Vision and Place: John Wesley Powell and Reimagining the Colorado River Basin

Synopsis

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 its 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."

Copyright:

2020

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

344 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780520976238

Related ISBNs:

9780520375796, 9780520375789

Publisher:

University of California Press

Date of Addition:

10/27/20

Copyrighted By:

University of California Press

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Outdoors and Nature

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.

Edited by:

Jason Robison

Edited by:

Daniel McCool

Edited by:

Thomas Minckley