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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 15 THE POWELL SuRVEy Thompson’s confidence in Adair’s ability to keep the group supplied. On May 10, Thompson recorded, “George went home.” Four days later, Thompson “let George Adair have 215 lbs. flour” and, on May 20, Adair “commenced work again.”46 Shortly thereafter, Adair joined Thompson and others of the survey on the first part of a remarkable four-week journey (May 25-June 22) from Kanab to the mouth of the Dirty Devil River over some of the wildest country on the continent. Their immediate goal was to locate the mouth of the Dirty Devil and retrieve the Cañonita. If he successfully located this junction, Thompson would accomplish what Powell, Hamblin, and others before him had failed to do. Where Hamblin had mistaken the Escalante River for the Dirty Devil and others had become snarled in the convoluted slickrock wilderness west of the Colorado River, Thompson alone recognized that the Escalante ran to the west of the Henry Mountains (then called the “Dirty Devil” or “Unknown” mountains), while the Dirty Devil ran to the east of them.47 The party began to assemble in Johnson Canyon on May 25. New photographer James Fennemore, delayed by illness, had missed the turn north into Johnson Canyon in the dark. When he finally stopped at midnight, he “tied his mule and tried to sleep.” In the night, “the mule broke loose,” and Fennemore had to “back track” on foot to Johnson Canyon. Meanwhile, Adair had gone “back on the road to find some things lost last night” on his way and found Fennemore, thirsty, tired, and hungry. With Adair’s assistance, Fennemore finally reached camp at 10 a.m., “played out.”48 The party set out on Thursday, May 30, 1872. (Thompson employed massacre participant Nephi Johnson to care for a horse during his absence.) In addition to six members of the second Powell expedition (Thompson, Jones, Dellenbaugh, Hillers, Clem Powell, and Hattan), the group included Pardon Dodds, former agent from the Uintah Agency; Fennemore; and the two Mormon wranglers, Adair and Willie Johnson.49 On May 31, 1872, the group found itself six miles from the base of the Paunsaugunt Plateau southeast of the “Pink Cliffs” of what is now Bryce Canyon National Park, in a “beautiful valley with a fine cool spring.” They were “about ¾ miles” north of Swallow Lake in Park Wash. This little lake (“200 yards across,” according to Thompson) had its outlet through “a narrow cañon of white [Navajo] sandstone.” Jones declared the location “very pretty,” and Dellenbaugh concurred that it was “an exceedingly beautiful little valley.”50 46 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 77, 78. Worster, River Running West, 242–44. 48 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 126–27; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 417. 49 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 79; “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 127, 127–28n109. 50 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 79; “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 128-29; Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 197. 47 15 |
