Canyons of the Colorado

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Produced by Eric Eldred

CANYONS OF THE COLORADO

BY

J. W. POWELL, PH.D., LL.D.,

Formerly Director of the United States Geological Survey. Member of the
National Academy of Sciences, etc., etc.

WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS.

First published 1895

PREFACE.

On my return from the first exploration of the canyons of the Colorado,
I found that our journey had been the theme of much newspaper writing. A
story of disaster had been circulated, with many particulars of hardship
and tragedy, so that it was currently believed throughout the United
States that all the members of the party were lost save one. A good
friend of mine had gathered a great number of obituary notices, and it
was interesting and rather flattering to me to discover the high esteem
in which I had been held by the people of the United States. In my
supposed death I had attained to a glory which I fear my continued life
has not fully vindicated.

The exploration was not made for adventure, but purely for scientific
purposes, geographic and geologic, and I had no intention of writing an
account of it, but only of recording the scientific results. Immediately
on my return I was interviewed a number of times, and these interviews
were published in the daily press; and here I supposed all interest in
the exploration ended. But in 1874 the editors of Scribner's Monthly
requested me to publish a popular account of the Colorado exploration in
that journal. To this I acceded and prepared four short articles, which
were elaborately illustrated from photographs in my possession.

In the same year--1874--at the instance of Professor Henry of the
Smithsonian Institution, I was called before an appropriations committee
of the House of Representatives to explain certain estimates made by the
Professor for funds to continue scientific work which had been in
progress from the date of the original exploration. Mr. Garfield was
chairman of the committee, and after listening to my account of the
progress of the geographic and geologic work, he asked me why no history
of the original exploration of the canyons had been published. I
informed him that I had no interest in that work as an adventure, but
was interested only in the scientific results, and that these results
had in part been published and in part were in course of publication.
Thereupon Mr. Garfield, in a pleasant manner, insisted that the history
of the exploration should be published by the government, and that I
must understand that my scientific work would be continued by additional
appropriations only upon my promise that I would publish an account of
the exploration. I made the promise, and the task was immediately
undertaken.

My daily journal had been kept on long and narrow strips of brown paper,
which were gathered into little volumes that were bound in sole leather
in camp as they were completed. After some deliberation I decided to
publish this journal, with only such emendations and corrections as its
hasty writing in camp necessitated. It chanced that the journal was
written in the present tense, so that the first account of my trip
appeared in that tense. The journal thus published was not a lengthy
paper, constituting but a part of a report entitled "Exploration of the
Colorado River of the West and its Tributaries. Explored in 1869, 1870,
1871, and 1872, under the direction of the Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution." The other papers published with it relate to the
geography, geology, and natural history of the country. And here again I
supposed all account of the exploration ended. But from that time until
the present I have received many letters urging that a popular account
of the exploration and a description of that wonderful land should be
published by me. This call has been voiced occasionally in the daily
press and sometimes in the magazines, until at last I have concluded to
publish a fuller account in popular form. In doing this I have revised
and enlarged the original journal of exploration, and have added several
new chapters descriptive of the region and of the people who inhabit it.
Realizing the difficulty of painting in word colors a land so strange,
so wonderful, and so vast in its features, in the weakness of my
descriptive powers I have sought refuge in graphic illustration, and for
this purpose have gathered from the magazines and from various
scientific reports an abundance of material. All of this illustrative
material originated in my work, but it has already been used elsewhere.

Many years have passed since the exploration, and those who were boys
with me in the enterprise are--ah, most of them are dead, and the living
are gray with age. Their bronzed, hardy, brave faces come before me as
they appeared in the vigor of life; their lithe but powerful forms seem
to move around me; and the memory of the men and their heroic deeds, the
men and their generous acts, overwhelms me with a joy that seems almost
a grief, for it starts a fountain of tears. I was a maimed man; my right
arm was gone; and these brave men, these good men, never forgot it. In
every danger my safety was their first care, and in every waking hour
some kind service was rendered me, and they transfigured my misfortune
into a boon.

To you--J. C. Sumner, William H. Dunn, W. H. Powell, G. Y. Bradley, O.
G. Howland, Seneca Howland, Prank Goodman, W. E. Hawkins, and Andrew
Hall--my noble and generous companions, dead and alive, I dedicate this
book.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Valley of the Colorado

II. Mesas and, Buttes

III. Mountains and Plateaus

IV. Cliffs and Terraces

V. From Green River City to Flaming Gorge

VI. From Flaming Gorge to the Gate of Lodore

VII. The Canyon of Lodore

VIII. From Echo Park to the Mouth of the Uinta River

IX. From the Mouth of the Uinta River to the Junction of the Grand and
Green

X. From the Junction of the Grand and Green to the Mouth of the Little
Colorado

XI. From the Little Colorado to the Foot of the Grand Canyon

XII. The Rio Virgen and the Uinkaret Mountains

XIII. Over the River

XIV. To Zuni

XV. The Grand Canyon

Index

CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.

CHAPTER I.

THE VALLEY OF THE COLORADO.

The Colorado River is formed by the junction of the Grand and Green.

The Grand River has its source in the Rocky Mountains, five or six miles
west of Long's Peak. A group of little alpine lakes, that receive their
waters directly from perpetual snowbanks, discharge into a common
reservoir known as Grand Lake, a beautiful sheet of water. Its quiet
surface reflects towering cliffs and crags of granite on its eastern
shore, and stately pines and firs stand on its western margin.

The Green River heads near Fremont's Peak, in the Wind River Mountains.
This river, like the Grand, has its sources in alpine lakes fed by
everlasting snows. Thousands of these little lakes, with deep, cold,
emerald waters, are embosomed among the crags of the Rocky Mountains.
These streams, born in the cold, gloomy solitudes of the upper mountain
region, have a strange, eventful history as they pass down through
gorges, tumbling in cascades and cataracts, until they reach the hot,
arid plains of the Lower Colorado, where the waters that were so clear
above empty as turbid floods into the Gulf of California.

The mouth of the Colorado is in latitude 31 degrees 53 minutes and
longitude 115 degrees. The source of the Grand River is in latitude 40
degrees 17' and longitude 105 degrees 43' approximately. The source of
the Green River is in latitude 43 degrees 15' and longitude 109 degrees
54' approximately.

The Green River is larger than the Grand and is the upper continuation
of the Colorado. Including this river, the whole length of the stream is
about 2,000 miles. The region of country drained by the Colorado and its
tributaries is about 800 miles in length and varies from 300 to 500
miles in width, containing about 300,000 square miles, an area larger
than all the New England and Middle States with Maryland, Virginia and
West Virginia added, or nearly as large as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa,
Illinois, and Missouri combined.

There are two distinct portions of the basin of the Colorado, a desert
portion below and a plateau portion above. The lower third, or desert
portion of the basin, is but little above the level of the sea, though
here and there ranges of mountains rise to an altitude of from 2,000 to
6,000 feet. This part of the valley is bounded on the northeast by a
line of cliffs, which present a bold, often vertical step, hundreds or
thousands of feet to the table-lands above. On the California side a
vast desert stretches westward, past the head of the Gulf of California,
nearly to the shore of the Pacific. Between the desert and the sea a
narrow belt of valley, hill, and mountain of wonderful beauty is found.
Over this coastal zone there falls a balm distilled from the great
ocean, as gentle showers and refreshing dews bathe the land. When rains
come the emerald hills laugh with delight as bourgeoning bloom is spread
in the sunlight. When the rains have ceased all the verdure turns to
gold. Then slowly the hills are brinded until the rains come again, when
verdure and bloom again peer through the tawny wreck of the last year's
greenery. North of the Gulf of California the desert is known as
"Coahuila Valley," the most desolate region on the continent. At one
time in the geologic history of this country the Gulf of California
extended a long distance farther to the northwest, above the point where
the Colorado River now enters it; but this stream brought its mud from
the mountains and the hills above and poured it into the gulf and
gradually erected a vast dam across it, until the waters above were
separated from the waters below; then the Colorado cut a channel into
the lower gulf. The upper waters, being cut off from the sea, gradually
evaporated, and what is known as Coahuila Valley was the bottom of this
ancient upper gulf, and thus the land is now below the level of the sea.
Between Coahuila Valley and the river there are many low, ashen-gray
mountains standing in short ranges. The rainfall is so little that no
perennial streams are formed. When a great rain comes it washes the
mountain sides and gathers on its way a deluge of sand, which it spreads
over the plain below, for the streams do not carry the sediment to the
sea. So the mountains are washed down and the valleys are filled. On the
Arizona side of the river desert plains are interrupted by desert
mountains. Far to the eastward the country rises until the Sierra Madre
are reached in New Mexico, where these mountains divide the waters of
the Colorado from the Rio Grande del Norte. Here in New Mexico the Gila
River has its source. Some of its tributaries rise in the mountains to
the south, in the territory belonging to the republic of Mexico, but the
Gila gathers the greater part of its waters from a great plateau on the
northeast. Its sources are everywhere in pine-clad mountains and
plateaus, but all of the affluents quickly descend into the desert
valley below, through which the Gila winds its way westward to the
Colorado. In times of continued drought the bed of the Gila is dry, but
the region is subject to great and violent storms, and floods roll down
from the heights with marvelous precipitation, carrying devastation on
their way. Where the Colorado River forms the boundary between
California and Arizona it cuts through a number of volcanic rocks by
black, yawning canyons. Between these canyons the river has a low but
rather narrow flood plain, with cottonwood groves scattered here and
there, and a chaparral of mesquite bearing beans and thorns. Four
hundred miles above its mouth and more than two hundred miles above the
Gila, the Colorado has a second tributary--"Bill Williams' River" it is
called by excessive courtesy. It is but a muddy creek. Two hundred miles
above this the Rio Virgen joins the Colorado. This river heads in the
Markagunt Plateau and the Pine Valley Mountains of Utah. Its sources are
7,000 or 8,000 feet above the sea, but from the beautiful course of the
upper region it soon drops into a great sandy valley below and becomes a
river of flowing sand. At ordinary stages it is very wide but very
shallow, rippling over the quicksands in tawny waves. On its way it cuts
through the Beaver Mountains by a weird canyon. On either side
grease-wood plains stretch far away, interrupted here and there by
bad-land hills.

The region of country lying on either side of the Colorado for six
hundred miles of its course above the gulf, stretching to Coahuila
Valley below on the west and to the highlands where the Gila heads on
the east, is one of singular characteristics. The plains and valleys are
low, arid, hot, and naked, and the volcanic mountains scattered here and
there are lone and desolate. During the long months the sun pours its
heat upon the rocks and sands, untempered by clouds above or forest
shades beneath. The springs are so few in number that their names are
household words in every Indian rancheria and every settler's home; and
there are no brooks, no creeks, and no rivers but the trunk of the
Colorado and the trunk of the Gila. The few plants are strangers to the
dwellers in the temperate zone. On the mountains a few junipers and
pinons are found, and cactuses, agave, and yuccas, low, fleshy plants
with bayonets and thorns. The landscape of vegetal life is weird--no
forests, no meadows, no green hills, no foliage, but clublike stems of
plants armed with stilettos. Many of the plants bear gorgeous flowers.
The birds are few, but often of rich plumage. Hooded rattlesnakes,
horned toads, and lizards crawl in the dust and among the rocks. One of
these lizards, the "Gila monster," is poisonous. Rarely antelopes are
seen, but wolves, rabbits, and sundry ground squirrels abound.

The desert valley of the Colorado, which has been described as distinct
from the plateau region above, is the home of many Indian tribes. Away
up at the sources of the Gila, where the pines and cedars stand and
where creeks and valleys are found, is a part of the Apache land. These
tribes extend far south into the republic of Mexico. The Apaches are
intruders in this country, having at some time, perhaps many centuries
ago, migrated from British America. They speak an Athapascan language.
The Apaches and Navajos are the American Bedouins. On their way from the
far North they left several colonies in Washington, Oregon, and
California. They came to the country on foot, but since the Spanish
invasion they have become skilled horsemen. They are wily warriors and
implacable enemies, feared by all other tribes. They are hunters,
warriors, and priests, these professions not yet being differentiated.
The cliffs of the region have many caves, in which these people perform
their religious rites. The Sierra Madre formerly supported abundant
game, and the little Sonora deer was common. Bears and mountain lions
were once found in great numbers, and they put the courage and prowess
of the Apaches to a severe test. Huge rattlesnakes are common, and the
rattlesnake god is one of the deities of the tribes.

In the valley of the Gila and on its tributaries from the northeast are
the Pimas, Maricopas, and Papagos. They are skilled agriculturists,
cultivating lands by irrigation. In the same region many ruined villages
are found. The dwellings of these towns in the valley were built chiefly
of grout, and the fragments of the ancient pueblos still remaining have
stood through centuries of storm. Other pueblos near the cliffs on the
northeast were built of stone. The people who occupied them cultivated
the soil by irrigation, and their hydraulic works were on an extensive
scale. They built canals scores of miles in length and built reservoirs
to store water. They were skilled workers in pottery. From the fibers of
some of the desert plants they made fabrics with which to clothe
themselves, and they cultivated cotton. They were deft artists in
picture-writings, which they etched on the rocks. Many interesting
vestiges of their ancient art remain, testifying to their skill as
savage artisans. It seems probable that the Pimas, Maricopas, and
Papagos are the same people who built the pueblos and constructed the
irrigation works; so their traditions state. It is also handed down that
the pueblos were destroyed in wars with the Apaches. In these groves of
the flood plain of the Colorado the Mojave and Yuma Indians once had
their homes. They caught fish from the river and snared a few rabbits in
the desert, but lived mainly on mesquite beans, the hearts of yucca
plants, and the fruits of the cactus. They also gathered a harvest from
the river reeds. To some slight extent they cultivated the soil by rude
irrigation and raised corn and squashes. They lived almost naked, for
the climate is warm and dry. Sometimes a year passes without a drop of
rain. Still farther to the north the Chemehuevas lived, partly along the
river and partly in the mountains to the west, where a few springs are
found. They belong to the great Shoshonian family. On the Rio Virgen and
in the mountains round about, a confederacy of tribes speaking the Ute
language and belonging to the Shoshonian family have their homes. These
people built their sheltering homes of boughs and the bast of the
juniper. In such shelters, they lived in winter, but in summer they
erected extensive booths of poles and willows, sometimes large enough
for the accommodation of a tribe of 100 or 200 persons. A wide gap in
culture separates the Pimas, Maricopas, and Papagos from the
Chemehuevas. The first were among the most advanced tribes found in the
United States; the last were among the very lowest; they are the
original "Digger" Indians, called so by all the other tribes, but the
name has gradually spread beyond its original denotation to many tribes
of Utah, Nevada, and California.

The low desert, with its desolate mountains, which has thus been
described is plainly separated from the upper region of plateau by the
Mogollon Escarpment, which, beginning in the Sierra Madre of New Mexico,
extends northwestward across the Colorado far into Utah, where it ends
on the margin of the Great Basin. The rise by this escarpment varies
from 3,000 to more than 4,000 feet. The step from the lowlands to the
highlands which is here called the Mogollon Escarpment is not a simple
line of cliffs, but is a complicated and irregular facade presented to
the southwest. Its different portions have been named by the people
living below as distinct mountains, as Shiwits Mountains, Mogollon
Mountains, Pinal Mountains, Sierra Calitro, etc., but they all rise to
the summit of the same great plateau region.

The upper region, extending to the headwaters of the Grand and Green
Rivers, constitutes the great Plateau Province. These plateaus are
drained by the Colorado River and its tributaries; the eastern and
southern margin by the Rio Grande and its tributaries, and the western
by streams that flow into the Great Basin and are lost in the Great Salt
Lake and other bodies of water that have no drainage to the sea. The
general surface of this upper region is from 5,000 to 8,000 feet above
sea level, though the channels of the streams are cut much lower.

This high region, on the east, north, and west, is set with ranges of
snow-clad mountains attaining an altitude above the sea varying from
8,000 to 14,000 feet. All winter long snow falls on its mountain-crested
rim, filling the gorges, half burying the forests, and covering the
crags and peaks with a mantle woven by the winds from the waves of the
sea. When the summer sun comes this snow melts and tumbles down the
mountain sides in millions of cascades. A million cascade brooks unite
to form a thousand torrent creeks; a thousand torrent creeks unite to
form half a hundred rivers beset with cataracts; half a hundred roaring
rivers unite to form the Colorado, which rolls, a mad, turbid stream,
into the Gulf of California.

Consider the action of one of these streams. Its source is in the
mountains, where the snows fall; its course, through the arid plains.
Now, if at the river's flood storms were falling on the plains, its
channel would be cut but little faster than the adjacent country would
be washed, and the general level would thus be preserved; but under the
conditions here mentioned, the river continually deepens its beds; so
all the streams cut deeper and still deeper, until their banks are
towering cliffs of solid rock. These deep, narrow gorges are called
canyons.

For more than a thousand miles along its course the Colorado has cut for
itself such a canyon; but at some few points where lateral streams join
it the canyon is broken, and these narrow, transverse valleys divide it
into a series of canyons.

The Virgen, Kanab, Paria, Escalante, Fremont, San Rafael, Price, and
Uinta on the west, the Grand, White, Yampa, San Juan, and Colorado
Chiquito on the east, have also cut for themselves such narrow winding
gorges, or deep canyons. Every river entering these has cut another
canyon; every lateral creek has cut a canyon; every brook runs in a
canyon; every rill born of a shower and born again of a shower and
living only during these showers has cut for itself a canyon; so that
the whole upper portion of the basin of the Colorado is traversed by a
labyrinth of these deep gorges.

Owing to a great variety of geological conditions, these canyons differ
much in general aspect. The Rio Virgen, between Long Valley and the
Mormon town of Rockville, runs through Parunuweap Canyon, which is often
not more than 20 or 30 feet in width and is from 600 to 1,500 feet deep.
Away to the north the Yampa empties into the Green by a canyon that I
essayed to cross in the fall of 1868, but was baffled from day to day,
and the fourth day had nearly passed before I could find my way down to
the river. But thirty miles above its mouth this canyon ends, and a
narrow valley with a flood plain is found. Still farther up the stream
the river comes down through another canyon, and beyond that a narrow
valley is found, and its upper course is now through a canyon and now
through a valley. All these canyons are alike changeable in their
topographic characteristics.

The longest canyon through which the Colorado runs is that between the
mouth of the Colorado Chiquito and the Grand Wash, a distance of 217 1/2
miles. But this is separated from another above, 65 1/2 miles in length,
only by the narrow canyon valley of the Colorado Chiquito.

All the scenic features of this canyon land are on a giant scale,
strange and weird. The streams run at depths almost inaccessible,
lashing the rocks which beset their channels, rolling in rapids and
plunging in falls, and making a wild music which but adds to the gloom
of the solitude. The little valleys nestling along the streams are
diversified by bordering willows, clumps of box elder, and small groves
of cottonwood.

Low mesas, dry, treeless, stretch back from the brink of the canyon,
often showing smooth surfaces of naked, solid rock. In some places the
country rock is composed of marls, and here the surface is a bed of
loose, disintegrated material through which one walks as in a bed of
ashes. Often these marls are richly colored and variegated. In other
places the country rock is a loose sandstone, the disintegration of
which has left broad stretches of drifting sand, white, golden, and
vermilion. Where this sandstone is a conglomerate, a paving of pebbles
has been left,--a mosaic of many colors, polished by the drifting sands
and glistening in the sunlight.

After the canyons, the most remarkable features of the country are the
long lines of cliffs. These are bold escarpments scores or hundreds of
miles in length,--great geographic steps, often hundreds or thousands of
feet in altitude, presenting steep faces of rock, often vertical. Having
climbed one of these steps, you may descend by a gentle, sometimes
imperceptible, slope to the foot of another. They thus present a series
of terraces, the steps of which are well-defined escarpments of rock.
The lateral extension of such a line of cliffs is usually very
irregular; sharp salients are projected on the plains below, and deep
recesses are cut into the terraces above. Intermittent streams coming
down the cliffs have cut many canyons or canyon valleys, by which the
traveler may pass from the plain below to the terrace above. By these
gigantic stairways he may ascend to high plateaus, covered with forests
of pine and fir.

The region is further diversified by short ranges of eruptive mountains.
A vast system of fissures--huge cracks in the rocks to the depths
below--extends across the country. From these crevices floods of lava
have poured, covering mesas and table-lands with sheets of black basalt.
The expiring energies of these volcanic agencies have piled up huge
cinder cones that stand along the fissures, red, brown, and black, naked
of vegetation, and conspicuous landmarks, set as they are in contrast to
the bright, variegated rocks of sedimentary origin.

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