Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell & the Second Opening of the West

by Wallace Stegner

John Wesley Powell fought in the Civil War and it cost him an arm. But it didn't stop him from exploring the American West.

Here Wallace Stegner, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, gives us a thrilling account of Powell's struggle against western geography and Washington politics. We witness the successes and frustrations of Powell's distinguished career, and appreciate his unparalleled understanding of the West.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Westerns, Nature, American History, Adventure

385 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Wallace Earle Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist. Some call him "The Dean of Western Writers." He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.

Reviews

[Kev · Rating 5 out of 5]

On my top 10 of 10,000. No one can claim sufficient understanding of the expansion of the West in the late 19th & early 20th centuries without having read this. Stegner is a beautiful writer and you'll love this book. John Wesley Powell not only led the historic Explorations of the Grand, Green and Colorado Rivers and their Canyons, explored the blank areas of the western US, but founded the US Geological Survey & Bureau of Ethnicity. He also was a cofounder and inaugural attendee of very first meeting to consider the creation of a Society for the increase & diffusion of geogrphic knowledge -- The National Geographic Society.

Beautiful, Pulizer-winning biography of JW Powell and a magnifiscent literary tour de force.

Read this one.

[Karen GoatKeeper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not an easy read. It was written in the 1950s and is a scholarly work. That said it is not difficult to read, just slow if you want to think about what is packed into this book.
John Wesley Powell gained fame as the first man to run the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. He was so much more than that. His career spanned the late 1860s when he mapped the Colorado region to 1894 when some Senators finally pushed him out of his work with the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Irrigation Survey.
Powell grew up much as John Muir did and gained an education in much the same manner. Both men had itchy feet and went off exploring. Powell loved the Plateau area of the West. He was concerned that people thought it was something it wasn't and their mistaken ideas too often ended in tragedy. His career was centered on trying to give people a better understanding of the arid regions beyond the hundredth meridian.
Central to Powell's plan was the topographical mapping of the entire U.S. This was still only 60% done in 1952! Yet, his influence did create the USGS and set it on a course to map the country.
A major concern was that the country had formed its ideas and beliefs about farming in the eastern part of the country where rainfall was enough to make farming profitable. The land laws were written for this type of farming. A school of thought promoted the idea rain followed the plow so all homesteaders had to do was stake a claim and put in a crop.
During the wet years in the 1870s this worked. Then came the dry decades preceded by a terrible winter leaving people frozen in their homes, cattle frozen by the hundreds in their pastures. And over 90% of homesteaders failed sometimes fatally. There was even a dust bowl in the 1890s.
I highly recommend this book. It takes a good hard look at why western policies are the way they are, where the water wars came from and how politics can both help or destroy the solutions. Those western myths and legends are hard to deal with but must be understood for what they are before a solution to the arid west can be found and implemented. With the west becoming even drier and the population growing, these questions must be faced and do affect the entire country.

[Dax · Rating 4 out of 5]

This should have been much more boring than it was. Other than Part I, which covers Powell's exploration of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, the majority of this book centers on Powell's career leading the US Geological Survey. In that role, Powell essentially held the ultimate power in determining how the West would be opened up to settlement. The second half of this book covers his futile struggle with politicians who fought against his general plan.

Why is this such an interesting read? Stegner's dry wit and powerful writing are on full display, and his passion for the West bleeds through the passages. He is not afraid to attack those disillusioned optimists who supported blind homesteading (Sam Adams, Gilpin and Stewart are particularly lambasted) and Stegner clearly believes that Powell was on the right track. This is not an objective work, and Stegner does not attempt to make it seem so. He is a Powell supporter and wants to make it clear that Powell is a forgotten name who deserves remembering.

Informative and well written. Excellent read.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far I've read two Wallace Stegner novels and this, and this book about geography, cartography, ethnology, and American politics is by far the best of the three. I discovered my surprising weakness for geology writing after reading Basin and Range during my student days, and still regret feverishly selling it in order to buy ramen noodles.

John Wesley Powell emerged one-armed from the Civil War (serving under Grant) and gathered up a motley crew in order to traverse the Colorado River. It had been done before, but casually, with more exploratory than scientific aims in mind. Powell was a self-taught scientist and university professor. In fact he would traverse the Colorado twice under U.S. government aegis; the first expedition had so many mishaps, overturned and destroyed boats in the rapids (during which food supplies, clothing, oars, scientific instruments, and notes and diaries were lost), and near drownings, that its data-gathering was severely hampered.


Powell with his one arm, and a Paiute Indian, with his two.


These two photos show one of the boats used in the second expedition, with an armchair bolted to the center.

Not really having any idea whether the Colorado had rapids, or how bad they might be, Powell designed his boats blind for the first expedition. They turned out to be quite unsuitable, too heavy and lacking maneuverability. At times the going was so rough the boats had to be recaulked and repaired every night.


Care for a ride down the rapids in an armchair?

Before the very last set of rapids on the first expedition, the men were extremely anxious. The concern was that this set would be untraversable, and they would lose their lives. Their food supplies were nearly depleted, their bacon and most of their flour gone bad; they were eating biscuits the consistency of sandstone now. Powell gave the men a choice of riding the final set of rapids and finishing the journey, or hiking up and out of the canyon and quitting the expedition, no hard feelings. Three of the 10 or so men chose to hike up and out, whereupon the remaining men bounced their way down the river. Sadly, once the three hikers reached the top of the canyon, they were mistaken for three white men who had recently molested a Shivwit squaw and were shot with arrows as they slept. Later, not a man to hold a grudge, Powell met with the Shivwits and smoked a peace pipe in order to find out what had happened to his men. He used the time productively, recording Shivwit vocabularies, as he did repeatedly for other tribes. (If I'm not mistaken, he ended up with some 700 or so vocabularies.) Along with mapping, ethnology was one of his favorite pursuits.

The next chapter in Powell's life entailed trying to persuade the U.S. government and the western states that west of the 100th meridian (a line through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas) the lands were arid, and that the homesteading law should be changed. The standard 160 acres that a homesteader could acquire for farming could in no way be arable unless irrigated; and once it was irrigated, it would take more than one family to farm it. Land for pasturage was in a different category and could be owned or disbursed in much huger chunks since it didn't require irrigation. Powell battled with Congress repeatedly, both in trying to obtain funds for his scientific researches, and trying to persuade Western congressmen that their states were indeed arid. Much like today, the Congressmen of the 1870s-1890s did not always believe in science, or only when it suited them. It didn't suit them to believe that their state only got X amount of annual rainfall. If they had once seen a lush green farm somewhere in the west, that was proof to them lush green farms could exist everywhere at every time in the west ("we've got two feet of snow and it's 20°F, global warming can't possibly exist").

I already knew the fallacy of this reasoning from reading The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Together these two books have me wanting to know everything there is to know about homesteading, irrigation, farming, and water rights in the western two-fifths of the U.S.

As an example of Stegner's nonfiction writing, this paragraph is about as perfect as it gets:

In the West the winter of 1886 clenched and loosened and clenched in blizzard and cold snap and January thaw, cold again, blizzard again. Sometimes after sundown the sky was the clear green of forty below, and sometimes wind reached down out of the north to whine across the flats. Snow moved before it, dry as sand, light as smoke, shifting in long ropy trails, and white coned against clumps of grass and the broken clods of fields, long cone and dark hollow formed in furrows and the ruts of wagon trails, and deeply, with edges like scimitars, around the corners of shacks and soddies. In some of the shacks, after five days, a week, two weeks, a month, of inhuman weather, homesteaders would be burning their benches and tables and weighing the chances of a desperate dash to town - lonely, half-crazed Swedes, Norwegians, Russians, Americans, pioneers of the sod-house frontier. Sometimes they owned a team, a cow, a few chickens; just as often they had nothing but a pair of hands, a willingness to borrow and lend, a tentative equity in 160 acres of Uncle Sam's free soil, a shelf full or partly full or almost empty of dried applies, prunes, sardines, crackers, coffee, flour, potatoes, with occasionally a hoarded can of Copenhagen snus or a bag of sunflower seeds. More than one of them slept with his spuds to keep them from freezing. More than one, come spring, was found under his dirty blankets with his bearded grin pointed at the ceiling, or halfway between house and cowshed where the blizzard had caught him.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beyond the 100th Meridian: John Wesley Powell

I had to have something to listen to while I drove around Long Island, so I happened upon the audio CD “Beyond the 100th Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West” written by Wallace Stegner and read by Mark Bramhall. Bramhall did better than Stegner on this project, although not by much.

Both were dry presenters: Stegner wrote as if the US Government had commissioned him to do so, and Bramhall narrated it as instructed. Well, then why did I read this dry history? Two reasons. One, I wanted to see if John Wesley Powell was related to my Great Great Great Great Grandfather, Charles Powell (no kidding), but I was not able to establish that relationship. Two, knowing that he was an ethnographer as well as an explorer, I wanted to hear what he had to say about the Indians of the West. Not nearly as much as I had hoped. This is Stegner’s fault, not Powell’s who did a lot of work on the American Indian, but Stegner just didn’t seem that interested.

Stegner seemed to delight in depicting the beauty of the mountains and the canyons that Powell and his fellow explorers observed while braving the rapids of the Colorado and other rivers. That’s nice if you’re into wetsuits and ways to keep your matches dry, but really I wanted to hear about the Indians, not all this Boy Scout stuff and macho men on rafts.

Stegner spent way, way too much time explaining how bureaus and departments were set up within the Federal Government, how Powell dealt with his river crews and how unfair his detractors and critics were.

There’s no doubt that Powell was a superlative amateur but dedicated scientist, kind of like Teddy Roosevelt, gaining honorary degrees from prestigious American universities and publishing important landmark papers on a myriad of subjects. There’s no doubt that he was a brave and determined patriot convinced that the West needed to be developed properly through scientific farming and irrigation.

If Stegner had had the talent, he could have transformed all his learned research into a great American novel about how the West was really won and how Powell had married a wonderful woman who underwent the same deprivations with her husband; and, as far as I could tell, both stayed true to each other throughout. The conflicts with fellow explorers could have been dramatized and might have created a flywheel of more stories from this exciting, thrilling chapter in American history.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

At times as dry as the land it discusses this book is more a biography of John Wesley Powell, or perhaps hagiography. Powell was the one armed amateur scientist who quickly morphed into a selfless, skilled bureaucrat whose vision for the American West was denied by Congress and the settlers of the West. The first part of the book concentrates on Powell's expeditions and the latter part on his work in DC managing numerous surveys and agencies. Surprisingly the second part is very instructive and interesting, more so than the tedious recounting of every mile of the discovery trips. Congress in the 1880's and 1890's sounds just like today's Congress. Lots of talk of anti-science and government encroachment into the state's rights and the right of the individual to just be. If they had listened to Powell the American West would be very different. This took me over two months to read. It's one of those books you are glad to have read but you're not going to revisit. However, it's essential in any library on the American West. Stegner's prose is inviting and Powell was obviously one of his heroes. Powell set the stage for Teddy Roosevelt and Gordon Pinchot but he was just one man against a sea of selfish and impatient interests. He was an interesting man who is almost saint like in this retelling. Sadly his contributions to reclamation are overshadowed by his explorer status. He was also a cultural anthropologist and a philosopher.

[Patrick Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian deserves its iconic status; it is a work of both scholarship and poetry. It relates the life of a unique, talented, and farsighted man; it also portrays that man's attempt to save the Western United States from its worst myths and preconceptions about itself. One can come away saddened that then, as now, facts and science can be ignored by selfish, greedy, narrow interests. However, one can also be heartened by the way in which finally, reality tends to vindicate those who have eyes to see.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for people who, like me, who feel at home in the American West. Masterfully written--it's Stegner, after all--it includes important reminders about water in the West, especially as it becomes more scarce. It also argues convincingly that this "second opening" of the West required collective action--I could say "socialism" if I wanted to be provocative--on a scale that had never been seen before in the U.S. Those are the big federal water projects, without which we could not have settled the West in anything like the way we actually did.

Lovely, lovely book.

[Shane · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Verifiable knowledge makes its way slowly, and only under cultivation, but fable has burrs and feet and claws and wings and an indestructible sheath like weed-seed, and can be carried almost anywhere and take root without benefit of soil or water."

Wallace Stegner, already perhaps America's best writer of fiction, has here written a terrific history of the geological survey of the arid West and a partial biography of John Wesley Powell.

Stegner's main focus is in maintaining that the West was opened only after men of science like Powell were able to impose order and reason on the fantastical images of the West conjured by men like William Gilpin, Charles Wilber, and even Thomas Jefferson. Those men believed that the agricultural potential of places like west Texas, Utah, and the Dakotas was essentially limitless, that the "rain follows the plow" and that the aridity could be undone by determined homesteading.

Surveyors and scientists like Powell resisted these fantasies through careful and devoted study. Stegner, obviously an admirer of Powell's, devotes much of this book characterizing Powell as an embodiment of reason, standing stalwart against the popularizers of Manifest Destiny.

I came away from it with a renewed appreciation for the importance of caution and critical thinking in evaluating ideas. Thousands embraced the stories of an idyllic west because they felt good and were fun to believe, while the truth was complicated and unglorious.

[Feisty Harriet · Rating 4 out of 5]

The high desert, red rock canyon country of south-east Utah was the last part of the contiguous United States to be mapped, and with good reason. That country is harsh, blistering, and difficult to navigate by foot, horse, boat, or, frankly, jeep. Powell is the first (white) explorer to attempt this country and try to map the rivers and mountains and plateaus. This book is that history and follows Powell's political career for several decades as he tries to convince Congress and the public so hot for the Homestead Act that agricultural farming just will not work in vast areas of the arid, desert West. He failed, and it wasn't until decades later that the US Government started to understand his points. The subsequent water war that has lasted and heightened in the last 15 or 20 years was predicted by Powell over 150 years ago, he knew exactly what would happen to the lands of the West if farming and ranching were left unchecked and the water resources were not protected.

The most exciting part of this book is the first 150 pages where Powell and a small group of adventurers run the Green River from Wyoming down through the Uintas and eastern Utah, finally meeting up with the Grand/Colorado River and continuing on through southeast Utah and northern Arizona, running the Grand Canyon, and ending up in the tip of Nevada. His descriptions are fantastic and, in many ways, a love letter to the red rock country I hold so dear. The rest of the book is more political and details the history of homesteading and immigration through the western United States, bits of the wars and treaties and decimation of the Native American tribes, and a lot of congressional arguments and acts and vetoes that led to the "opening" and settlement of the West. Stegner wrote this in the 1950's and it is fascinating how much still holds true 75 years later on the fight for water and other sustaining resources in the hot desert mesas and mountains.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I didn't appreciate Wallace Stegner so much I wouldn't have bought the book, and I probably wouldn't have finished it either. Stengner is an awesome writer. When describing Powell's intellect, Stegner writes, "He learned from every book, acquanintance, experience; facts stuck in his mind , and not like stray flies on fly-paper but like orderly iron filings around magnetic poles." That kind of writing made the description of Powell's expedition down the Colorado River a quick read. That kind of writing made the account of Powell's career with the U.S. Geological survey tolerable. Barely!

[Michael Perkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

“An acquaintance with books and learning was not a thing that a frontier boy like John Wesley Powell could take for granted; he had to seize it as he could. Abe Lincoln said it for every such boy with brains and dreams in his head: “The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is a man who’ll git me a book I ain’t read.”

[Doubledf99.99 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good read on the issues of the american west, and on Powell.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exceptional story of John Wesley Powell's exploration of the Colorado River and Grand Canyon as well as the Green River and his role in the opening of the West. Most of the first half of the book was about his famous expedition of exploration with ten men in four boats running the rapids and dangerous waters of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. This tale is a great example of how truth can often be more exiting than fiction, especially when told in Stegner's magnificent prose. The second half of the book was about his involvement in the opening of the West. He played a major role in the establishment of many of the policies that were put into place governing the migration of settlers to the West that I wasn't aware of. It was a very enlightening and educational read.

[Nick Bookman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is classic Stegner! What a salubrious read.

[Christopher Pitts · Rating 4 out of 5]

This doesn't compare with Angle of Repose, but Powell was such a fascinating person. Worth it if only to read the first-recorded account of running the Colorado River.

[Amber Brusak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powell was quite the guy and it was cool to see how he basically started geologic studies in the West/began scientific government funded studies.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this on audiobook (Blackstone audio), which I highly recommend. Since I grew up on a street named for Powell, I can hardly afford NOT to read this book.

The narrative of the trip down the Colorado was dramatic, especially compared to the descriptions of failed attempts by contemporaries. I was amazed that they traveled all the way down the river with only flour, dried apples, bacon and a few other supplies for food. They were obviously better foragers than people are today. Well and of course they had guns to shoot animals, when there were some around to be shot.

There were some really amusing bits in the beginning and middle regarding someone named "Gilpen" and others like him that told stories of how the West would become some sort of fertile Eden, that somehow plowing would increase rainfall. (Such stories were obviously NOT supported by Powell.) Wow. I grew up in the desert, so it strains credulity to think that someone could tell such a tale, and that others would believe it.

The second half, about the geological survey, got a bit bogged down in technical details for a while. But the latter part discussing Powell's plans for division of land and water rights in the west, was truly amazing. He was a visionary in land planning, and could see how success of Western settlement was more likely if arranged around a community rather than independent homesteaders. The last section that discussed the political machinations over Powell's geological survey and land proposals was most compelling. I was surprised, but then not surprised, to see how the business interests of land speculators and others overwhelmed reason and defeated Powell's proposals in Congress. It read just like today's news of politics ignoring science (e.g. climate change). Here we are more than a hundred years later, still fighting bitter legal battles over water in the West.

[Pat Rolston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me Stegner brings his extraordinary writing skills to the equally extraordinary life of John Wesley Powell and the combination is magical. We tend to take for granted our surroundings and the historical wonders that preceded our advancements. Advancement maybe a stretch in multiple categories in that we have softened by comparison to our ancestors to a degree that would render us unrecognizable in our daily routines.

Powell and his incredible ambition, vision, and fortitude are recounted with grace and expertise. This is a book that reminds us of our pioneers who mapped and explored the great Western lands and their natural wonders. Read this to better appreciate
the sacrifice, skill, and grit of these folks with Powell as their leader.

It really is a privilege to have access to such literature for an opportunity to better understand and be thankful for the changes wrought by all who preceded us while opening the door to self reflection on ourselves and our times.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic. One of Stegner's best-known and widely read books. Kev's 5-star review here is the one to read: "On my top 10 of 10,000. No one can claim sufficient understanding of the expansion of the West in the late 19th & early 20th centuries without having read this. Stegner is a beautiful writer and you'll love this book. John Wesley Powell not only led the historic Explorations of the Grand, Green and Colorado Rivers and their Canyons, explored the blank areas of the western US, but founded the US Geological Survey & Bureau of Ethnology . . ."

Read this one if you are interested in the history of the West, and why Powell's good ideas about managing water and human settlement were ignored, with tragic consequences. A full 5-star book, not a rating I give often or lightly. Don't miss this one!

[Evan Hays · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a book. I’d have to say this is one of the best and most important books of US History I have ever read. It is more important than ever today with the ongoing terrible drought in much of the American West. I teach a unit on the settling of the Great Plains every year to my 8th graders, and I found myself thinking many times as I was reading, “I will change the way I teach this or that part of the unit because of this book.”

I am sure that, were I to study all of this on the grad school level, that there are further works that have been published in the decades since the 1950s that will have corrected and improved on certain elements of Stegner’s scholarship here, but I highly doubt they will have written it as well as he did. This was my first Stegner, somehow, and will certainly not be my last.

It’s hard for me to know where to begin on why I appreciated this book so much, but as someone who wrote my master’s thesis about an American in the late 19th century, this book scratched a lot of itches and connected a lot of dots. First, I found out that Powell attended my alma mater, Wheaton College, before it was named that, so that had me at hello. There is the thrilling element of the story of the exploration of the Colorado River. There is the fascinating discussion of Powell’s work on ethnology with Native Americans. This was fascinating because much of what he believed and wrote we would consider problematic and racist today, yet in his own time did much to advance at least some level of an attempt at true interest and study of Native Americans. There is his incredibly keen analysis of the workings of the American democratic system, particularly of how Congress works. I often think about how a huge problem through our nation’s history is our lack of political will to see some needed policy or reform through before it gets tossed out because something else is more captivating to voters and will keep a Congressman in office. If anyone ever needed any convincing of the truth of that pattern in our nation’s history, read this book. There is the fact Powell (and clearly Stegner) loved the landscape of what Abbey calls, “4 corners country” like few other Americans have. You could read this book just to study an aesthetic appreciation of natural beauty. There is the highlighting of Powell’s prescient understanding of the nature of the water problem in the West, which America continues to do its very best to ignore, despite failures and disaster time and time again. The Dust Bowl need never have happened if people had studied Powell more earlier on. But beyond the historical content, Stegner is just such a good writer. He can sum up something very complex with a perfect turn of phrase. His metaphors are deeply meaningful. He is quotable and profound without verging into the extreme or exaggerated. He was clearly someone who did tons of research and who was just very wise. I looked up a list of the authors that he trained while teaching at Stanford, and it’s like a who is who of American western authors of the 20th century. Now I know why.

I plan to read one of Stegner’s works of fiction next.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those who live in or love the American West, this book is a must read. For those who want to expand their knowledge of American history, this book is a must read.

Wallace Stegner masterfully brings all the facts together to paint a lively picture of John Wesley Powell and his colleagues, detractors, and supporters—within the backdrop of the political atmosphere os the time. It is quite the tale. And Stegner’s writing is something to savor.

After Powell’s trips down the Green and Colorado rivers (quite the exciting tales), Powell realized that the American West was arid, and would not support small farms in the same way that farming was done east of the Mississippi. He wanted to survey the land to determine locations for dams that could parcel out water equally to farmers. Hence the formation of the US Geological Survey. But he had to fight “the Gilpin mentality” which was based on the ideas of a western utopia, and that surely, “rain would follow the plow.” These ideas were supported by land grabbers (many who wanted control of the water rights), and they had their friends in Washington. (Seems like we have the same issues today, over 100 years later.)

And there is a lot to learn about Powell. For instance, I did not know that Powell was more interested in documenting the Indian tribes of the Southwest than making maps of the area. (His ethnologists worked to document a hundred Indian languages.) And that he was a democrat (small “d”) who thought that if the US sent settlers out west, it should sure create systems to support them so they wouldn’t go bankrupt in a few years. But, his ideas were a bit ahead of their time, and bad land laws and management were fully exposed with the dust storms of the 1930s (to name just one of the negative effects).

[Kelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wallace Stegner is one of my favorite authors, but this was the first non-fiction book of his I've read. It did not disappoint. I had no idea the influence John Wesley Powell had and could have had if he stayed in legislative power longer. I got a lot out of this book, but my main take aways:

He had one arm! And did amazing expeditions, climbed mountains, collected specimens, etc. and was considered a "bully of a man" by those on his expeditions.

Colonel Powell was the first to explore and map the Colorado and Green Rivers in the Rocky Mountains. He helped dispel the myth that there was a continuous and calm body of water that went all the way to the Pacific Ocean. (The description of his expedition is in the first 1/3 of the book; reading that alone is fulfilling.)

He made intense efforts to catalog and record Native American languages and customs. He encountered a few tribes who had never seen white men and was fascinated and respectful of their way of life. Without his enthusiasm as an ethnographer, we wouldn't have the rare collection of Native American artifacts in the Smithsonian.

He realized that the wild West was not like England, that it was mostly a desert and needed to be treated as such. Many disbelieved him and those in politics thwarted his efforts at water conservation and planning. If his policies had gone through, there most likely would never have been the dust bowl of the 1930's. He tried to keep the land out of big companies and in the hands of small farmers. Stegner does a much better job of the little remembered, yet incredible, work of John Wesley Powell. I'm really glad I finished the book even though it took me a few check outs.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

At few weeks ago, I was feeling blah. But then I saw a Facebook friend's pictures of his hiking in Colorado. I remembered that I had this Wallace Stegner book Beyond the Hundredth Meridian on my to read list and plunged in to the Colorado River with John Wesley Powell and crew.

However, this book is about so much more than his trips into undiscovered country. It discusses all the political wrangling in DC to get funding for these expeditions. Powell is also like Muir one of the first to realize that natural resources like water and minerals are not inexhaustible.

Powell wanted to protect those individual farmers in the arid west by insuring their access to adequate water for their crops. Although published in 1954, Stegner's book is still relevant today. With record heat searing the southwestern US, the demand for water is critical. Powell looked to the federal government to police private industries monopolizing and over utilizing our natural resources. Yet even in the late 1800's there were those in Congress who supported unrestricted development and overuse.

A well written and researched worked that would be enjoyed by those with an interest in history and the environment.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a riveting book about John Wesley Powell's exploration of the Colorado River and his subsequent quest to focus lawmakers in Congress on the terrain and water available in the arid west. I knew that Powell had explored the Grand Canyon, and I knew that Lake Powell is named after him, but I didn't know much more about him before I started reading this book to prepare for our trip to the Southwest. I did not know that Powell was the founder of the US Geological Survey, urging his country to produce accurate maps of the west and arguing that its arid climate precluded the development under the Homestead Act that many senators and bureaucrats aspired for it. he was also the founding director of the Ethnography Dept and an expert of Native Americans. And Stegner, the author, is amazing. There is a reason that it is not out of print and it was written in 1954. Stegner is ironic, witty, and his passion for the West and its arid dry beauty is obvious on every page. He attacks those who support the homesteading movement. His descriptions of Powell's disagreement with those propounding false science is interesting and prescient. I did not expect to like this book as much as I did. Highly Recommended!

[Richard Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nearly perfect blend of biography and history, one of three books on the American West that historian Dale Morgan said he wished he'd written himself. Stegner explains the origins of American science and government exploration along the way of telling about Powell. Wonderful use of language, and because his subject is really the West rather than Powell, Stegner can be expansive without losing sight of his subject.

If the book has a weakness (and every book does) it is that it is more historical than biographical. It is about Powell's times much more than about Powell himself, but the weakness is more than made up for the insight it provides into an American willfulness that simply dismisses geographic and geological reality. The West is not the East and cannot be treated or settled or managed as such. While Stegner wrote much else of value about the West, this is perhaps his best broad context for all of it. Wish I could write like that.

[Joe Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve wanted to read this book for a while. I studied geology for six years in Utah and am more than familiar with the geography and geology this book refers to. There is a very special place in my heart for the arid western United States (the part with variable topographic relief).

I give this book a 3.5. The beginning is full of adventure as Powell explores the unexplored Colorado River, but the book’s thesis is really about the importance of truth and how it should be used for societal progress. The truth Powell patiently obtains and fervently delivers is the kind revealed through the scientific method. Most of the last third of this book deals with Powell’s unpopular but true ideas about settlements in the west and the battles he ultimately lost to greedy politicians.

It was an interesting read with valuable history. The reason I rate it lower is that many of the chapters through the middle of the book are about as arid as anything beyond the hundredth meridian.

[Carol Bakker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read two very similar books (this and John F. Ross's The Promise of the Grand Canyon) back-to-back in conjunction with a week vacation at Lake Powell. I preferred Wallace Stegner's prose, and thus his 1954 book on John Wesley Powell. Unfortunately, because I listened to the audio, I couldn't grip and hold the phrases and word sequences that tickled my fancy. They simply evaporated from my memory.

The first half is an adventure story about the expeditions down the Green and Colorado Rivers through the Grand Canyon. The second half covers Powell's massive contributions to topographical mapping the west and his struggles to make eastern legislators understand how settling an arid land is much different than settling the midwestern regions. Political conflict, alas, doesn't make for absorbing reading.

[Mary Ellen Barringer]

Adventure in nature and adventure in bureaucracy could be the subtitle of this book. The first portion follows John Wesley Powell down the Colorado River as he charts it for the first time. I would love to see this adventure made into a movie. The first part of the book continues has he leads additional excursions to the west. He never had a formal education, but became one of the great scientists of the 19th century.

The second part of the book follows Powell as he becomes the head of one, then two then three government scientific institutions and his adventure in gaining funding from Congress to do what he thought was right for the American people, especially the settlers in the west. The shenanigans of Congress were in full swing in the 1880s and 90's.

Stenger's writing is beautiful and descriptive. This is the third book I have read by him, but the first non-fiction book. A first rate read.

[Nick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Should have been called "inside the beltway"

Ostensibly about exploration of the American West, much more of the book centers on Washington DC. It's full of minutiae about political grievances and maneuvering.

Somehow even the initial part of the book, which is about the exploration of the Colorado River, manages to be ponderous and boring. Page after page of descriptions of various bends of the river and its geology seemed like they would never end. Many pages are devoted to grifters who tried to raise money off of their fraudulent explorations. Meanwhile, members of Powell's party who were murdered received one sentence out of these 367 pages. I suppose these men, having departed Powell and no longer useful to him, didn't merit more.

The end of the book is essentially a celebration of bureaucracy and Powell as proto-environmentalist hero, standing up to the ignorance and greed of those around him. If only they could all just be as wise as Powell, then everything would be great. This perspective isn't persuasively explained so much as assumed to be true. There isn't much nuance here. His opponents are painted as cartoonish villains, rather than people who might have been frustrated at the pace of Powell's work or suspicious of the tendency to centralize power in DC rather than letting local people decide for themselves what was best for their own lives.