Damming Grand Canyon: The 1923 USGS Colorado River Expedition [Hardcover]

Diane E Boyer (Author), Robert H. Webb (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 2007

In 1923, America paid close attention, via special radio broadcasts, newspaper headlines, and cover stories in popular magazines, as a government party descended the Colorado to survey Grand Canyon. Fifty years after John Wesley Powell's journey, the canyon still had an aura of mystery and extreme danger. At one point, the party was thought lost in a flood.

Something important besides adventure was going on. Led by Claude Birdseye and including colorful characters such as early river-runner Emery Kolb, popular writer Lewis Freeman, and hydraulic engineer Eugene La Rue, the expedition not only made the first accurate survey of the river gorge but sought to decide the canyon's fate. The primary goal was to determine the best places to dam the Grand. With Boulder Dam not yet built, the USGS, especially La Rue, contested with the Bureau of Reclamation over how best to develop the Colorado River. The survey party played a major role in what was known and thought about Grand Canyon.

The authors weave a narrative from the party's firsthand accounts and frame it with a thorough history of water politics and development and the Colorado River. The recommended dams were not built, but the survey both provided base data that stood the test of time and helped define Grand Canyon in the popular imagination.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Provides magnificent background on Colorado River water development. . . . It is also an adventure story of coping with the elements while accomplishing the complex surveying required.

W. L. Rusho, author of Lee's Ferry and Everett Reuss

About the Author

Diane Boyer is an archivist working for the U.S. Geological Survey's Desert Laboratory Collection of Repeat Photography in Tucson, Arizona. She has published several articles, most of which deal with Grand Canyon and Colorado River history.

Robert Webb has worked on long-term changes in natural ecosystems of the southwestern United States since 1976. He is a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and has authored, co-authored, or edited nine books, including Grand Canyon: A Century of Change.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Utah State University Press; 1 edition (May 7, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874216605
• ISBN-13: 978-0874216608
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,868,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the exploration opening up the Colorado River as a chief water supply and popular tourist area, September 10, 2007

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Henry Berry "Henry Berry" (Southport, CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Damming Grand Canyon: The 1923 USGS Colorado River Expedition (Hardcover)

Diaries and letters of 10 of the 12 men in the 1923 U.S. Geological Survey to obtain detailed and useful information on the Colorado River including the Grand Canyon stretch make the "backbone" of the book. The 12 men included a variety with particular knowledge and skills to accomplish the purposes of the expedition. Among them were a hydraulic engineer, a photographer, a writer, and topologists and geologists. The main aim was study of the River for favorable places to build dams to supply water to the fast-growing Western states, especially California with its large agricultural areas, and make the area suitable for additional development and tourism.

Though the locations for dams recommended by the 1923 Expedition were not accepted, its findings were used to determine locations where dams were built, notably Hoover Dam. The publicity given to the Expedition, in the periodical Scientific American for example, and appearances and writings by several of its members brought national attention to the large, unique natural area about which little was previously known despite previous explorations and expeditions going back to the first half of the 1800s. The Grand Canyon has since become a popular tourist area.

The format of much of the book is to follow the progress and varied work of the Expedition by excerpts from its members' diaries and letters covering the same day or short period of time. Background on the Expedition and its aftermath are provided in surrounding chapters by the coauthors, both of whom have done much work and writing relating to the region's natural environment.