The Promise of the Grand Canyon
Page 40
the year 1867: Clarence King, First Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880), 4.
“a touch of Alcibiades”: Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (New York: The Modern Library, 1996), 311.
“brilliant and beaming creature”: Robert Wilson, The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax—Clarence King in the Old West (New York: Scribner, 2006), 231.
Would America develop her rich: Henry Nash Smith, “Clarence King, John Wesley Powell, and the Establishment of the United States Geological Survey,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 34, no. 1 (June 1947): 38.
“I could endure cheerfully”: Mike Foster, “Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden as Naturalist,” American Zoology 26, no. 2 (1986): 343.
firmly establishing dinosaur paleontology: “Leidy, Joseph,” American National Biography Online, www.anb.org; Leonard Warren, Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998): 82.
who first discovered Permian rocks: Mike Foster, “The Permian Controversy of 1858: An Affair of the Heart,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 133, no. 3 (1989): 370–90.
impatience bordering on rudeness: Foster, American National Biography Online, www.anb.org; Foster, “Permian Controversy,” 377; Foster, Strange Genius, 351.
“might as well strike out”: Foster, Strange Genius, 211.
“efficient route for moving troops”: Bartlett, 337–38.
“an astounding 72,250 square miles”: Ibid., 339–40.
“extended from fifty to sixty”: George M. Wheeler, “Geographical Report, Vol. 1,” in Report upon United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1889), 45.
lost the stout case: Ibid., 165.
three hundred of them broke: Robin E. Kelsey, “Viewing the Archive: Timothy O’Sullivan’s Photographs for the Wheeler Survey, 1871–74,” The Art Bulletin 85, no. 4 (December 2003): 720, n.3.
“Dishonestly if we can”: Mark Twain, “The Revised Catechism,” New-York Tribune, September 27, 1871, 6.
four thousand inexpensive weekly magazines: Debora Rindge, “Science and Art Meet in the Parlor: The Role of Popular Magazine Illustration in the Pictorial Record of the ‘Great Surveys,’” in Survey the Record: North American Scientific Exploration to 1930, ed. Edward C. Carter, II (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1999), 181.
Powell could pay $500: Thurman Wilkins, Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 108.
“I am troubled to know”: Foster, Strange Genius, 254.
“only real foe”: Hayden to Gardner, February 1873, cited in Foster, Strange Genius, 253.
“Jackson will knock spots”: Moran to Hayden, January 28, 1873, in Joni Louise Kinsey, “Creating a Sense of Place: Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West” (PhD diss., Washington University, 1989), 297.
“I will utterly crush him”: “Geographical and Geological Surveys West of the Mississippi, May 26, 1874,” House of Representatives Serial Set, Vol. No. 1626, Session Vol. No. 4, 43rd Congress, 1st Session, House Report 612, 63.
need full-page engravings: Hurd de Houghton to Powell, March 6, 1873, in Kinsey, 299.
a passel of commissions: Thomas Moran, Home-Thoughts, from Afar: Letters of Thomas Moran to Mary Nimmo Moran (East Hampton, NY: East Hampton Free Library, 1967), 41–42.
commissioners divided up in September: Worster, A River Running West, 274–75.
all but the painter: Moran, Home-Thoughts, 31.
“And yet the force”: J. E. Colburn, “The Colorado Cañon,” New York Times, September 4, 1873, 2.
“a horde of savages”: “Report of Special Commissioners J. W. Powell and G. W. Ingalls on the Conditions of the Ute Indians of Utah; the Pai-Utes of Utah, Northern Arizona, Southern Nevada, and Southeastern California; the Go-Si Utes of Utah and Nevada; the Northwestern Shoshones of Idaho and Utah; and the Western Shoshones of Nevada . . .” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1874), 23.
“I am constrained to protest”: Worster, A River Running West, 285.
“more about the live Indian”: Wallace Stegner, “A Dedication to the Memory of John Wesley Powell, 1834–1902,” Arizona and the West 4, no. 1 (Spring 1962): 1.
beauty and sublimity: Ibid., 307–8.
Dante’s portrayal of hell: Clarence Cook, “Art,” Atlantic Monthly 34, no. 203 (September 1874): 375, 376.
“thousand battles had been fought”: Powell, Exploration, 174.
“[W]e do not know”: “Thomas Moran’s Paintings,” Congressional Record, 44th Congress, 1st Session, April 4, 1876, 2185.
“was to precipitate a conflict”: “Geographical and Geological Surveys,” 33.
stain the hearings: Ibid., 64, 71.
“his map is so inaccurate”: Ibid., 51–52.
“its pages were quickly turned”: Stephen J. Pyne, Grove Karl Gilbert: A Great Engine of Research (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), 59.
a work of adventure: Powell, Exploration, preface.
all turned the project down: Worster, A River Running West, 331.
“even hint at the terrible”: Moran to Powell, December 19, 1874, in Worster, A River Running West, 332.
“the bond of affection”: Pyne, Gilbert, 72.
“we done middling for greenhorns”: Ibid., 65.
“speak of his justice”: Worster, A River Running West, 256.
CHAPTER 9: A RADICAL IDEA
poet Walt Whitman: This, and details of fair, in Robert W. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Exhibitions, 1876–1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 9–37.
West’s alien outlines: “Characteristics of the International Fair,” Atlantic Monthly 38, no. 228 (October 1876): 497. There’s some debate on whether Jack Hillers’s photographs also were included on the glass windows. See Rindge, 190, fn.44.
rich display of maps: Rindge, 190.
pride in his plaster models: William Henry Jackson and Howard R. Driggs, The Pioneer Photographer: Rocky Mountain Adventures with a Camera (Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: 9 World Book Company, 1929), 273.
“life-size papier-mâché and stuffing”: J. S. Ingram, The Centennial Exposition Described and Illustrated (Philadelphia: Hubbard Bros., 1876), 151.
“is a hideous demon”: W. D. Howells, “A Sennight of the Centennial,” Atlantic Monthly 38, no. 225 (July 1876): 103.
list of Colorado mountains: Thomas G. Manning, Government in Science: The U.S. Geological Survey, 1867–1894 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967), 37.
package fifteen chromolithographic prints: Rindge, 190–91.
paleontologist Charles White: Foster, Strange Genius, 283.
Congress had cumulatively appropriated $690,000: Bartlett, 311.
surveying almost six million acres: David R. Dean, “Soldiers and Scientists: The Politics of Exploring the American West, 1803–1879” (PhD diss., Arizona State University, August 2006), 366.
Holman’s son had joined: Manning, 37–38.
“a tight squeeze for us”: Powell to Newberry, January 25, 1877, in Worster, A River Running West, 343.
King had met Powell: Wilson, 232.
“I beg of you”: Foster, Strange Genius, 293.
“so much of a fraud”: Newberry to Hewitt and Garfield, January 20, 1877. Powell Survey, Letters received, RG 57, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
“most valuable and important collection”: Foster, Strange Genius, 286.
claiming to have 1,500 negatives: Foster, Strange Genius, 287.
“desired to devote himself exclusively”: William H. Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the Ame
rican West (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1966), 581–82; Foster, Strange Genius, 288.
“All the good public lands”: James B. Power, “Unsold Public Lands: Grave Errors in Recent Statements—Large Opportunities for Agriculture in the Northwest,” New York Tribune, July 21, 1877, 4.
“part of this ‘arid’ region”: Ibid.
envisioned himself the successor: “Long, Stephen Harriman,” American National Biography Online, www.anb.org.
“wholly unfit for cultivation”: Edwin James, Account of an Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1823), 24.
“When I was a schoolboy”: Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973), 152.
flag atop a vertiginous: “Frémont, John Charles,” American National Biography Online, www.anb.org.
“almost without limitation”: “Gilpin, William,” American National Biography Online, www.anb.org.
within an Isothermal Zodiac: Charles N. Glaab, “Visions of Metropolis: William Gilpin and Theories of City Growth in the American West,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 45, no. 1 (Autumn 1961), 24.
“You can lay track”: John Warfield Simpson, Visions of Paradise: Glimpses of Our Landscape’s Legacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 95.
“a gradual increase in moisture”: Ibid., 95.
“Divine task! Immortal mission!”: William Gilpin, Mission of the North American People, Geographical, Social, and Political (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott & Co., 1873), 124.
“that the day was won”: Joseph Stanley-Brown, “John Wesley Powell: Memorial Address Delivered Before the Literary Society, December 13, 1902,” Darrah Papers, Box 2 Folder 7, Mss B-361.
most brazen gamble of his career: Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (New York: Penguin Books, 1954), 229
“most remarkable books ever written”: Ibid., xxii.
“perennially yield bountiful crops”: J. W. Powell, “Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States,” House of Representatives, Ex. Doc. No. 73, 45th Congress, 2nd Session, viii.
arid cultures stood or fell: W. R. Gardner, “Some Thoughts on Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States by J. W. Powell,” Society & Natural Resources 1, no. 1 (1988): 88.
“organization now under my charge”: “Surveys of the Territories. Letter from the Acting President of the National Academy of Sciences transmitting a report on the surveys of the Territories,” December 3, 1878, House of Representatives, 45th Congress, 3rd Session, Misc. Doc. No. 5, 11.
leading to an unhealthy rivalry: Ibid., 16.
“The time must soon come”: Ibid., 20.
“attempt to transform a savage”: Ibid., 26.
“renounces all claim or desire”: Worster, A River Running West, 364.
“no one episode illustrates”: Stanley-Brown, “John Wesley Powell.”
He was a “wretched geologist”: Worster, A River Running West, 365.
“is an enemy of mine”: Foster, Strange Genius, 299.
“its rugged mineral-seamed mountains”: Henry Nash Smith, “Clarence King, John Wesley Powell, and the Establishment of the United States Geological Survey,” 48.
“My blood was stirred: Ibid., 55.
“Hamlet with Hamlet left [out]”: Ibid., 56.
CHAPTER 10: TAKING OVER WASHINGTON
“remains in an inchoate condition”: Worster, A River Running West, 371.
“I congratulate you”: Ibid., 392.
had championed geology: Edward Orton, “Geological Surveys of Ohio,” The Journal of Geology 2, no. 5 (July–August 1894): 508.
Powell had lent Garfield: Darrah, Powell of the Colorado, 17.
“the General had again arranged”: Joseph Stanley-Brown, “An Eventful Career,” Darrah Papers, Box 2 Folder 7, Mss B-361.
“been far more than just”: Hayden to Powell, March 22, 1881, in Worster, A River Running West, 415.
“cool, dry, and ample” air: “Report of Prof. Simon Newcomb, U.S. Navy,” Reports of Officers of the Navy on Ventilating and Cooling the Executive Mansion During the Illness of President Garfield (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1882), 3–5.
replacing King’s decentralized organization: Preston Cloud, “The Improbable Bureaucracy: The United States Geological Survey, 1879–1979,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 124, no. 3 (June 30, 1980): 158.
identifying the nation’s mineral wealth: “Report of the Secretary of the Interior,” 46th Congress, 3rd Session, House Ex. Doc. 1, Pt. 5, Vol. 2, 389.
growing needs of the iron: Mary C. Rabbitt, “The United States Geological Survey: 1879–1989,” U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1050 (1989), 11.
developing theories of ore formation: Manning, 70.
King, the man of mountains: Pyne, Gilbert, 114.
1.2 billion acres of land: Rabbitt, “The United States Geological Survey,” 10.
despite a request for $500,000: R. T. Evans and H. M. Frye, “History of the Topographic Branch (Division),” U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1341 (2009), 6.
“extend the operations”: J. W. Powell, Fourth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey to the Secretary for the Interior 1882–’83 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1884), xiii.
“three- or even four-dimensional”: Cloud, 160.
three impressions per plate: Scott Kirsch, “The Allison Commission and the National Map: Towards a Republic of Knowledge in Late Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010): 33.
mapping 600,000 square miles: Manning, 93.
55,000 quadrangle maps: Charles G. Groat, “The National Map—A Continuing, Critical Need for the Nation,” Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing 69, no. 10 (October 2003): 1089.
“cannot do any scientific work”: U.S. Senate Misc. Doc. 82, 49th Congress, 1st Session, 40.
six-story Hooe Iron Building: James W. Goode, Capital Losses: A Cultural History of Washington’s Destroyed Buildings (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2003), 178–79, 338–39.
“a stoic who suffered”: “John Wesley Powell: Proceedings of a Meeting Commemorative of His Distinguished Services, Held in Columbian University Under the Auspice of the Washington Academy of Sciences, February 16, 1903,” Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences 5 (1903): 129.
“seeing analogies and making comparisons”: Edward Anthony Spitzka, “A Study of the Brain of the Late Major J. W. Powell,” American Anthropologist, New Series 5, no. 4 (October–December 1903): 642.
“half a dozen minds”: Pyne, Gilbert, 127.
USGS collaborated with: Andrew S. Kelly, “The Political Development of Scientific Capacity in the United States,” Studies in American Political Development 28 (April 2014), 19.
new divisions at Harvard: Ibid., 24.
an indoor picnic: Darrah, Powell of the Colorado, 162, 323.
seven-year-old daughter, Bessie: Pyne, Gilbert, 161; Darrah, Powell of the Colorado, 282–83.
population rise from 75,000: Scott Kirsch, “Regions of Government Science: John Wesley Powell in Washington and the American West,” Endeavor 23, no. 4 (1999): 157.
three thousand gaslights: Leonard D. White, The Republican Era: 1869-1901: A Study in Administrative History (New York: Macmillan, 1958), 3.
“meet two or three times”: Kirsch, “Regions,” 157.
“Survey of such magnitude”: Powell to Becker, April 29, 1884, in Worster, A River Running West, 429.
to secure greater efficiency: Sen. Misc. Doc. 82, March 16, 1886, 49th Congress, 1st Session.
combined annual budget: Kirsch, “Allison Commission,” 29.
a federal science doctrine: Ibid., 32.
“we do not usually tell�
�: Ibid., 11.
“it did not occur”: Ibid., 18.
“power of improving the minds”: Ibid., 36.
even more informed citizenry: Ibid., 35.
“ladies” on the payroll: “Finding Against Hilgard,” New-York Tribune, August 7, 1885, 2.
without congressional authority: Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, August 13, 1885, 1.
Hayden had been sent: The Evening Star, August 21, 1885, 1.
“these scientific people cannot show”: New York Herald, September 18, 1885, 3.
“gang of cheap newspaper men”: Worster, A River Running West, 429.
“baseless and absurd”: “The Geological Survey,” New York Tribune, November 9, 1885, 2.
“abolish the whole survey”: John W. Powell, On the Organization of Scientific Work of the General Government. Part 2—Additional Statements (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1886), 1014.
“don’t wish the Government”: Ibid., 1015.
only the wealthy: Powell to Allison, February 26, 1886, in Powell, On the Organization, 1070–84.
“ambitious scheme of geology”: A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1957), 215.
“pernicious tendency” of certain bureaus: New York Times, May 3, 1886.
CHAPTER 11: A TOUGH OPPONENT
driving upward of 300,000 people: K. John Holmes, “Pushing the Climate Frontier,” Nature 501 (September 18, 2013): 311.
“capable of supporting”: William D. Rowley, The Bureau of Reclamation: Origins and Growth to 1945, Vol. 1 (Denver, CO: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006), 67.
the sale of these tracts: Reno Evening Gazette, October 17, 1888, 3.
“public good presents no demand”: Grover Cleveland, Fourth Annual Message (first term), December 3, 1888, The American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29529.
identified 147 reservoir sites: Donald J. Pisani, To Reclaim a Divided West: Water, Law, and Public Policy, 1848–1902 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992), 163, 164.
would travel to the Dakotas: Russell R. Elliot, Servant of Power: A Political Biography of Senator William M. Stewart (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1983), 114.