Unseen Depths
n 1869, explorer John Wesley Powell led the first recorded passage of white men through the Grand Canyon. Plunging into the unknown in small wooden boats to measure and map one of the last uncharted spots in the American West, the expedition team was ill-equipped to face the ferocity of the canyon’s creator—the formidable Colorado River. Powell wrote: “We are three-quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth,
