HEROICS AND VILLAINIES

                             By Jeffrey Ingram   2019 - 2020    
AN UNORTHODOX -- THOUGH TRUE -- POLITICAL HISTORY:

       Grand Canyon National Park in Its Regional Setting

  

           Chapter 1: 1882-93; Beginnings and Reflections
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Two 1882 letters about the Grand Canyon exist between John Wesley Powell, Canyon explorer and new Director, United States Geological Survey:

and Benjamin Harrison, freshman Senator from Indiana, later, President of the United States:

There may have been more letters; --almost certainly were, in the 1880's. On Powell's side, however, fire in the early twentieth century destroyed the pertinent archives of the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) under his directorship. And Harrison's collected correspondence contains nothing about the Canyon. Nor is there any other evidence of a relationship between the two. Yet these men -- Powell leading, Harrison taking the actions -- together constructed the founding political framework in which debate about a Grand Canyon National Park took place over the next 40 years and beyond. How did this partnership, so obscured, so fruitful, come about?

Introduction
In trying to answer that question, and the multitude of others that have arisen from human efforts to gain control, exploit, enjoy, and yes, celebrate the Grand Canyon, we will see a multitude of people swirling about, often just briefly, some for decades. However, I wanted my view not to get stuck on personalities of individuals; for many, the Canyon was peripheral to their main concerns. Yet in taking the actions they did -- for better or worse, heroically or villainously in effect-- they placed themselves in the service of our attempts to cope with the astounding, the astonishing, physical fact and universal environmental meaning of the Grand Canyon. People's actions are my ingredients here; the Canyon is the grandest of banquets, a feast in which many have participated; contributions sometimes delightful; other dishes, unpalatable.

Counterfactual: History Game-Playing

THE NORTHWEST HAS NO CLOUT:

WOULD THE GRAND CANYON DAMS HAVE BEEN BUILT?

There are the what-if games played with history; there are the erroneous, even willful, interpretations. Byron Pearson's Saving Grand Canyon is fatally flawed as an academic history by the latter -- his failed book-long rant at environmentalists, and in particular the Sierra Club as the Grand Canyon's saviors.

Playing the what-if games, however, I have found an intriguing and educational antidote, since they permit an examination of the roles of various actors under conditions that did not quite prevail. For instance, it is a linch-pin of any solid understanding of the 1965-8 legislative history of the Colorado River Basin Act to understand the multi-diimensional influences that gave Washington's Democratic Senator Henry Jackson, Interior & Insular Affairs Committee Chairman (and there are a bunch of those influences in that titling) his central position in shaping the legislation. So, suppose we take out of the CRB legislation story Jackson's position and convictions and motivations and support. Suppose that there had been no central figure from the Northwest, Jackson or another. Suppose, that is, that the political balances in the Senate were much like those in the House, where Northwest Representatives were eloquent and determined, but of little impact on the Arizona-Colorado-California alliance that drove the process. 

Hockney and travel, a personal note

There is much to be said for travel. I have travelled; I am a traveller. The Canyon is an anchor, a universe: I have travelled about in it, through it, across it, been within it.
There is no jet lag in the Grand Canyon.

The Navajo-Park boundary: scene of a land grab or beneficial cooperation?

FAIR PLAY FOR THE NAVAJO OR LAND GRAB FOR A PARK?

The location of the western Navajo Reservation boundary along the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers is a matter vexed by the usual plethora of crisscrossing land actions and overlain by the responsibility of the federal government to behave in ways mindful of its ethical duties toward the Navajo and the Grand Canyon.

I have written, at great length, a comprehensive chronological and topical examination of these issues (http://gcfutures.blogspot.com/2012/07/more-on-boundary-segment-b-navajo.html).
Here I wish to state the matter as it stands today, cutting through the Gordian knot presented by the history of those land actions:

A Carbon-Free Grand Canyon Wilderness

2020: THE ELECTION TO DEDICATE

THE GRAND CANYON

TO ITS TRUE ENVIRONMENTAL ICON STATUS

AS A CARBON-FREE MOTOR-FREE WILDERNESS

On the 2020 election agenda for the new American Government in 2021:

Lets elevate the Grand Canyon to its natural status as the icon of a renewed pro-climate, pro-environment effort by moving through Congress the CARBON-FREE GRAND CANYON WILDERNESS.

The proposed boundary of a CARBON-FREE MOTOR-FREE GRAND CANYON WILDERNESS is already drawn. Lets support the 2021 introduction and passage through Congress of this positive forward-moving action to place the Grand Canyon at the vanguard of a pro-climate agenda. A CARBON-FREE GRAND CANYON WILDERNESS ACT would be an easily achieved win-win physical and governmental symbol of a solid dedication to acting strongly on actions to protect and restore a livable climate.

Within the 277 miles of the Grand Canyon itself and over its near airspace, boat and plane and associated motors would no longer operate, cutting to zero all carbon emissions from recreation and administrative activities (saving only emergencies). At the stroke of the new President's pen signing a CARBON-FREE GRAND CANYON WILDERNESS bill, the Grand Canyon would become the icon of a national dedication for immediate action on climate repair and rejuvenation.

As a major benefit, the normal Wilderness quiet, the natural pro-human quiet, that would descend throughout the Grand Canyon with the legislating of a CARBON-FREE MOTOR-FREE GRAND CANYON WILDERNESS would signal loud and clear American commitment to a sound and supportive environment for visitors and the world at large.

A Navajo Navy?

A NAVAJO NAVY?

WHY BUILD A DOCK AT LEES FERRY?

The (Murky) Situation

According to a January 17 letter from Grand Canyon National Park Acting Superintendent:

“Navajo Nation Army Corps of Engineers Permit – The Navajo Nation has recently applied for and received a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers (COE) to construct a dock along the Colorado River, downstream of Lees Ferry, Arizona, within Grand Canyon National Park. The approved dock measures 12 feet long and 128 feet wide, accessed by two gangways, each measuring 60 feet long and 6 feet wide, connected to the shoreline. The stated purpose, in the application to the COE, is to conduct law enforcement patrols along the Colorado River, from Lees Ferry (river mile 0) to the Little Colorado River confluence (River Mile 61), focusing on natural and cultural resource violations. DOI Solicitor’s Michael Williams and Robert Eaton have been in contact with the legal counsel for COE, expressing the DOI concern for the issuance of the permit without consultation with DOI or NPS. The Navajo Nation interprets the western boundary of the Navajo Nation differently than the DOI solicitors, variously claiming the middle of the Colorado River or the shoreline along Marble Canyon (eastern Grand Canyon). The 1975 Act proposed the rim of Grand Canyon through Marble Canyon as the boundary with the concurrence of the Navajo Nation. To date no record of concurrence exists. The DOI solicitors have affirmed, in writing in 1969 and 2003, that the eastern boundary of GRCA is ¼ mile east of the eastern or southern shore of the Colorado River.

Acting on this news, River Runners for Wilderness sought more information, and ran into bureaucratic thickets. 

DID THE CALIFORNIANS CONSPIRE, SAVING THE GRAND CANYON?

THE CALIFORNIA CONSPIRACY TO KILL THE GRAND CANYON DAMS

Revisiting the long-dead world of Colorado River Basin politics in the 1960s is surely an esoteric exercise; for me, it is an itch I need to scratch. For any reader not up to speed on the maneuvers of that dimmed time of late summer 1966, my short history (17 Sep 2018 "Dumping the Dams") may help to make more sense of the following what-if historicizing.

What is generally accepted is that at the crucial moment when momentum needed to be sustained at full strength to get from positive House Interior Committee action and onto the House floor for approval, California betrayed its supposed allies, Chairman Aspinall and bill prime workhorse Representative M. Udall. This doomed the pending legislation.