The Promise of the Grand Canyon

by John F. Ross

  Powell convinced Byers to try again, this time with the Major leading the way. They agreed to tackle the mountain in August, with Sumner and a few others. In late July, Powell took his crew to Middle Park to begin collecting. Sumner glanced over Powell’s young men and declared them about as fit for outdoor work as “I would be behind a dry-goods counter.” As Reverend W. C. Wood and Henry approached the Grand for the first time, they saw a prospector drive his wagon halfway across the river, when the dangerous currents, hidden by the sparkling waters, ripped a wheel away. When Wood rode in to retrieve it, he quickly found the river so powerful and deep that he jumped with alarm from his saddle. A mountain man watching from the bank turned to action, braving the river, mounting the frightened horse, and dragging the wagon’s party to safety. The hero of the moment introduced himself as Oramel Howland, a part-time printer for Byers, who worked for Sumner in the warm months.

  The newcomers would also meet another of Sumner’s friends, a thirty-year-old backwoods trapper named Bill Dunn, sporting dark hair that cascaded over a buckskin of dark, oleaginous luster, “doubtless due to the fact that he has lived on fat venison and killed many beavers since he first donned his uniform years ago,” noted Powell. At the outset, these mountain men had little truck with Powell, Wood reporting that “it seems to be the general opinion of the mountaineers that [Powell] doesn’t get along much.” These men relied on spontaneous improvisation; after all, their lives would repeatedly depend on it. So alien a figure as Powell, who brooded about supplies and logistics, kept talking about geology and collecting flowers and birds, must have seemed a pantywaist indeed. When the mountain men and students passed the whiskey bottle around the bonfire in the evenings, the tall tales grew ever more raucous and outlandish. Powell made little contribution to the noise. A good preacher’s son, he did not join in with the constant whiskey drinking and frequent cussing that the mountain men enjoyed so much. Casually tossed insults did not warrant even a guffaw or good-natured retort. To these free spirits, he seemed uptight, self-righteous, and probably not what he said he was. But perhaps worst of all, his aloofness smacked of the judgmental and its dangerous corollary—the conviction that he held himself somehow better than they. But it would be these mountain-hardened men, not the passionate young undergraduates, upon whom the Major would call for his dangerous river trip.

  Powell’s young men spread out over Middle Park, eventually collecting more than two hundred bird species. That summer, Sumner killed three grizzlies, two mountain lions, and a large host of elk, deer, sheep, wolves, and beavers. “All think it a hard life,” wrote young Allen Durley in his journal, although Lewis Keplinger, who had marched with Sherman through Georgia and completed his studies at Illinois Wesleyan that spring, exulted in the raspberries and gooseberries they found. Powell had some of his charges transcribe an elementary Ute vocabulary, not a universally popular task. “’Tis most stupid work these children of the mountains have little or no idea of the eternal fitness of things,” wrote one. Powell alone welcomed the Indians when they came begging at dinnertime, and he continued to buy objects and clothing.

  On Friday, August 21, a group of dignitaries descended on Middle Park, intent on fishing for trout, collecting a few agates, and meeting Indians. Schuyler Colfax, presently speaker of the house and previously a journalist, was stumping as Grant’s vice president designate. He had spent the past week in Denver City, Central City, and Georgetown, rousing patriotic sentiment and denigrating the entire Democratic Party as war-opposing Copperheads. Samuel Bowles, the influential publisher of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, Alexander Hunt, governor of the Colorado Territory, and John Bross, the lieutenant governor of Illinois, accompanied Colfax. Bowles praised the generous hospitality of Major Powell and his assistant W. L. Byers (as Bowles saw fit to characterize the newspaperman) and their wives. The group hooked string upon string of speckled mountain trout; on Saturday afternoon, Powell led them to the crest of a narrow ridge immediately above the springs, for views of Middle Park and the miles of snow-capped peaks that spread in either direction. He pointed to the imposing outline of Longs Peak, announcing that he and Byers would leave on the morrow to climb it, an impressive declaration even for those influential men of action. Powell, who knew how to elicit grandeur and stateliness at such moments, went on to hold forth on how the mountains had formed—still a new and surprising subject. Byers found no reason to speak up; it was Powell’s show. The Major’s audience could now plainly see that his interest centered not so much on the conquest of one more summit, but in furthering science and adding to the understanding of how geographic features took shape. The mountains were certainly a grand sight, but as seen through Powell’s eyes, they became something even more marvelous: the key to unlocking nature’s deepest secrets and a reflection of the enormous possibility of human will and courage.

  Later that evening, the party gathered outside Sumner’s cabin, conversation stretching far into the night about the future of these swiftly opening western lands, leaving Powell with a powerful memory he would call into service a decade later as he formulated his radical assessment of the development of the American West. While virtually all agreed that mining would define this vast expanse of mountain and wilderness, Powell submitted that agriculture and manufacturing would soon develop on a mammoth scale, calling attention to the rewards that irrigation had conferred on the arid regions of Egypt, Persia, India, and China. “In a very few decades all the water of the arid region of the United States would be used in irrigation,” predicted Powell.

  When Powell laid out his plans for the next year’s expedition—to explore the headwaters of the Colorado, and then begin a descent through the unknown canyonland—all shook their heads that the federal government had left so important a responsibility to a private enterprise; but all agreed that Powell was the man to do it. For Powell, a passage down the Colorado would not be merely a high-adventure river trip, the bold effort of a team of men fighting unheralded obstacles to get from one point to another. Instead, he would be inserting the final—and strangest—piece in the American jigsaw puzzle left by nearly a century of continental American exploration. What Lewis and Clark had begun more than sixty years ago, he would complete by fitting into place this last difficult patch of terra incognita. So when Bowles rhetorically wrote, “Is any other nation so ignorant of itself?,” one can hear the echoes of Powell’s own words.

  “We should be out of the Park before this time,” wrote Bowles. “But the Utes and Prof Powell are so interesting that I have lingered long, and must stop.” Darkly handsome, with what his friend Emily Dickinson described as “that Arabian presence,” Bowles was well known for his sharp tongue and keen intelligence, but also for his penchant for the romantic. In his book about that western trip, he remained entranced by the vision that Powell had evoked. “The whole field of observation and inquiry which Professor Powell has undertaken is more interesting and important than any which lies before our men of science. . . . Here are the central forces that formed the Continent; here more striking studies in physical geography, geology, and natural history, than are proffered anywhere else.” Equally was Bowles enamored of the Major: “Professor Powell is well educated, an enthusiast, resolute, a gallant leader . . . He is every way the soul, as he is the purse of the expedition; he leads the way in all danger and difficulty . . .”

  On Sunday morning, as the Colfax group departed for Denver City, Powell gathered the team.

  * * *

  There’s nothing easy about Longs Peak. When mere talk of climbing it had come up, “[t]he old mountaineers had fun at our expense,” wrote Keplinger. “The idea of a bunch of tenderfeet coming out and trying to do a thing like that was ridiculous!” Longs rises dramatically, nine thousand feet above the Great Plain, boulders and loose rock crowding its steep slopes, which are punctuated with sheer granite faces. Few animals but marmots can survive its often unrelenting winds, unpredictable storms, and frequent lightning
strikes. To negotiate a path to its summit necessitates threading often narrow, frequently snow- or ice-covered ledges. A modern guide has likened an assault on Longs as attacking “a citadel . . . a castle with defenses.”

  On August 20, Powell set out on horseback with his brother Walter, the ever-enthusiastic Keplinger, Byers, Sam Garman, Jack Sumner, and Ned Farrell, one of the Sulphur Springs mountain men. A pack mule known as Grizzly bore ten days of supplies. Each man wore a pistol and packed a rifle. The party carried two sets of barometers and thermometers, courtesy of the Smithsonian. Powell would take a difficult, circuitous four-day route to reach his object.

  The party rode up the Grand River to Grand Lake. They then followed a promising ridgeline east, albeit through an exacting tangle of rocks and tree blow-downs that tripped the horses and even the mule. Grizzly indeed pitched off the trail, falling forty feet end over end. It sprang up with a look of astonishment on its face, and the expedition continued.

  They soon passed above the timber line to spend their first night near Ptarmigan Mountain. They climbed 13,310-foot Mount. Alice—probably the first white men to do so—braving its biting winds and subarctic cold. Catching their breath, they gazed toward Longs, now looming defiantly about five miles distant. They carefully wound their way down a precipitous northern ridge, then up again to the summit of Chiefs Head Peak, probably another first ascent. They followed a path along one more ridge toward Longs, a route that quickly narrowed to a knife’s edge.

  Keplinger came upon Jack Sumner sitting, evidently discouraged by the prospect of negotiating a steeply rising ridgeline only eighteen inches wide. Now the cocky greenhorn poked fun at the mountain man. “Hello, Jack, what’s the matter?” and Keplinger confidently moved ahead, Sumner yelling after him that he could go anywhere Keplinger could. But that young man was left recalling with pleasure that Sumner got down on his haunches and “cooned it.” Shortly afterward, the party reluctantly turned back. On their descent, they saw a gully running down the southern flank of the mountain well above them, crowned by a feature now known as the Notch. They would find out the hard way that only one passage offers a nontechnical approach to the summit. The so-called Keyhole Route requires that climbers snake their way 270 degrees around the mountain and then pass through a small opening in the rocks to get to the summit.

  At 2 p.m., the group camped back at timberline and built a fire. Although they had climbed two thirteen-thousand-foot peaks that day, the irrepressible Keplinger asked Powell whether he might reconnoiter up the gully. Powell assented. When night fell with no sign of “Kep,” he sent Sumner after him with bundles of dry sticks for signal fires. Sumner’s shouts, and the fires, helped Kep get down a harrowing descent. He reported that he had neared the top—and now thought he knew how to approach the summit, even though his shaken countenance suggested otherwise. The narrow ledges, pocketed with ice and snow, had exacted everything he had; the unrelentingly strong winds had nearly pitched him off the mountain several times. That night the small group crowded behind a large leaning rock, which protected them somewhat from stiff gusts of wind and scattered rains as they shivered through a cheerless night.

  The next morning brought an unexpectedly fair day. At 6 a.m., the seven began up the steep, boulder-clogged gully, negotiating several treacherous snow drifts. A hundred yards or so below the Notch, they took Keplinger’s recommendation to cut west and up to the top of the gully, reaching a boulder field that was mounted by the Keyhole. After climbing through it, they cut sharply to the left, making a dangerous traverse of what is now known as the Ledges, up a broad gully (the present Trough), and across the Narrows, a thin-lipped ledge clinging to a sheer face. When they approached the Homestretch, a 275-foot, near-vertical polished slab, their hearts must have sunk—the peak, so close, appeared unassailable.

  But once again Keplinger found a way through a break in the wall, snaking upward on both hands and feet. The rest followed without major mishap, and at 10 a.m., Powell heaved himself onto the summit with a cry of “Glory to God!” They spent three hours on top, a level area several football fields in extent, from which they could make out Denver City across to the east, Pikes Peak to the south, Hot Sulphur Springs and a crescent of ranges to the south, west, and north. The men deposited a slip of paper bearing their names, along with barometric readings, into an empty baking soda can to leave behind. Giddy from his outsized role, Kep dropped a biscuit into the can with an additional note christening it as “an everlasting memento of Major Powell’s skill in bread making.” Earlier Powell had insisted on taking his turn at baking, but one-handed kneading had left the biscuits dense and unappetizing, although Keplinger acknowledged that his were no better. The Major told him to remove both items, feeling it did not honor the dignity of the occasion, then took off his hat and spoke a few solemn words: “We have reached the summit of Longs, accomplishing what others thought impossible.” Yet this effort would be but a warm-up for yet greater achievements.

  How Powell had managed to lead such a difficult first ascent defies comprehension: the rock slippery, his boots offering insufficient traction, the wind blowing savagely. By perpetually shifting his weight and balancing carefully—and aided by the others—he had persevered, his ferocious refusal to quit keeping the others going. Fall he did, at one point badly bruising his stump, but the others fell, too, Byers’s tumble breaking a barometer.

  Indeed, Powell had not merely come through but conclusively proved to Byers and Sumner that he indeed was no pantywaist but a man who could not only outface towering physical challenges with one arm but could also lead men on a daunting challenge. Again, he had needed to prove his fitness, but this climb was a crucial test. He required Sumner’s unwavering faith in him to prosecute the unimaginable challenges that lay ahead.

  * * *

  As summer wound down, most of the expedition traveled to Denver City and back to school, but a handful remained with Powell, who intended to overwinter and continue the reconnaissance along the Green River that lay far to the west in present-day northeastern Utah. On September 9, he had his brother Walter lead a pack train west some two dozen miles across Middle Park to Gore Pass, following an often indistinct trail marked by famed guide Jim Bridger in 1861. Powell instructed Walter to trace the Yampa River up to the White River watershed, then to follow that river, which intersects the Green. The going proved more difficult than anyone anticipated, frequent rains and hailstorms battering them. One of Walter’s team spent a month hopelessly lost, before miraculously appearing in camp. Another man—a mountain man, to boot—decided that he had had enough, loading as much of the supplies as a mule could carry before skulking off. Some of the team pursued him, only to scurry back when the thief fired upon them.

  Overwintering on the Green appeared too ambitious, so Powell determined to stop over on the banks of the White River, not far from present-day Meeker, Colorado. They would build cabins near the winter camps of several bands of Utes, among whom Powell would spend much of his time. Before settling in, he took a number of the expedition northwest to Green River City, just over the present-day Wyoming line, a nine-day journey on horseback. The continental railroad, heading toward Promontory and its completion, had just come to this small town perched on the river’s banks. Powell had realized what an extraordinary opportunity this offered him: No longer would he be confined to building boats in the southwest, but could have them built virtually anywhere else and shipped by rail to river’s edge. From Green River City, he would initiate the river journey the following summer. He knew that others would also recognize the same opportunity, so he had no time to waste.

  Winter conditions did not deter him from making several exploratory excursions—down the White to the Green, northward to the Yampa, and around the Uinta Mountains. Emma prepared and identified the 175 species of birds that the expedition had collected. The Major labored over his Ute dictionary, which began to take robust form. That winter he wrote to the president of
Illinois Normal University that they had enjoyed a mild season: “I have explored the canyon of the Green where it cuts through the foot of the Uintah Mountains, and find that boats can be taken down. So that the prospects for making the passage of the ‘Grand Canyon’ of the Colorado is still brighter. The Canyon of the Green was said to be impassable.” A few months later, the Bloomington Daily Pantagraph reported that “with Powell, to think was to dare. The impulse to make the terrific descent was irresistible. Those who know him and his battle experience, will recognize this feature of his character. That which seemed impossible to others, grew to him to be an imperative necessity.”

  That winter, Powell’s river team started to coalesce. Traveling with the greenhorns the past two years had convinced him of the need for hard-weathered men, not just the young, however eager they were. Jack Sumner would serve well as his deputy. Sumner’s friend Oramel Howland agreed to come and would bring along his quiet, younger half-brother Seneca. The trapper Bill Dunn seemed to have toughness aplenty, so he, too, was recruited. Sumner no doubt secured their participation with assurances that Powell indeed could pull off this expedition. The Major also signed on a frequent customer of Sumner’s trading post, the twenty-year-old Billy Hawkins, “an athlete and a jovial good fellow,” as Powell described him, to serve as cook at $1.50 per day. A scrappy orphan, Hawkins had lied about his age and entered a Missouri cavalry regiment at fifteen and rode in a major cavalry charge against a Confederate force twice as large. Byers himself toyed with joining the expedition, but eventually backed out. With his contributions toward equipment and groceries, along with some outright loans, Byers became Powell’s largest financial benefactor, exceeding the Illinois Board of Education’s $600.