When I was a boy, we often heard the stories of John Wesley Powell leading expeditions in the American Southwest, particularly of his navigating the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Powell was a Civil War veteran who lost an arm at Shiloh. During an August 2023 trip to the Grand Canyon I found that a monument had been put up at the Canyon to Powell and and his men.
To get to the monument, I first went to the Visitor’s Center at the South Rim. I got on the free Blue buses provided by the National Park Service (NPS) to the Bright Angel Trail. I got off and walked a short distance to the Red bus which took me to Powell’s Point. There, I got off right next to the canyon at an outcropping of rock over the Canyon.
There was a marker describing the exploration by Powell, although the sun was so bright that it was hard to get a picture.
John Wesley Powell was born 1834 in Mount Morris, New York. Today, Mt. Morris is near Rochester outside of Letchworth State Park. His father was an English immigrant who became an active Abolitionist and Methodist minister. When the family moved to Jackson, Ohio, the Powell’s suffered for their anti-slavery position. As a teenager, the family moved to Wisconsin and at 18 Powell became a teacher.
Powell had enlisted in the Union Army on May 8, 1861, less than a month after the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter. Powell had spoken against slavery before the Civil War and he enlisted as a private, although he was soon promoted to sergeant-major of the 20th Illinois. He later helped organize the 2nd Illinois Light Artillery. He was appointed as captain. On April 6, 1862 Powell was shot during the Battle of Shiloh and his arm below his elbow was amputated. He returned to active duty service after a few months and continued to function under Ulysses S. Grant during the Siege of Vicksburg. He later won appointment as the commander of the 17th Army Corps Artillery Brigade. Both before his enlistment and during his service, Powell studied the natural sciences. After the war, Powell became a professor of geology at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington.
The path from the bus to the monument is paved and level. As you can see in the picture below, it is narrow with a fall off of seven thousand feet on both sides. People with a fear of heights may not want to cross it, but for everyone else it is safe and an easy walk. My wife has mobility issues and I had had a stroke three months before and neither of us had any trouble navigating the path.
We first went out to Powell’s Point where you can see the incredible area the expedition explored. Of course, Powell’s expedition started in Colorado, explored down through Utah, traversed the Grand Canyon, and travelled down river to the confluence of the Colorado and Virgin rivers. You can drive for hundreds of miles next to the Green and Colorado rivers to trace the path of exploration of the expedition. Below is a photo of Powell’s Point from the Powell Monument.
Powell explored the Grand Canyon by boat in 1869 and again in 1871-1872. At every viewpoint of the Grand Canyon National Park, you are looking over where the expedition explored. The 1869 expedition included Powell’s brother, Walter, a captain of the Union Army. Other Union Army veteran members included Jack Sumner, a veteran of the 32nd Iowa Infantry during the Civil War, George Y. Bradley, a Union lieutenant, Seneca Howland of the 16th Vermont Infantry regiment, and W.R. Hawkins who had joined the army to fight in the Civil War as a teenager.
John Wesley Powell wrote about his brother Walter as “Captain Powell was an officer of artillery during the late war and was captured on the 22d day of July, 1864, at Atlanta and served a ten months’ term in prison at Charleston, where he was placed with other officers under fire. He is silent, moody, and sarcastic, though sometimes he enlivens the camp at night with a song. He is never surprised at anything, his coolness never deserts him, and he would choke the belching throat of a volcano if he thought the spitfire meant anything but fun. We call him ‘Old Shady.'”
George Bradley, Powell wrote, was “a lieutenant during the late [American Civil] war, and since orderly sergeant in the regular army, was, a few weeks previous to our start, discharged, by order of the Secretary of War, that he might go on this trip.” Billy Hawkins, “the cook, was a soldier in the Union Army during the war, and when discharged at its close went West, and since then has been engaged as teamster on the plains or hunter in the mountains. He is an athlete and a jovial good fellow, who hardly seems to know his own strength.”
The monument from Powell’s Point is shown below.
The expedition went over a 1,000 miles along the Colorado and its tributaries. Four of the men in the expedition left before it was completed. None of the Union veterans left. Of the four who left, three were killed either by indigenous warriors or Mormons. Frank Goodman left before the expedition entered the Grand Canyon and William Dunn, and brothers Oramel and Seneca Howland died.
The monument is well maintained, however at over one hundred years old the writing on it need to be buffed so that the words can be made out.
Here is another view from Powell’s Point of the Grand Canyon.
Below is the monument. It honors both the 1869 trip and the 1871-1872 expedition.
The 1871-1872 expedition included a surveyor and a photographer, creating a lasting record of the journey.
In 1881, Powell was appointed to be the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey. Throughout this period, Powell’s war wound troubled him and in the 1890s he had an operation to relieve his suffering. He died in Haven, Maine, on September 23, 1902. He was 69.
While Powell and his expedition are usually credited as the first people to have passed through the Colorado River at the Grand Canyon, indigenous nations say that they have been living along the canyon for centuries and that it is likely that others have sailed this terrain before Powell.
To get to the Powell Monument, go to the National Park Service Visitor Center and get on the Blue Bus to the transfer point at Bright Angel Trail at the end of the line. Next, transfer over to the Red Bus and get off at Powell’s Point.
All photos were taken by Pat Young. To see more sites Pat visited CLICK HERE for Google Earth view.
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