Note 79 — Chapter XII · THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO RIVER IN ARIZONA

The first complete exploration of the river cañons was made in 1869, by an expedition in charge of Major J. W. Powell, the noted ethnologist and geologist. He had boats especially built for the trip. It was an undertaking of supreme danger, forming, as Mr. F. S. Dellenbaugh says in his interesting “Romance of the Colorado River,” “one of the distinguished feats of history;” for not one of the pioneering party could have any conception of what physical obstacles were before them when the boats set out at the Cañon’s head into the unknown. Powell was a Civil War veteran and had but one hand. He made a second and more leisurely trip in 1871-72.