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Major John Wesley Powell led the first documented expedition through Grand Canyon in 1869, descending a roaring, not-yet-charted river without knowing whether the party would emerge. Because that first expedition was more survival than science, he led a second in 1871-1872 that gave America its first geologic glimpse of the canyon. Four members of the 1869 expedition, Frank Goodman, William Dunn, and brothers Oramel and Seneca Howland, are absent from a 1912 monument because all were labeled deserters, though not by Powell, for leaving the voyage. Goodman left after the first major rapid in northern Utah. Dunn and the Howlands left just two days before the trip's end, attempted to climb out of the canyon, and were never heard from again.
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