Below are some some items pertaining to the history of the Grand Canyon and the exploits of some of the early river runners.
In 1923, the USGS sent an expedition under the leadership of Colonel Claude Birdseye to survey possible dam sites in the Grand Canyon. In addition to other valuable information collected, they took hundreds of photographs. In 1991 another group, sponsored by the Kansas Geological Survey, rephotographed many sites from the exact vantage point of the earlier photos, and published 45 pairs of photos, the old next to the new, in the book "The Canyon Revisited: A Rephotogoraphy of the Grand Canyon," by Donald Baars. We recreated one of the photos on our trip in 2000. Click below the to see the three photos together.
Outlines from books on Grand Canyon History:
Down
the Colorado, John Wesley Powell
The Great Unknown, The Journals of
the Historic First Expedition Down the Colorado River, John Cooly,
1998
The Colorado River Survey,
Robert Brewster Stanton and the Denver, Colorado, and Pacific Railroad,
1987
Standing Up Country, the
Canyon Lands of Utah and Arizona, C. Gregory Crampton, 1964
River Runners of the Grand Canyon,
David Lavender, 1985
How the Canyon
Became Grand,
Stephen Pyne, 1999
The Man Who Walked Through Time, Colin Fletcher, 1967
Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer, 2003
More History Items:
John Wesley Powell's Report to Congress (pdf format)
Questions,
comments, corrections: please email
Steve Perrin