In 1869, John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War Veteran from Illinois, led an epic three-month expedition through the last unmapped section of the continental United States – the canyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers. After attaining national fame as the “Conqueror of the Grand Canyon,” Powell became the architect for the federal science bureaucracy, organizing and leading the U.S. Geological Survey and the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology. This lecture is illustrated and is based on primary source research.

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