Customer Reviews

A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell

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Reading this book was like being present at the creation of America. It will appeal especially to U.S. history buffs and to anyone interested in the American West. Worster's telling of the feat that won Powell fame, leading the first expedition down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon, has definitely renewed my passion for exploring the West. Powell was a man of ideas, as well as action. For a quarter century he was at the forefront of debates over reserving land for American Indians, how to foster family farming in the arid West, and the thorny issue of water rights. For many years, Powell was a prominent official in Washington, as head of the U.S. Geological Survey, which he helped create, and in other positions. From what I gather in this book, Powell may have been as important as any single individual in making support of scientific research a normal function of the Federal Government. From the perspective of one man's career, Worster touches on a multitude of topics: railroads, telegraph, photography, landscape painting of the West, Mormon settlements, and many more. For the comprehension one gains of American life in those times, this biography is the equal of a first rate novel. Although a work of scholarship, it is written to be enjoyed by the general reader.

Born in 1834, John Wesley Powell died in 1902, the same year the first steam-powered automobile reached the rim of the Grand Canyon (p. 566). As its title suggests, Donald Worster's new biography is as much a book about Powell as it is about the river that carved the Grand Canyon. "Powell's life is . . . the story of the rising influence of the natural sciences, of rationalism contesting the faith of tradiional religion, and of a new nationalism and secularism taking its place," Worster writes in his Introduction. As Powell "was coming of age, science was rising to influence the study of nature and culture and even making the laws. In his day science meant, above all, geology, evolution, and Darwinism. The contest of those ideas with what is now called religious fundamentalism for supremacy in the American mind is mirrored in Powell as nowhere else" (pp. xii-xiii).

Worster succeeds in bringing Powell to life in a book that is both well-written and well-researched. We learn, for instance, that although they never met, Powell grew up in Wisconsin less than 100 miles from John Muir. "Both experienced the Wisconsin world of Protestantism, capital accumulation and work ethic, mixed with an intimacy of the land. Both would eventually go into the far-off West to find new meaning for their lives" (p. 50). At age 26, Powell declared himself a "Naturalist," a self-educated man "well versed in the natural history of plants and animals, could tell one species from another, knew the difference between Cretaceous and Carboniferous periods of geology, and spent time collecting for a museum" (p. 60). As a young man, Powell was "in love with the land, the outdoors, the flow of rivers, and the nation's material life" (p. 62). Worster writes, rivers "flowed through the landscape of his mind like songs of freedom and escape. They sang of catfish, beaver, blue herons, grape vines festooning the trees, the smell of mud" (p. 76). After Powell loses his right arm to a musket ball in the Civil War, Worster's biography takes a breathtaking turn to the West.

Part Two, "Canyons of the Colorado" (pp. 107-380), is truly the heart and soul of this book. We find Powell exploring "The Great Unknown" (p. 184) of the West in these pages, climbing the "highest peaks in the Rockies" (p. 146), sleeping "on hard rocks and sand" (p. 260) "under western stars in a leaking tent" (p. 370), and travelling the Colorado River in 1869 with the Colorado River Exploring Expedition, a group of men "gathered from the wayside and by chance meetings, men who were all misfits by the standards of domestic middle-class life" (p. 162). I could hear the roar of the River and even sense Powell's feelings of "awe and wonder" in Worster's writing. Worster reveals his subject wanting "nothing less than to possess the vast interior space of the Colorado River as his own intellectual property, to measure it off and stake it out in seven-league boots" (p. 152). Powell perceived "the natural world as an endless source of intellectual and aesthetic delight" (p. 163). Worster triumphs at capturing the spirit and adventure of the unknown West here.

The significance of Powell's explorations is fascinating. This book shows how Powell gave America "knowledge of itself" (p. 380) through his expeditions, and how the Grand Canyon challenged both artists and scientists to reeducate their perceptions of the earth (p. 329). After all, Powell discovered a canyon billions of years old in an earth believed to be only twenty-four million years old. "The real issue" posed by the Grand Canyon, Worster observes, "was theology versus science" (p. 316).

Worster concludes his book by examining Powell in his later years, settled into the life of a "thorough metropolitan" (p. 384), a conservationist "bound to a desk" (p. 389), and nonetheless a "man of large thoughts" inclined "toward agnosticism and free thought" (p. 545).

A hundred years after Powell's death, it is now hard to find a parking space at the Grand Canyon. Although I have hiked from the rim of the Grand Canyon down to Powell's River many times, reading this biography has given me a whole new perspective of that experience, together with a new appreciation for Powell and those men who journeyed into "The Great Unknown" for the first time in 1869.

G. Merritt

The life of John Wesley Powell presents a mystery and a meaning. Powell, of course, achieved fame for his explorations of the Colorado River and surrounding regions, accomplished in two expeditions in 1869 and 1871-72. The romance of a one-armed man, wounded in the Civil War fighting for the Union, now beating the toughest river in the West, retains its charm to this day; Powell's visage graces plaques all over the West, especially at the Grand Canyon. But the bulk of Powell's life was spent not in rugged exploration but behind desks in Washington, as director of the US Geological Survey and the Bureau of Ethnology. In his capacity as a bureaucrat Powell proved a tenacious infighter, successful in all but his most important venture (more on that below). The mystery of Powell's life lies in finding the connection between Powell the explorer and Powell the bureaucrat, which seem at first blush to be at such odds with each other. Donald Worster's biography of Powell does not solve this mystery directly, but provides the material out of which a solution can be constructed. In both endeavors it was Powell's ability to claim and retain the loyalty of subordinates (who, in many cases, did the really serious scientific work) and his extraordinary organizational talent that spelled his success. We can see these skills operating clearly in Worster's careful, detailed, chronological narrative of Powell's life. The battles he fought with his Congressional opponents demanded at least as much finesse as the rapids of the Colorado; Worster's book allows us to see Powell's life, despite the surface incongruity of its two halves, as a fundamentally unified whole. The meaning in Powell's life he shared with many men of his generation in both Europe and America. Raised in a traditional, pious Wesleyan family (hence his given names), he shrugged off the strictures of religion for science; it was to science that he devoted his life, science in which he reposed his trust, science which made his career. The United States still struggles with the conflicts and contradictions between religion which makes its powerful, often deeply conservative, claims, and science, to which we owe our wealth and standing. Powell knew from his mid-twenties to which side he belonged. His experience can still speak to us. Worster's interest in Powell was adumbrated in his earlier, passionate book, *Rivers of Empire* (published in 1985). There Powell's plan to divide the West into hydrological basins, each of which would -- if its water supply was adequate -- serve as the basis for a self-governing, democratic, locally controlled water-use district, became the environmental alternative to the path we actually followed -- the construction of gigantic dams redirecting water hundreds of miles, with concomitant uncontrolled growth, pollution, disfigurement of the landscape, and transfer of untold billions of dollars from the East to the West in perhaps the greatest governmental subsidy in history. Powell's struggle to expound and implement this plan as described in his *Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States* of 1879 ended in his total defeat. Worster tells this story especially well, with full consciousness of the contribution Powell's own missteps made to the result. Powell's great failure forms the counterpoint to his great success. Whether Powell's vision, if implemented, would have led to a different, more environmentally sound -- if less glamorous -- exploitation of the West must remain moot, though there is no doubt about the damage the approach we actually followed has caused. In any case, Powell's story intertwines with issues that haunt us today. Every American needs to know his story.

This is a beautiful book: well conceived and exquisitely written. It may sound cliché, but this is surely an instant classic. The genius of Donald Worster's A RIVER RUNNING WEST is not that it provides a compelling and captivating account of the life of John Wesley Powell (it does), but rather that through Powell, Worster tells the story of the settlement of the American West, the history of surveying the American West, and the professionalization of science in the 19th Century. Few individuals have represented their times so comprehensively to allow for such a study (only Ben Franklin jumps readily to mind), but Powell serves as a perfect vehicle for a study of period and place. Further, Worster is arguably the finest contemporary writer on the American West, comparable to past greats De Voto and Stegner. To boot, the book's final sentence is an absolute zinger! Anyone interested in the American West must read this book.

My comment at the end of my title refers to Wallace Stegner's "Beyond the 100th Meridian." While that is a very good book, it comes close to perpetuating a myth of Saint John Wesley Powell.

Compared to Stegner, who may be a point of reference for many readers curious about this book, Worster paints a far more complete picture of Powell, delving much deeper into journals and letters kept by colleagues, underlings, and exploratory co-travlers of his.

We see a Powell who was NOT totally Stegner's beknighted prophet of a kinder, gentler Western development. Powell did favor independent farmers over corporate conglomerates, but just as much as Nevada's Sen. Stewart, he wanted to drain every last drop from the Colorado. And, Worster also shows how he ran afoul of the most ardent forest conservation advocates late in his Washington career.

In short, Worster indicates the semi-mythical Powell, not just of Stegner but some other writers, should be taken with a grain of salt.

Worster puts Powell's evangelical -- yes, evangelical -- fervor for irrigation in the backdrop of his childhood Methodism. While there's no way of proving this, it is certainly a reasonable interpretation.

He also paints a broader picture of Powell the bureaucrat. Here again, he differs somewhat from Stegner, suggesting that Powell bears a bit of the blame, at least, for his own wing-clipping by Stewart et al late in his career.

At the same time, Worster gives a detailed portrait of just how hard-working Powell was, both as a Washingtonian and the explorer of the Colorado River and Plateau.

In essence, this is "revisionist history" at its best and most proper.

The title a River Running West is something of a misnomer. One could infer from this title that the bulk of this work centers upon Powell's Colorado River excursions (the front cover might lead one to believe so as well), yet barely 1/5th of it actually does. The beginning, as to be expected, recounts the early years of John Wesley Powell, but the entire second half of this weighty tome is dedicated to his time in Washington DC as head of the USGS. Indeed, to be fully accurate, if matching title to content, a more appropriate appellation might be A Bureaucrat in the East, but bureaucracy just doesn't sell well.

Worster's underlying thread in this effort is Powell's transition from son of devout Methodists to enlightened, agnostic scientist. All well and good, if this is the Powell story. But, Worster bangs this drum so incessantly that it leaves one wondering if he was more concerned with Powell's religious upbringing than Powell himself. There's a whiff here of an agenda.

To be fair, the Colorado River excursions are suspensefully told, but as with most books of the genre, the maps are sparse and dreadful. I can't believe I am in the minority for desiring detailed maps with which I might closely trace the route of intrepid explorers. This becomes especially desirous when I have personally visited sites along their journey for then I may more accurately transform the text into mental imagery. But with sub-par maps containing spotty detail and far too many blank spaces, this becomes a mere exercise in frustration.

Despite this, Worster's biography of Powell is no less than mediocre. It follows the standard format of the genre leaving the reader educated if not exactly enthralled. It is not a book I leapt towards at every opportunity, though there was no need to coerce myself into continuing. A River Running West is but an average account of an indomitable man synonymous with western expansion. 3 stars.

John Wesley Powell, a man for dry seasons

After many diversions, I finally finished reading A River Running West, Donald Worster's full-scale biography of John Wesley Powell. This was my follow-up to several reads of Wallace Stegner's classic account of Powell's career--Beyond the Hundredth Meridian. Undoubtedly it was brave of Worster to attempt to follow in Stegner's footsteps, and his book is far from bad, though not nearly as readable or compelling as Stegner's.

If one were to read only one account of Powell's famous expedition down the Colorado river--which made him a national hero--Stegner's would be the one to select for its thrilling narrative. Stegner doesn't take all of Powell's journals at face value. Nevertheless, he casts the break-up of Powell's party, and its differential consequences, in lines of high drama, to etch one of the great legends of the exploration of the West. Worster, as a careful professional historian, is constrained to acknowledge the uncertainties about why Powell's party broke up, and what became of those who left Powell's command. The result is a somewhat mushy story, though likely more accurately reflective of what is really known about the first Powell expedition.

Worster's careful historiography pays dividends in his description of the battles between Powell and his nemesis, Senator Stewart of Nevada. Stegner portrays Powell as a tower of enlightenment in regard to the appropriate policies for settlement of the arid West, and his downfall at the hands of Stewart as the triumph of benighted boosterism in a flawed political arena. No less than Stegner, Worster acknowledges Powell's ground-breaking work as a senior Washington bureaucrat. He also rightly praises Powell's unmatched appreciation of the challenges raised by lack of water in the plans for development of the West. But Worster's account also provides the insight that Powell's policy prescription--collective planned settlement on a watershed-by-watershed basis--was hopelessly quixotic, and out of touch with the social, economic and political realities of the late 19th century in the U.S. In my mind the key question was, where would the capital have come from to finance the water management infrastructure that would have permitted Powell's plan to come about? To put the question another way, why would the political forces provide a subsidy from the federal government for the collectives of small holders that Powell proposed?

Without having read up on the long aftermath of the boosters' triumph, I infer that what actually happened was that moneyed interests in the West influenced more-or-less corrupt Congressional representatives to provide the federal subsidy for water projects, but to the benefit of the large-holders, and not for settlement by collectives. The result was the proliferation of monopolies that Powell feared. A great many disputes over water rights also developed, and remain acute.

In other words, the West was bound to be exploited, even as the Indians were bound to be pushed out and marginalized. Since exploitation of the West would require government capital, and since the vested interests had the power to control the application of government capital, the exploitation came about to the advantage of the vested interests. Not a pretty picture, but what else could possibly have happened, given the way Washington works?

This is an impressive account of John Wesley Powell's public persona and offers interesting background concerning the times during which he lived and the opening up of the West. He was born of immigrant parents in 1834, and in his early life shared many of the experiences and conditions of his contemporary John Muir. His parents came to America seeking religious freedom and were strongly influenced by the evangelical Methodism as espoused by John Wesley. With the Bible as their guide and really only media influence, the family restlessly moved from place to place first through upstate New York, then Ohio, two farms in Wisconsin and finally to Illinois, gradually increasing their holdings by taking advantage of rising real estate values.

From available research material, the author does a good job chronicling Powell's passage from a laboring farm boy with limited educational opportunities to a man who showed great curiosity and enterprise about the natural world. Figuring largely is his military experience during the Civil War, and his losing of his right arm at Shiloh. Also of note, in preparation for the 1868 Expedition down Colorado River, were his early fossil hunting expeditions, which he did on his own initiative. This was period of great opportunity for an outsider because the natural sciences were just fledgling disciplines. He took advantage of his opportunities and was able to become a force in the scientific world.

Unfortunately, a close associate of Powell's destroyed many of his personal papers after his death; and after losing his right arm, he never learned to write easily and therefore rarely wrote but instead dictated. As a result, there does not appear to be much that would lead us to a close and personal view of his struggles. The book reflects this distance, and it drags at times as Powell becomes a kind of shadowy figure in his own story. The section about the expedition down the Colorado River and the decade-long-survey that he supervised concerning the Colorado Plateau deals with a landscape that is truly majestic and breathtaking. Yet, the book takes a generally matter-of-fact tone with not much passion or poetry.

Contrary to those who saw great wealth to be exploited in the West, Powell saw an opportunity to learn, not only about the landscape and its forms, but also about its native inhabitants. While settlers and miners were trying to push Native Americans away from where the wealth was and marginalize them, Powell took up their cause to some extent. He became the first director of the Bureau of Ethnology and made their languages an object of serious study. But he was very much influenced by Darwin and the scientific determinism of the times. Such influences that promote objectivity may have prevented him from gaining a greater understanding of the religious ceremonies of tribes such as the Hopis. He regarded Native American myth and shamanism as superstition.

As the first director of the USGS established in 1881, he became involved in bitter bureaucratic battles concerning the settlement of the West, especially in regard to irrigation. He was on the forefront of those who wanted the country to proceed with development on a scientific basis. In taking such a stand he was bound to collide with those who wanted free access to make a fortune, such as his most noted rival Senator William M Stewart of Nevada. Powell learned from the experiences of Mormon settlers, made a fairly accurate assessment of the aridity of the West debunking the fanciful "rain follows the plow", and concluded that a cooperative arrangement was the best way to allocate scarce water resources.

The book is well written and informative about the events of Powell's life and the geological survey in which Powell played such a major role. My primary disappointment with the book was that I felt I didn't know the person John W. Powell much better after reading the book. The book provided very little information about Powell's life outside of his work.

For the thickness of the book, I was somewhat disapointed with the lack of significant detail. The writer provides a thorough survey of Powell's life and his activities. However, the writer offen times makes generalizations, but does not provide any detailed back up (these would include the troubles at the early USGS, with Congress, and what Powell had to do to overcome the challenges). The impression given in the book was that Powell was not a man of great depth, but rather a generalist who was successful in motivating others. Surely his staff staff acheived sucess, but no mention is made of these activities or of Powell's involvement. His most significant publication has been the Lands of the Arid West, but the writer gets caught up in Powell's vision of the West rather than the fact brought out in the report. I would conclude that this would be a good book to read in conjunction with Stegner's Beyond the 100th Meredian.