Canyons of the Colorado, or The exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Canyons of the Colorado, or The exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons, credited to John Wesley Powell, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox Recording of Canyons of the Colorado or The exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons by John Wesley Powell, read by LibriVox Volunteers. John Wesley Powell was a pioneer American explorer, ethnologist, and geologist in the 19th Century. In 1869 he set out to explore the Colorado and the Grand Canyon. He gathered nine men, four boats and food for ten months and set out from Green River, Wyoming, on May 24. Passing through dangerous rapids, the group passed down the Green River to its confluence with the Colorado River (then also known as the Grand River upriver from the junction), near present-day Moab, Utah. The expedition's route traveled through the Utah canyons of the Colorado River, which Powell described in his published diary as having …wonderful features—carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds and monuments. From which of these features shall we select a name? We decide to call it Glen Canyon. (Ironically, now almost completely submerged by Lake Powell, behind the Glen Canyon Dam.) One man (Goodman) quit after the first month and another three (Dunn and the Howland brothers) left at Separation Rapid in the third, only two days before the group reached the mouth of the Virgin River on August 30 after traversing almost 1,500 km. The three who left the group late in the trip were later killed — probably by Indians. Powell retraced the route in 1871-1872 with another expedition, producing photographs, an accurate map, and various papers, including ethnographic reports of the area's Native Americans and a monograph on their languages. (adapted from Wikipedia by Karen Merline)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Canyons of the Colorado, or The exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons
• Author credits: John Wesley Powell
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 16
• Listed recording duration: 8:07:26

Catalogue topics

• audio book
• Colorado River
• canyon
• John Wesley Powell
• geography
• geology
• exploration
• history

Track guide

1. Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons — 6:30
2. 01 - The Valley of the Colorado — 21:37
3. 02 - Mesas and Buttes — 32:51
4. 03 - Mountains and Plateaus — 20:31
5. 04 - Cliffs and Terraces — 28:32
6. 05 - From Green River City to the Flaming Gorge — 17:38
7. 06 - From Flaming Gorge to the Gate of Lodore — 20:46
8. 07 - The Canyon of Lodore — 21:05
9. 08 - From Echo Park to the Mouth of the Uinta — 29:35
10. 09 - From the Mouth of the Uinta River to the Junction of Grand and Green — 25:51
11. 10 - From the Junction of the Grand and Green to the Mouth of the Little Colorado — 57:41
12. 11 - From the Little Colorado to the Foot of the Grand Canyon — 1:07:45
13. 12 - The Rio Virgen and the Uinkaret Mountains — 1:04:51
14. 13 - Over the River — 32:06
15. 14 - To Zuni — 16:40
16. 15 - The Grand Canyon — 23:34

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.