In May 1869, Major John Wesley Powell set out to explore the uncharted canyons and waters of the Green and Colorado rivers. A geology professor and one-armed Civil War veteran, he began the journey with nine novice oarsmen and four wooden boats, and three months later finished with two boats, six men, and detailed knowledge of a unique landscape that would capture national attention. As his party first entered canyon country, Powell wrote in his journal, “What shall we find?” When the expedition reached this section of the river in July, he called it a “strange, weird, grand region” of naked rock with “cathedral-shaped buttes, towering hundreds or thousands of feet, cliffs that cannot be scaled, and canyon walls that shrink the river into insignificance.” His voyage opened a world of adventure and scientific discovery that continues today, and modern boaters still see a wild landscape changed little since 1869.