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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 13 THE POWELL SuRVEy Andrew Hattan, along with various Mormon locals.35 Thompson and his men finished the Kanab base line on February 21, 1872.36 The following day, Thompson added Mountain Meadows Massacre participant and Kanab resident George W. Adair to the survey payroll at forty dollars per month. Twenty years old at the time of the massacre, Adair was now in his mid-thirties. He had more extensive involvement with the Powell survey than any other massacre participant, working under Thompson’s direction on and off for the next year and a half. Perhaps not coincidentally, on the day Thompson hired Adair, he noted: “Found all our stock for the first time for a month.”37 On March 21, Thompson led an excursion southwest from Pipe Spring across the Uinkaret Plateau toward Mt. Trumbull. They camped in the vicinity of Mt. Trumbull, making visits to the tops of that mount and Mt. Logan. Some visited the Grand Canyon. By early April, the heavy, late-season snow had chased the party down to lower (and warmer) climes in the vicinity of St. George. Thompson recorded on April 7 that they “ate all our flour tonight” and the next morning had a “breakfast of beans.”38 The next day, at Berry Springs along the Virgin River (just south of Harrisville Gap and present-day Quail Creek Reservoir) they encountered George Adair with Clem Powell and a wagon with corn and beef from Kanab. Adair had left Kanab for Washington County on April 3. Thompson noted: “George commenced work again.” Two days after meeting up with Adair at Ber r y Spr ings, Thompson “took dinner at Haights” in Toquerville.39 One editor has characterized Adair’s role in the Powell survey as “horse wrangler, packer, and man-of-all-work.”40 Thompson noted “taking George Adair with me to talk to Indians.”41 On April 22, Adair retrieved “some goods that the Major had procured in Salt Lake City and shipped down for distribution among the Sheviwits and Pa-Utes”; he then hauled the “Indian goods” to Ft. Pearce, southeast of St. George. Next, Adair joined Thompson, 35 Robert W. Olsen Jr., “The Powell Survey Kanab Base Line,” Utah Historical Quarterly 37 (Spring 1969): 262–64; Worster, River Running West, 234–36. The Powell surveyors’ first camp was at Eight Mile Spring, east of Kanab at Eight Mile Gap at the base of the Shinarump Cliffs just north of the UtahArizona border. 36 Olsen, “Powell Survey Kanab Base Line,” 266. 37 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 69. For references to Adair’s interactions with Powell’s men, see Fowler, “Photographed All the Best Scenery,” 95, 96, 104, 107, 110n61, 111n63, 113, 117; “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 113–14, 120, 126–27, 131–33, 135–36, 138–39, 141; “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 74–78, 88, 90, 93, 98, 101, 105–6; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 410, 413, 417, 422, 449, 453–54, 457–58, 471, 475. Herbert E. Gregory, in “Stephen Vandiver Jones, 1840–1920,” 15, wrote, “To no small degree the success of the land surveys is due to the skill and knowledge of Utah men employed as guides and packers,” including “George Adair.” 38 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 70–74. 39 Ibid., 74; “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 113. 40 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 113n94. This source mistakenly lists an obituary for a different George Adair. 41 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 74. 13 |
