A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell [Paperback]

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.

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.

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.