Vision and Place: John Wesley Powell and Reimagining the Colorado River BasinJason Robison, Daniel McCool, Thomas Minckley The Colorado River Basin’s importance cannot be overstated. Its living river system supplies water to roughly forty million people, contains Grand Canyon National Park, Bears Ears National Monument, and wide swaths of other public lands, and encompasses ancestral homelands of twenty-nine Native American tribes. John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran, explorer, scientist, and adept federal administrator, articulated a vision for Euro-American colonization of the “Arid Region” that has indelibly shaped the basin—a pattern that looms large not only in western history, but also in contemporary environmental and social policy. One hundred and fifty years after Powell’s epic 1869 Colorado River Exploring Expedition, this volume revisits Powell’s vision, examining ts historical character and its relative influence on the Colorado River Basin’s cultural and physical landscape in modern times. In three parts, the volume unpacks Powell’s ideas on water, public lands, and Native Americans—ideas at once innovative, complex, and contradictory. With an eye toward climate change and a host of related challenges facing the basin, the volume turns to the future, reflecting on how—if at all—Powell’s legacy might inform our collective vision as we navigate a new “Great Unknown.” |
Contents
The Fall and Rise | 11 |
Powells LegacyThe Bureau of Reclamation and | 76 |
public lands | 95 |
Who Is the Public on the Colorado River Basins | 125 |
Powell as Unwitting Godfather of Outdoor Recreation | 148 |
Stewart Udall John Wesley Powell and the Emergence | 167 |
native americans | 191 |
Water Land and Tribes | 220 |
Civilizing Public Land Management in the Colorado | 242 |
John Wesley Powells Land and Water Policies | 265 |
Afterword | 290 |
| 297 | |
| 303 | |
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1869 Expedition agricultural allocation Apache areas Arid Lands Report arid region Arizona basin tribes Bears Ears National Bureau of Reclamation California Canyon Dam century chapter civilization climate change Colorado River Basin Colorado River Compact communities Congress conservation cultural deBuys diverse Dolores River Ears National Monument ecological economic ecosystem environmental Exploration farming federal government federal land future Glen Canyon Glen Canyon Dam Grand Canyon Ibid ideas Indian tribes institutions John Wesley Powell Lake Mead Lake Powell land and water land management landscape Lower Dolores ment Montezuma Valley Mountain National Park Service Native Americans natural resources Navajo Nation outdoor recreation ownership planning political Powell's vision prior appropriation proposals protect public lands reservations reservoirs River Running West society stakeholders Things Whole tion Treaty tribal Udall Utah values Wallace Stegner water law water management water rights water supply watershed Western water wilderness Worster