COLORADO RIVER EXPLORATIONS

COLORADO RIVER EXPLORATIONS. The Spanish explorer Francisco de Ulloa unwittingly reached the mouth of the Colorado River, in the Gulf of California, in 1539, but it was not until the following year that Hernando de Alarcón braved the fierce tidal bore of the river's mouth and proceeded upstream in boats drawn by tow ropes. Though Alarcón did not meet with Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's overland expedition, two of Coronado's officers, Melchior Díaz and García Lopéz de Cárdenas, did reach the Colorado that same year. Indeed, Cárdenas is generally credited as being the first European to see the GRAND CANYON.

The Colorado River was given its name by FRANCISCAN missionaries, who were the predominant explorers of the next two centuries. The name came from the river's red tinge during the spring melt. While missionaries traveled the Colorado frequently during this period, their missions were more concerned with converting souls than they were in contributing to the geographical knowledge of the region. One exception among the Franciscans was Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, who explored the river in the 1770s.

American trappers and fur traders were the next group of Europeans to take interest in the Colorado. William H. Ashley organized the American fur trade in the ROCKY MOUNTAINS and hired Jedidiah Smith, who discovered the beaver-rich Green River. Ashley himself descended the Green River—conducting the first navigation of the river—in 1825 in bullboats and provided the first authentic information regarding the upper Colorado, painting "Ashley, 1825" on a huge rock at Ashley Falls.

Whereas the early Spanish adventurers had explored the Colorado from its mouth and headed northward, the American trappers had explored the river's northern tributaries, discovering and charting the geographies of the Green River and its junction with the Colorado. The greatest explorer of the Colorado connected the two ends of the river in exploring the last unmapped part of the continental United States. John Wesley Powell, the intrepid, one-armed leader of the Colorado River Exploring Expedition, embarked on his first—and historically more significant—trip through the Grand Canyon in 1869, departing from up the Green River in western Wyoming in May. After a dangerous 900-mile journey, in which three men deserted, the party concluded its voyage at the mouth of the Virgin River, in southeastern Nevada on 29 August. Powell's subsequent expeditions were scientifically more productive than the first, and enriched by the participation of the scientific artist of such eminent geologists as Grove Karl Gilbert and Clarence Dutton as well as the archaeologist William H. Holmes. Their collaboration was instrumental in the formulation of the basic principles of structural geology. As well as the geography and geology of the Colorado River, Powell was also intensely interested in the ethnology of the region and devoted considerable time to this study. As a result of the success of the second expedition, Powell was appointed director of the Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region in 1877. In 1881 he was made bureau chief of the new U.S. Geological Survey, a position he held until 1894. The Exploration of the Colorado River of the West (1875) and The Geology of the Eastern Portion of the Uinta Mountains (1876) are among Powell's important publications from his Colorado River explorations.

While Powell might have closed the book on discovery-oriented explorations of the Colorado, the river has been explored extensively throughout the twentieth century. The damming of Glen Canyon in the 1950s required considerable analysis of sites, while recent talk of dam removal has also prompted further investigation of the river's ecology.

COLORADO RIVER EXPLORATIONS

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