The Colorado River Basin’s importance cannot be overstated. Its living river system supplies water to roughly forty million people, contains Grand Canyon National Park, Bears Ears National Monument, and wide swaths of other public lands, and encompasses ancestral homelands of twenty-nine Native American tribes. John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran, explorer, scientist, and adept federal administrator, articulated a vision for Euro-American colonization of the “Arid Region” that has indelibly shaped the basin—a pattern that looms large not only in western history, but also in contemporary environmental and social policy.
One hundred and fifty years after Powell’s epic 1869 Colorado River Exploring Expedition, this volume revisits Powell’s vision, examining its historical character and its relative influence on the Colorado River Basin’s cultural and physical landscape in modern times. In three parts, the volume unpacks Powell’s ideas on water, public lands, and Native Americans—ideas at once innovative, complex, and contradictory. With an eye toward climate change and a host of related challenges facing the basin, the volume turns to the future, reflecting on how—if at all—Powell’s legacy might inform our collective vision as we navigate a new “Great Unknown.”
"It has been 150 years since John Wesley Powell made his epic descent of the Colorado River and started conversations that continue to this day. Vision & Place gathers some of the very best scholars to consider anew Powell's lasting influence and legacy, offering essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of Americans' relationship with the Colorado River Basin and its native peoples."—George Vrtis, coeditor of Mining North America: An Environmental History since 1522
“A clear-eyed exploration of Major Powell’s prescient vision for the Colorado River Basin's water and public lands, disquietingly laid next to his hidebound adherence to nineteenth-century demeaning cultural conceptions about Native Americans.”–Anne J. Castle, Senior Fellow, Getches-Wilkinson Center, University of Colorado, Former Assistant Secretary for Water & Science, U.S. Dept. of the Interior
“Despite his expertise on Native Americans, Powell did not integrate Native values, knowledge, or institutions into his vision for the Colorado River Basin. As revealed by this book, tribes are reclaiming land, water rights, and sovereign authority—and they seek to collaborate to shape the basin’s future."– Daryl Vigil, Executive Director, Ten Tribes Partnership, Water Administrator, Jicarilla Apache Nation
“Today’s West is vastly different from Powell’s, but this book shows that his legacy of deep, science-based thinking about the region remains highly relevant.”–A. Dan Tarlock, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Chicago-Kent College of Law
"Marking the 150th anniversary of John Wesley Powell's first expedition down the Colorado River, this volume offers timely reflections on pressing environmental and political questions surrounding the Western US drylands."—Ellen Wohl, author of Of Rocks and Rivers: Seeking a Sense of Place in the American West
