With the 150th anniversary of Maj. John Wesley Powell’s historic expedition down the Green River this week, several events are planned to help celebrate and honor Powell’s initial 1869 expedition.
The 150th celebration started Wednesday evening, celebrating Powell’s launch from Green River. An opening reception and discussion about Powell and the future of the Colorado River also took place Wednesday evening.
On Thursday, a cleanup of the Green River will take place from 8:30-11:30 a.m., with lunch scheduled to take place at Expedition Island afterward.
A presentation titled “Powell’s Grand Canyon” will take place from noon to 1 p.m. at the island, followed by an art show from 1-2 p.m., and a youth and education in science program by the USGS from 4-5 p.m. Additional discussions will take place at the island until 8:30 p.m.
On Friday, the SCREE Expedition will launch during an activity from 8-9 a.m., followed by events and activities scheduled from 10 a.m., to 4 p.m., at the island.
The museum has also created a display focused on Powell’s expedition and life afterward.
“There’s some fun stuff here,” Dave Mead, exhibits coordinator for the museum, said.
Mead said the initial expedition was much less a scientific endeavor than the second, and the men who came to Green River Station were a ragtag group of adventurers.
“We reached Fort (Bridger), and then on to Green River Station on the Union Pacific railroad, where we camped and awaited orders and in the meantime tried to drink all the whiskey there was in town,” an entry in John Colton “Jack” Sumner’s journal, quoted on the museum’s display, states. “The result was a failure, as Jake Fields persisted in making it faster than we could drink it.”
Fields operated the Green River Station and is considered the father of the town, having operated the Green River Station and a mail service known as the Jackass Express.
After pushing off, the expedition would be forced to unload a ton of equipment and lead the boats through rapids they encountered at Ashley Falls in Utah, which Mead said is now under the Flaming Gorge Reservoir.
This is what Mead says he admires most about the expedition, that the men would unload, transport and reload several tons of equipment in boats as they made their way down river, in their attempt to avoid severe rapids. Ashley Falls would only be a teaser for what the men ran into further down the river.
One of the boats would get destroyed at a place known as Disaster Falls, and Powell would experience a sleepless night about the potential loss of barometers his men used to measure the altitude during the trek.
“I have determined to get the barometers from the wreck, if they are there…” Powell’s diary entry, made June 10, 1869, states.
“Sumner and Dunn volunteer to take the little boat and make the attempt. They start, reach it, and out come the barometers! The boys set up a shout, and I join them, pleased that they should be as glad as myself to save the instruments. When the boat lands on our side, I find that the only things saved from the wreck were the barometers, a package of thermometers, and a three-gallon keg of whiskey. The last is what the men were shouting about.”
The journey was rough and a few men abandoned the expedition. One man, Frank Goodman, left early on and eventually settled in Vernal, Utah. Three others, Oramel Howland, Seneca Howland and Bill Dunn left the group a few days prior to the expedition’s conclusion, not knowing what lied ahead of the group and convinced they could no longer survive the river’s dangers. They were allegedly killed by members of the Shivwits tribe, mistaking the three for miners who attacked a young girl.
Mead said Powell’s name was immortalized in the naming of Lake Powell between Utah and Arizona, as well as the mineral Powellite.
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