Down the Great Unknown

by EdwardDolnick (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.35

  This work charts the epic adventures of the first white men to explore the Grand Canyon, the last unmapped region of the United States. By 1869, the map of the United States had long since been filled in. Only one mystery remained - an immense area of the south-west, larger than any state in the union and any country in Europe, remained unexplored. On May 24th 1869, a one-armed Civil War veteran named John Wesley Powell and a ragtag band of nine men set out down the river to resolve the mystery. Three months later, defying premature reports of their deaths, six of the men emerged to tell the tale. Their expedition was the last epic adventure on the American continent. They were the first white men to explore the Grand Canyon, the first of any race to brave the Colorado's ferocious and deadly rapids, and the first to map and measure the area, the ultimate American landscape. Powell instantly became a national hero and a star of the lecture circuit, enthralling audiences with vividly painted stories of a hostile and alien environment.