Skip to main content
University of California Press

Vision and Place

John Wesley Powell and Reimagining the Colorado River Basin

by Jason Robison (Editor), Daniel McCool (Editor), Thomas Minckley (Editor), Charles Wilkinson (Foreword by)
Price: $34.95 / £30.00
Publication Date: Oct 2020
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 344
ISBN: 9780520976238
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 19 b/w illustrations, 7 maps
Endowments:

About the Book

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.”

About the Author

Jason Robison is Professor of Law at the University of Wyoming and coauthor of Law of Water Rights and Resources.

Daniel McCool is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at the University of Utah, author of River Republic: The Fall and Rise of America's Rivers, and coauthor of Native Vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights Act, and the Right to Vote

Thomas Minckley is Professor of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Wyoming and principal organizer and leader of the 150th anniversary Powell Expedition project, the Sesquicentennial Colorado River Exploring Expedition (SCREE).

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Maps

Foreword
Charles Wilkinson

Introduction: The "Great Unknown"

PART I: WATER

1. Strange Resurrection: The Fall and Rise of John Wesley Powell
Louis S. Warren and Rachel St. John

2. Communitarianism in Western Water Law and Policy: Was Powell’s Vision Lost?
Robert W. Adler

3. Common Water Commonwealth: The Paradox of a Shared Resource
Amorina Lee-Martinez and Patricia Limerick

4. Powell's Legacy—The Bureau of Reclamation and the Contemporary West: Water Exchanges
Robert Glennon

PART II: PUBLIC LANDS
5. John Wesley Powell and the National Park Idea: Preserving Colorado River Basin Public Lands
Robert B. Keiter

6. Who Is the "Public" on the Colorado River Basin's Public Lands?
Paul Hirt

7. Powell as Unwitting Godfather of Outdoor Recreation in the Great Unknown
Emilene Ostlind

8. Stewart Udall, John Wesley Powell, and the Emergence of a National American Commons
William deBuys

PART III: NATIVE AMERICANS
9. "We Must Either Protect Him or Destroy Him"
Weston C. McCool and Daniel C. McCool

10. "Pastoral and Civilized": Water, Land, and Tribes in the Colorado River Basin
Autumn L. Bernhardt

11. Civilizing Public Land Management in the Colorado River Basin
Daniel Cordalis and Amy Cordalis

12. John Wesley Powell’s Land and Water Policies and Southwestern Native American Agricultural Practices
William J. Gribb

Afterword
John C. Schmidt

References
Contributors
Index

Reviews

"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