Contexts for the Desert 0:
Introduction: The Western Wisdom of Powell and Stegner
elevation in the contiguous USA shown as color
|
|
|
|
elevation in the contiguous USA shown as color
It is difficult to do much research at all on the American West without running across the names of scientist/explorer John Wesley Powell and his biographer Wallace Earle Stegner. In Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (1982) [ISBN: 080324133X] Stegner the biographer makes some of his own observations about the America West, and chronicles some of Powell's illuminations as well. Many of the wise conclusions of these two men are useful in any analysis of the desert. Stegner observes these universal facts about the West:
Most places in the West are too dry to support a human population without the expensive measure of importing water by rail or truck. A sudden discovery of a new resource (mineral, cultural or legal) makes an area suddenly economically viable, resulting in an influx of people and a "fast boom." After the resource is depleted or negated, people are reluctant to leave and so stay for the "slow bust," as lack of economic activity to pay for the water works to create a ghost town.
Expanding on insights from Powell and others, Stegner defines "the West" as the parts of the United States where annual rainfall is less than 20 inches per year, which is another way of saying the regions where irrigation is needed for agriculture, and goes on to point out that the the simplified designation "beyond the 100th meridian" is a fairly good approximation of this region. Of course coastal California and the Pacific Northwest states are thereby excluded from "the West," as Stegner reminds us with this aphorism: "California is West of the West."
Stegner goes on to describe the following accomplishments and realizations of Powell:
Powell took the first party of men in open boats down the Grand Canyon, and became the first to map the Green and Colorado Rivers. This adventure was made into an episode of the USA TV show Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color called Ten Who Dared (1968).
Powell founded the Unites States Geological Survey (USGS) and selected the 7 1/2 minute grid size for topo maps still used today.
As founder and the first director of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of Ethnology (a position he held until his death), Powell created the first ethnographic survey of the United States. He realized that US expansion into its new western territories would probably be to the detriment of native populations, and his might be the last generation of scientists able to study the language and culture of these people.
Powell was the first to argue that there must exist geological processes for uplifting mountains. His evidence was that there are rivers cutting through mountain ranges at perpendicular angles; these could only have formed if the river was older than the mountains, and had continued to cut a path as the mountains slowly rose.
As incredible as this may seem today, in Powell's time there were fools and charlatans who testified before congress that the West was a very wet climate, and showed early photos of erosion as proof of the deluge of water. Powell labored to convince them otherwise, that the erosive processes in the east had long ago worn down the mountains and erased most of the evidence in the process; only where the climate is dry is erosion slow enough to be witnessed "in progress" by people.
Powell unsuccessfully argued that in the western states each county should be composed of a complete watershed. That way resolution of water use issues between upstream and downstream would be resolved in the same county seat. He saw that downstream soils were usually better, but upstream irrigation often was done preemptively, with little political recourse, resulting in less efficient agriculture.
He also unsuccessfully argued against the 160-acre "quartersection" 0.25-square-mile-sized homesteads being granted by the federal government, pointing out that most lacked a water source, and were destined to be sold out to the large ranches which usually controlled water sources in an area, rewarding unethical homesteaders but dooming honest ones. (These quartersections were exactly the size of Disneyland with its original parking lot.)
Powell loved the West so much and cared so passionately about its future, that he bough a house in Washington, D.C., and lived there much of the year. He recognized that policies, often made ignorantly, were being put in place in the capital that would affect the West for decades to come, and he wanted to help shape those policies.
In our study of the Eastern Mojave Desert, we have found that decisions made in Mexico City, Washington, Sacramento, Carson City, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, all capitals or county seats, have greatly influenced its changes.
|
|
|
|
Last update 12:43 PM Fri. 27-Feb-2004 by ABS.