealt with within Stegner's œuvre, namely, the question of water use in the American West. However, independent of the book's importance in understanding the history of water use, it is also a rollicking adventure tale of a one-armed madman shooting hellacious rapids the likes of which our continent no longer knows, while strapped to a wooden boat.

Powell was a brilliant, eccentric man, and the United States would be a better place if the policies he suggested had been intelligently implemented (rather than first ignored and subsequently mis-applied). His life is well worth learning about.

This book written in 1954 not only captures the story of this remarkable man, Major John W. Powell, but also discusses and reflects on the challenges of too many people living in the Western desert. As a resident of a now "drought impacted state" the wisdom of Powell's ideas and the lack of implementation of those ideas are represented in the chaos local and state governments are facing as they attempt to keep lawns green, golf courses open, and drinking water available for all of the "new" residences of the state. I only hope that some of this generations politicians pay attention to Powell's "topographical" analysis and begin shaping more effective land and water policy for the West. A terrific read with many classic Stegner quotes.

This is an excellent biography of John Wesley Powell--exlorer, geologist, scientist, writer, and politician.
Anyone who reads this is sure to increase the amount they know about this historic figure, and about the West in general as the stories of each are inextricably tangled. The book excels at its account of John Wesley Powell's life AFTER his famous trips down the Colorado River, and does a great job of describing Powell's role in the battle against over-populating the West.
If the book has faults though, they lie in that many of Stegner's sources have since been expounded upon or dismissed entirely, and so the facts in this book aren't entirely current. Also, Stegner dismisses too quickly the merits of the story of James White, a man who very possibly went down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon two years before Powell did.
And, it's kind of ridiculous how Stegner criticizes Powell's second expedition's photos as if they were famous works and art: This photo "is marred by too much nondescipt low-water beach in the foreground," and that sort of thing.
This is a great book for anyone interested in John Wesley Powell or the Colorado River. It's possibly Stegner's best nonfiction work, though "Mormon Country" is good as well.
For another great account of John Wesley Powell, read "Down the Great Unknown" by Edward Dolnick.
Or, for a half-decent book about Wallace Stegner's peculiarly white view of the American West, read, "'Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner' and Other Essays" by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. That one's kind of interesting.

This one is a classic. Stegner presents not only a biography, but a cogent indictment of the blindness of the US government to growth-oriented boosterism and capitalism in the interior West. The results of that blindness can be seen today in the absurdities of the water-hungry urban economies of Phoenix and Las Vegas plunked down in the middle of the desert.

As Stegner makes clear, Powell predicted these inanities and would certainly appreciate their ironies today.

I kept waiting for this book to get boring. It has all the potential to be boring. But it's not. It's an excellent introduction to the history of the West. I learned little tidbits about all sorts of varied subjects - Native American tribes, government, the history of the USGS. Stegner does get a little too wrapped up in the details at a couple points, especially when he gets into all the wrangling in Congress over Powell's various ventures, but in general it's an excellent book.

Any history of the west has to deal with water. Stegner's biography of Powell describes Powell's career, in a largely engaging way. It's not a page-turner, but it gives you a good feel for the man. I appreciated it the most as I read it at the Grand Canyon while simultaneously reading Cadillac Desert. Stegner describes how Powell, a one-armed man, lead a rafting expedition down the Colorado river, complete with climbing up the sides of the Grand Canyon. Although some of the descriptions come across as a bit quaint these days, it's a valuable work. Reisner borrows from the story and its structure extensively when he writes about Powell in Cadillac Desert (probably the most important book about the water wars in the West).

Once upon a time in the West, a man named William Gilpin was blown westward along with an expedition of John Fremont that took him as far as Walla Walla, Wash. In 1846 he fought in the Mexican War. In 1861 he went to Washington, DC, after Abraham Lincoln was elected. Later he became the first territorial governor of Colorado. Once upon a time, Gilpin saw the land beyond the 100th meridian (which runs through the center of Nebraska and Kansas) through a mystical fervor. The semiarid lands were no desert, but a pastoral Canaan. Agriculture would be effortless. All that was needed was the plow break the soil so that rain would naturally follow.

At the same time that Gilpin was convincing the country that the West was a Biblical Paradise, an exploration party headed by John Wesley Powell was camped a few miles from Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was 1868. At this time Powell was not the pioneer that Gilpin was, and he was 34 compared to Gilpin's 55. Powell's interests were always varied. In 1860 his *mollusk* collection won awards at the Illinois State Agricultural Society fair. In 1861, he volunteered to join the army in the Civil War. Within six months he rose through the ranks to become a captain, an expert on *fortifications*. In April of 1862, Powell lost an arm due to a Minie ball at Shiloh. Powell continued through the war. In 1865, Powell began a professorship in *geology* at Wesleyan.

Powell began his exploration of the Green and Colorado rivers on July 6,1869. On August 30, 1869, only six of nine men and two of four boats managed to go all the way through the Grand Canyon to come out near Yuma, Az. The rest of the Colorado had already been explored. In a few short months, John Wesley Powell had gathered enough data to challenge Gilpin's portrayal of the West. For the rest of his life, he would try to convince Congress of what he had learned about the proper way to treat the land beyond the 100th meridian.

Powell's geological and *ethnological* work and his study of Native American *languages* continue today to form the basis for our understanding of these subjects for southern Utah and northern Arizona.

Almost everything that could be done wrong in the development of the modern American West (and not just the Rockies westward, but the High Plains as well) was warned against by Maj. John Wesley Powell, but done anyway by the federal government and various states.

The result? Water crises, fights over water rights, lying, chicanery and stealing in the name of water rights, corporate farms squeezing out small farmers, urban sprawl and smog in the middle of deserts, dust bowls and more, were either forseen or hinted at by Powell.

The 100th meridian of latitude is the U.S.'s "dry line." Areas to the west, generally, before you get to the Pacific Coast, average less than 20 inches of rain a year. Hence the title, and the basis of Powell's warnings.

And, AND, all of that came after this one-armed Civil War veteran led the first navigation of the entire whitewater section of the Colorado, actually starting on the Green River in Wyoming and running all the way down past the Grand Canyon. (Despite some claims otherwise, it seems pretty clear James White did NOT do this.)

It was this trip, in the name of scientific research, that gave Powell his standing to eventually found the Bureau of Ethnography, do further Western research and make some top-notch recommendations for the development of the west.

The reason I didn't five-star this is that I would like to have seen a little more depth to Powell's post-exploration career. Also, a little more personality profile of Powell's struggle with disappointment over the Newlands Act and other repudiation of his ideas would have been nice.

True, Stegner may not be a professional historian, but it would have been nice to see him incorporate this.

To get an idea of what I mean by the end of this critique, please read Donald Worster's "River Running West." Also, Worster provides a bit of corrective to Stegner's occasional near-hagiographical approach to Powell.

John Wesley Powell was "present at the creation," to use the expression popularized by Dean Acheson. The later was referring to the post-World War II era; Powell was present at the creation of the American West, during the period of its settlement by whites, from the end of the American Civil War to the "closing of the frontier," in the 1890's. Bernard Devoto, in his introduction, says that Powell's report on the Arid Lands is as essential to understanding America as the "Federalist Papers." I would extend Devoto's assertion to cover this work of Stegner, an essential book for anyone wondering why things are the way they are in the United States. Stegner does a brilliant job in weaving Powell's story into the larger background of the settlement of the West. Nothing is "dated" in this book, aside from its 1954 copyright. The lessons still unlearned are as fresh as today's headlines.

Powell lost his arm in the battle at Shiloh, in 1862, and as Stegner says: "Losing one's right arm is a misfortune; to some it would be a disaster, to others an excuse. It affected Wes Powell's life about as much as a stone fallen into a swift stream affects the course of the river." Prior to this book I had associated Powell with his "The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons," which I read in conjunction with my much more comfortable 6 day descent of the Colorado 30 years ago. Powell's trip, which also encompassed the Green River, was almost certainly the first descent of these rivers by any human. This re-enforced Powell's credentials as a man of action, with considerable skills in organization and leadership. And he was able to write a decent account of his trip. Fortunately for us this was still early in the career of this man of insatiable curiosity, which spanned the need to know what was around the next bend, with a need to know how and why humans behave, particularly the natives of the West. Much of his later career involved surveying the West, particularly the "plateau province" which encompasses parts of four states, CO, UT, AZ and NM. The summation of his life was the development of a blueprint for a dry land democracy, essentially a plan to formulate new rules for the settlement of land where there is insufficient rain to sustain non-irrigated agriculture. The Homestead Act's 160 acres was simple not enough land. The book's title denotes that land, since it is west of the 100th meridian, which passes though that American icon, Dodge City, Kansas, as well as forming the eastern edge of the Texas Panhandle. Though Powell was a good bureaucratic fighter too, the countervailing forces were too strong, and we are saddled today with the consequences of unwise development.

Stegner does not start his book with Powell however; rather he describes the career of the antithesis of Powell, William Gilpin, a huckster and con-man, delusional in his belief that rain would follow the plow, and who thought it would be beneficial if the Mississippi valley supported a population of more than a billion people! Puts today's "pro-growth" advocates to shame. Needless to say, Gilpin had many an ally in the political classes, the "something for nothing" crowd.

Stegner attributes Powell's success as an ethnologist to his ability "to approach a strange culture and a strange people without prejudice, suspicion, condescension, or fear..." qualities useful in ending the latest "clash of civilizations." In tribute to autodidacts everywhere, Stegner says: "His homemade education fitted him to grasp the obvious and state it without embarrassment--he had not been educated into scholarly caution and that squid-like tendency to retreat, squirting ink, which sophisticated learning often displays."

A good companion book, which updates many of the water issues outlined in this book is Marc Reisner's "Cadillac Desert." At least one good aspect of the bursting of the real estate bubble is the brakes applied to the Gilpins' of today, the endless apostles of housing development in the dry lands. Turning Albuquerque into Phoenix is fortunately viewed as a nightmare by many of my fellow ABQ's.

Overall, Stegner brings a remarkable erudition to his superlative account of Powell and the settlement of the American West, as opposed to the fantasy so often promoted by Hollywood and the developers. Consider this summation, which could equally apply to the bankers of today: "The American yeoman might clamor for governmental assistance in his trouble, but he didn't want any that would make him change his thinking."