John Wesley Powell on the Green River

John Wesley Powell on the Green River. What Shall We Find?. , In May 1869, Major John Wesley Powell set out on a remarkable mission: to explore the uncharted canyons and waters of the Green and Colorado rivers. Powell, a geology professor and one-armed Civil War veteran, began the journey with nine novice oarsmen and four wooden boats. He ended the journey three months later with two boats, six men and detailed knowledge of a unique landscape that would capture national attention., As they first entered the wilds of canyon country, Powell wondered in his journal, “What shall we find?” When Powell’s party reached this section of the river in July, he described a “strange, weird, grand region” of naked rock with “cathedral-shaped buttes, towering hundreds or thousands of feet, cliffs that cannot be scaled, and canyon walls that shrink the river into insignificance.", Powell’s voyage opened a world of adventure and scientific discovery that continues today. Modern boaters float the rivers in the relative safety of rubber rafts, but they see a wild landscape that has changed little since 1869.