Pulled by a childhood dream of exploration, John Wesley Powell's goal was to serve science and make it work for America.

He grew up on the Ohio frontier, tutored by a farmer who gave him the rudiments of biology and geology and inspired him with a passion for exploration. His father considered these studies "heathen" and refused to help him toward the scientific education he craved. Too poor to finish college, he became a lecturer and teacher of geology, inspiring young and old by his enthusiasm in "geologizing". But his dream persisted and he gave up teaching to do exploring. In an old rowboat he followed the Mississippi River for eleven hundred miles, studying and classifying every phase of its wild life.

When the Civil War exploded, Powell volunteered and lost his right arm in battle. His career seemed doomed, yet incredibly he never lost sight of his goal. Major Powell led two expeditions into the Colorado wilderness where he explored and mapped the uncharted 300-miled canyon. Boats splintered in the currents and supplies were lost. Sun-blistered during the day or buffeted by chill gales roaring through the canyon, they were never out of danger.

Powell was the first to climb Long's Peak and to record the origins and characteristics of the American Indians. In one year, by enlisting the help of amateurs, specialists and collaborators all over the country, he brought to ethnology a scope and usefulness and purpose never dreamed possible. Thus he served the American Indian as no other man had in the past or would in the future.

The legacy he left to America was monumental—a U.S. Geological Survey, a Bureau of Ethnology and a Reclamation Service. His vision of harnessing the mighty Colorado River came to fruition with the construction of the Hoover Dam in the Boulder project. In his unending search for facts, John Wesley Powell risked his life and won a nation's gratitude.

From the dust jacket