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Show CHAPTER6 CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK: VASTNESS 'LOCKED UP' When John Wesley Powell published his Colorado River adventures in Scribner's Monthly, he exposed the remote and rugged landscape of southeastern Utah that would eventually become Canyonlands National Park. The article recounted how, in 1869, Powell had scrambled up the cliffs near the confluence of the Colorado and Green rivers to view the area: Away to the west were lines of cliffs and ledges of rock; not such ledges as you may sec where the quanyman splits his blocks, but ledges from which the gods might quarry mountains; not cliffs where you may see the swallow build its nest, but where the soaring eagle is lost to view before he reaches the summit.. Wherever we looked there was a wilderness of rocks - deep gorges where the rivers are lost below cliffs, and towers, and pinnacles, and ten thousand strangely carved forms in every direction, and beyond them mountains blending with the clouds. 31 8 Few ventured into this region in the years following Powell's expedition. The harsh country around the Canyonlands provided a hideout for Robert Leroy Parker (Butch Cassidy) and other outlaws. ln some of the less foreboding areas, ranchers began grazing cattle, but the land's extreme topography and remoteness kept out all but intrepid m John Wesley Powell, ''The Canons ofthc Colorado," Scribn er·s Monthly 9 (February 1875): 39 7. |
