2007 Grand Canyon History Symposium Richard D. Quartaroli Quartaroli is Special Collections Librarian at Northern Arizona University and is a Grand Canyon boatman with over 30 years experience and over 165 Grand Canyon river trips. He holds a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Texas and was the first Research Librarian at the Glen Canyon Environmental Studies where he coordinated their Scientific Information Management. He is researching a book on John Wesley Powell's surveying and cartography, and presented two talks at the 2002 inaugural Grand Canyon History Symposium. Presentation Abstract... John Wesley Powell's Cartography of the Colorado River System:   Beginning in the late 1860s, John Wesley Powell led exploring expeditions into the "Great Unknown" of the American west, mapping the last blank spots of the continental United States. His successful completion of the first intentional trip on the Green and Colorado Rivers, along their greater course and through the Grand Canyon, continued with both his successful mapping of the Colorado Plateau and a career in the scientific and government environs of Washington, D.C. Powell carried the latest available maps of the region, both overland and along the rivers, and accurately corrected and updated those rivers' course. The story of discovering his resources and methods for doing so is a complete and interesting story in itself. His plans for mapping the entire nation and the west on a grand scale are still being continued today. But Powell also thought that the land "beyond the hundredth meridian" did not have adequate resources needed to develop the land as in the east. His ideas for larger land allotments and irrigation districts on a smaller, regional scale would have dramatically altered reclamation in the west. If Powell's cartography of the "arid lands" had followed his irrigation concepts, what might the maps of the river drainages and irrigation districts looked like? Would that visual representation of place have better influenced the politicians and populace and led to more efficient use of our seemingly vast, but limited, western resources?