John Wesley Powell, art, and geology at the grand canyon

American Art

Volumn 10, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 7-35

  Childs, Elizabeth C ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 62449243968     PISSN: 10739300     EISSN: 15496503     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/424256     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. The classic study is Richard A. Bartlett, Great Surveys of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962).
2. See also William H. Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West (New York: Knopf, 1966)
3. Robert V. Bruce, The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1876 (New York: Knopf, 1987)
4. and A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957)
5. See Joseph C. Ives, Report upon the Colorado River of the West, Explored in 1857 and 1858 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1861), pp. 99-100. On Ives and John S. Newberry
6. see Stephen J. Pyne, Dutton's Point: An Intellectual History of the Grand Canyon, monograph no. 5 (Flagstaff, Ariz.: Grand Canyon Natural History Association, 1982)
7. U.S. House, Prof. Powell's Report on the Survey of the Colorado of the West, 43d Cong., 1st sess., 1874, H. Misc. Doc. 265, p- 6
8. and U.S. House, Geographical and Geological Surveys West of the Mississippi,43d Cong., 1st sess., 1874, H. Rept. 612, p. 10. The official report was John Wesley Powell, 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 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1875). Powell completed writing this report by June 1874
9. John S. Newberry, "Geological Report," in Ives, p. 45. Much of Powell's theorizing about the physical geology of the Grand Canyon area may be found in essays and preliminary reports published between 1870 and 1874. In addition to sources cited in n. 3
10. see "Major J. W. Powell's Report on His Explorations of the Rio Colorado in 1869," in William Bell, New Tracks in North America (London: Chapman and Hall, 1870), app. D; U.S. House, Survey of the Colorado River of the West, 42d Cong., 2d sess., 1872, H. Misc. Doc. 173
11. U.S. House, Report of the Survey of the Colorado of the West, 42d Cong., 3d sess., 1873, H. Misc. Doc. 76
12. and John Wesley Powell, "Some Remarks on the Geological Structure of a District of Country Lying to the North of the Grand Ca?non of the Colorado," American journal of Science and Arts, 3d ser., 5 (June 1873): 456-65
13. On Powell's geological contributions, see Grove Karl Gilbert, "Powell as a Geologist," Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences 5 (18 July 1903): 113-127
14. See also essays by Mary C. Rabb¡tt, Edwin McKee, and Charles Hunt, in The Colorado River Region and John Wesley Powell, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 669 (Washing ton, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1969)
15. On the controversy over un¡formitarian-ism, see Stephen Jay Gould, Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), chap. 4
16. See Clement Powell to John Wesley Powell, 14 February 1871, John Wesley Powell Correspondence, National Archives, Washington, D.C., microfilm 156, roll 1, frame 48
17. Clement Powell, "Journal of W. C. Powell, April 21, 1871-December 7, 1872," ed. Charles Kelly, Utah Historical Quarterly 16-17 (1948-49): 405
18. and House, Report of the Survey of the Colorado, p. 8
19. Ferdinand Hayden, quoted in House, Geographical and Geological Surveys, p. 35, see also p. 36
20. and Rosalind Krauss, "Photography's Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View," Art Journal 42 (winter 1982): 311-19
21. See also Joni Louise Kinsey, Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), p. 101
22. On the release of stereographs, see "Government Photography in America," Anthony's Photographic Bulletin 5 (November 1874): 366
23. See also Bruce Hooper, "Windows on the Nineteenth-Century World: John K. Hillers' Glass Window Transparencies," History of Photography 12 (July-September 1988): 185-92
24. See William Culp Darrah, "Beaman, Fennemore, Hillers, Dellenbaugh, Johnson and Hattan," Utah Historical Quarterly 16-17 (1948-49): 491-503
25. Clement Powell, "Journal," pp. 329-30
26. and Jack Hillers, "Photographed All the Best Scenery": Jack Hillers's Diary of the Powell Expeditions, 1871-1875, ed. Donald Fowler (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1972), p. 56
27. On Beaman, see E. O. Beaman, "The Colorado Exploring Expedition," Anthony's Photographic Bulletin 2 (February 1872): 463-65
28. and F. Dennis Lessard, "E. O. Who?" American Indian Art Magazine 12 (spring 1987): 52-61.
29. On Powell's financial arrange ments with his photographers, see William Culp Darrah, Powell of the Colorado (Princeton: Princeton Univer sity Press, 1951), p. 182
30. Hillers, p. 141. For an analysis of the journals of members of the 1871-72 expedition, see Bonnie Skell Hardwick, "Science and Art: The Travel Writings of the Great Surveys of the American West after the Civil War" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1977), chap. 2
31. See Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), pp. 130-31
32. On what John McPhee has termed deep time, see Gould, chap. 1
33. House, Prof. Powell's Report, p. 27
34. Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River, pp. 193-94. The illustration is opposite p. 137
35. William H. Truettner, "'Scenes of Majesty and Enduring Interest': Thomas Moran Goes West," Art Bulletin 58 (June 1976): 241-59
36. and Ann Morand et al., Splendors of the American West: Thomas Moran's Art of the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone (Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, 1990)
37. Thomas Moran, Home-Thoughts from Afar: Letters of Thomas Moran to Mary Nimmo Moran, ed. Amy Bassford and Fritiof Fryxell (East Hampton, N.Y.: East Hampton Free Library, 1967), pp. 41-42
38. Jack E. Colburn, "The Cañons of the Colorado," in Picturesque America, vol. 2 (New York: D. Appleton, 1874), p. 510. Colburn's account exaggerates (probably intentionally) the depth of the canyon by 2,200 feet. Orlo Childs has identified the following strata in fig. 12: Kaibab limestone, Coconino sandstone, Supai group, Redwall limestone, Bright Angel shale, Tapeats sandstone, and the Vishnu group. In addition, the following features may be identified, moving roughly clockwise from the flat butte in the upper center: Grand Scenic Divide, Mount Huathawa, Evolution Amphitheater (closer to center), Hakatai Canyon (toward upper right), Masonic Temple (near center), Holy Grail Temple, and Evan's Butte. Wallace Butte appears just above the center. Powell himself named many features, often using classical names when neither English nor Indian names were known; subsequent surveys added more. See Byrd Granger, Grand Canyon Place Names (1960; reprint, Tucson: University of Arizona, 1980)
39. and Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954), pp. 191-98. On the ideological implications of the naming of the land, see Trachtenberg, pp. 125-27
40. Jack Hillers to Powell, 15 December 1873, and Thomas Moran to Powell, 16 December 1873, Powell Correspon dence, microfilm 156, roll 2, frames 34, 38
41. See also Thurman Wilkins, Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), pp. 90-94
42. Moran to Powell, 16 December 1873, Powell Correspondence; see also Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River, p. 171
43. Unidentified clipping, quoted in Wilkins, p. 87; unidentified clipping, quoted in Rebecca Bedell, "The Anatomy of Nature: Geology and American Landscape Painting, 1825-1875" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1989), p. 96
44. See John Wesley Powell, "The Cañons of the Colorado," Scribner's Monthly9 (January-March 1875): 203-310, 394-409, 523-37
45. and John Wesley Powell, "An Overland Trip to the Grand Cañon," Scribner's Monthly 10 (October 1875): 659-78. On Moran's illustra tions, see Ann Morand and Nancy Friese, The Prints of Thomas Moran in the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art (Tulsa, Okla.: Gilcrease Museum, 1986)
46. See Don D. Fowler, The Western Photo graphs of John K. Hitlers: Myself in the Water (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), pp. 48-50
47. See letters from Moran to Powell, February-March 1879, Powell Corre spondence, microfilm 156, roll 10, frames 34-38. On Moran's late career, see Kinsey, chap. 7
48. Clarence Dutton, "The Physical Geology of the Grand Cañon District by Capt. C. E. Dutton," in Second Annual Report of the U.S.G.S., 1880-1881, ed. John Wesley Powell (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1882), pp. 49-166 and separate atlas