Grand Ambitions
...continued.
It was in 1869 that John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran and self-taught scientist, made the first recorded journey down the Colorado. This was the beginning of an illustrious career that would lead to the directorship of the United States Geological Survey. A group of ten, composed of trappers, college students, and relatives, set out from Green River, Wyoming in May of that year in four oak dories to conduct the first complete exploration of the Colorado River. Repeatedly they scaled the cliffs to map the terrain and survey the canyons. One man left the mission early on, demoralized by the torrents and beating they encountered on the Green. Those remaining would come to see that white water as a primer. The Colorado River was merciless in the Grand Canyon with flows powerful enough to move boulders the size of small houses. Many of the falls and rapids, encased by sheer canyon walls, could not be scouted or portaged and were challenged blind. The thundering river, with standing waves in excess of twenty feet, capsized the boats, took supplies and saturated what was left. The constant chafing of the silt-laden waters and the 115 degree summer sun drove the men to the brink of exposure.
What had begun as an expedition in science and adventure ended as an exercise in survival. Three men abandoned the party and climbed out to the rim only to encounter a band of Indians seeking three white men for murdering a young girl from their tribe. Powell's men told of coming down the river. To the Indians it was a tale of ludicrous dimensions. Certain they were lying, they killed them. Days later, during August's last days, the remaining six broke free of the canyon in an area that is now part of Lake Mead.
Grand ambitions had changed the landscape much since then. The dams that Washington built, and the water, energy, and land subsidies that they provided, were what made life here possible. Before Powell the only hint of civilization between Iowa and the California coast were two dusty towns - Denver and Salt Lake City. Today, if the Colorado were to stop flowing, within half a decade Southern California and Arizona would be uninhabitable, as would parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The dams and ground water pumping fed the farms, lights, air conditioners, and water fountains. The boating, fishing, rafting, and other tourist industries thrived upon the reservoirs and the year round flows. In this land of rugged individualism, government had been embraced. An inhospitable region of heat and rock was quickly being transformed into one of pleasure, recreation, and retirement.
It was also a land built on faith. Without faith ambition was pointless. The gargantuan reservoirs behind Glen and Hoover Dams distilled the warm muddy waters of their sediments and turned the river clear and cold. Depriving the river's sediment beds of rejuvenation had led to the loss of three species of fish and endangered a fourth. This silting was also expected to render Hoover and Glen useless by the end of the next century. Given the present ground water overdraft, the aquifers, a benefaction of the ice ages, were doomed to a similar fate.
The other end of the spigot was doing no better. Characteristic of flood irrigation was increased soil salinity. Evaporation, improper drainage, and alkaline soils conspired to make the Colorado one of the saltiest rivers in the world. It had been estimated that, if present farming practices continued, within fifty years as much land would become untillable as that put into production by the Bureau of Reclamation during its entire career of building water projects.
I wondered if anyone had considered the cost of building a civilization in the desert.
I bid the rancher good-bye and turned toward the Kaibab Plateau.