Powell of the Colorado

When John Wesley Powell reached this country in 1869, it was the last blank space on the map. The one-armed Civil War veteran launched four wooden boats from Green River, Wyoming, in May, and for ninety-eight days he and his men ran the unknown canyons of the Green and Colorado—through rapids that wrecked a boat and drowned their supplies. On August 30, 1869, the survivors reached the Mormon settlement near the mouth of the Virgin River, at the edge of Nevada. Powell named features as he passed—Flaming Gorge, Glen Canyon—and returned in 1871 to map the canyon country properly.

What the plaque says

On August 30, 1869, Major John Wesley Powell landed at the mouth of the Virgin River, about 12 miles south of here, thus ending the first boat expedition through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. The expedition left Green River City, Wyoming Territory, on May 24, 1869. For three months Powell and his men endured danger and hunger to explore, survey and study the geology of the canyons along the Green and Colorado Rivers. Exhausted and near starvation, the Powell party was warmly greeted and fed by the hardy Mormon pioneers of St. Thomas, a small farm settlement about 11 miles north of here. The original sites of St. Thomas and the junction of the Virgin and Colorado Rivers are now beneath the waters of Lake Mead. This, and later Powell surveys, stimulated great interest in the water conservation problems of the Southwest.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Valley of Fire State Park — 13 mi
  Jurassic sand dunes turned to blazing red stone — Nevada's oldest and largest state park
• Lost City Museum — 16 mi
  The Ancestral Puebloan metropolis Lake Mead drowned — and the museum that saved what it could
• Lake Mead National Recreation Area — 22 mi
  The largest reservoir in the country — and its most legible drought gauge
• Hoover Dam — 27 mi
  The 726-foot Depression-era colossus that tamed the Colorado and made Las Vegas possible

More markers nearby

• Arrowhead Trail (1914- 1924) — 8.5 mi
• Nevada’s First State Park — 9.9 mi
• Pueblo Grande De Nevada — 15 mi
• Moapa Valley — 23 mi