In 2019, Powell\u2019s fateful journey will have its 150th anniversary. Many events are planned, and local Mancos mapmaker Frank Lister has published his own colorful commemoration. Powell\u2019s trip was immortalized in his book, \u201cExploration of the Colorado River of the West,\u201d and in his place names, but now it is time to memorialize the trip itself. Lister has done just that with a new map full of vibrant illustrations, and a careful chronicling of each and every Powell campsite.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the sesquicentennial next year, it seems like the right thing to do,\u201d Lister told me. Now, river runners like myself, who want to paddle, row and float most miles that Powell traversed, will have our own map to do just that. But, I\u2019ll skip the flat water, thank you.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t bother trying to paddle across Flaming Gorge reservoir or Lake Powell, dubbed by some environmentalists Lake Foul. I\u2019ve been through the Canyons of Lodore many times and even suffered our own tragic loss at Disaster Falls, but we\u2019ve always taken out at Echo Park or Split Mountain. I want to row through Desolation-Gray canyons and test my mettle in Cataract Canyon. I\u2019ve been down through the Grand Canyon three times in rafts, but each campsite is different. Each trip has a unique flavor, and I\u2019d love to go again and again.<\/p>\n Lister\u2019s Time Traveler Map, titled \u201cJohn Wesley Powell\u2019s 1869 Colorado River Exploring Expedition, an illustrated map and adventure anthology,\u201d whets my appetite. Lister makes me want to stuff my dry bag, find my flotation device, put a paddle in the water and go.<\/p>\n Lister has managed to condense nearly 1,000 miles and 100 days of river travel into one large, foldable map that shows campsites from Expedition Island at Green River, Wyoming, to Powell\u2019s take-out at the confluence of the Virgin and Colorado rivers near the mud flats of Lake Mead. Imagine the vast Colorado Plateau before there were dams, farms, freeways and hundreds of diversion ditches pumping the river dry.<\/p>\n Lister spent months working with a team of scholars, river runners, writers, cartographers and designers with original oil paintings by Glen Hopkinson and detailed information on Powell\u2019s boats.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is far more than just a map,\u201d river runner and writer Christa Sadler says. \u201cIt\u2019s got something for everyone. In addition to a wonderful annotated map of Powell\u2019s journey through the region, an excellent text gives the reader important background on Powell\u2019s purpose, crew, boats and gear.\u201d<\/p>\n Research included time at the Powell Museum in Page, Arizona, and the Powell Museum in Green River, Utah. Lister attended the rowdy, raucous Grand Canyon River Guides annual meeting for comments and quips from guides.<\/p>\n He says with humility, \u201cThis has been a huge educational thing for me. I\u2019ve learned a lot,\u201d including trying to sort out what happened in 1869 and Powell\u2019s subsequent 1871 well-financed trip, which he conflated into one book forever confusing scholars and river runners alike.<\/p>\n I asked Lister what he thought the major would think of this Time Traveler Map. He laughed and said, \u201cI think Powell would like this. It\u2019s a book on a single sheet of paper.\u201d<\/p>\n With admiration, Lister added, \u201cThe guy had such vision. He was self-taught and the first to understand the Colorado Plateau\u2019s geologic uplifting and downcutting. All the civilians on the trip failed. Military veterans survived the ordeal. Powell was obsessed with science.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, Powell understood water in the West better than anyone else in the 19th century, and better than most scholars in the 20th century. Certainly better than politicians. Powell would have changed our political boundaries. Instead of a square-shaped Colorado with our oddly drawn county boundary lines cutting across canyons and mountain ranges, Powell wanted political districts to encapsulate watersheds. He wanted local administration of water so that citizens and neighbors could control their own fates.<\/p>\n Powell would have been aghast at our trans-montane water diversions where Denver and other Front Range cities siphon off Western Slope water and giant federal reservoirs hold, but also evaporate, our most precious resource. He learned the aridity of the West firsthand, and his fated journey taught him much. Wallace Stegner\u2019s biography of Powell, \u201cBeyond the Hundredth Meridian,\u201d is my favorite, but there\u2019s also Donald Worster\u2019s \u201cA River Running West,\u201d and I like Edward Dolnick\u2019s \u201cDown the Great Unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n New books for the 150th anniversary include \u201cRiver Master\u201d by Cecil Kuhne, \u201cThe Powell Expedition\u201d by Don Lago and \u201cThe Promise of the Grand Canyon\u201d by John F. Ross. For 2019, there will be displays at the Sweetwater County Historical Museum in Green River, Wyoming; the John Wesley Powell History Museum in Green River, Utah; the Moab Information Center; and the National Geographic Visitor Center\/Imax Theatre at the Grand Canyon.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s only one new map.<\/p>\n \u201cSo beautifully written. Simple, concise, packed full of interesting details of Powell\u2019s life from boyhood to scientist to adventurer,\u201d says Loie Belknap Davis of Westwater Press, which produces river guides and maps. \u201cWhat a perfect way to capture the John Wesley Powell story in a fresh way \u2013 to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the journey into the great unknown, 1869-2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Time Traveler Maps has a winner on its hands. Lister has produced maps of the Colorado Plateau and its borderlands, satellite images of the Four Corners, guides to the Santa Catalina Mountains in southern Arizona, maps of Navajo Country and the Hillerman Indian Country Map & Guide, but the new Powell map is a stunning, timely tribute.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a river guide. This is to haul around in your dry box and take out and study at night \u2013 on all sections of the journey,\u201d Lister says. He\u2019s right. Time to pack my river gear.<\/p>\n Hopefully, we\u2019ll get epic snows for epic flows next year. It will be a season to honor the patriarch. The dangers he faced will be adventures for us. Powell mapped the canyons and named the Plateau Province. We can only follow and row in his memory.<\/p>\n