2007 Grand Canyon History Symposium Marcia L. Thomas Thomas was the Library Director at University of Wisconsin–Baraboo/Sauk County, 2005-2006. From 1998-2005 she held, and currently holds, the position of associate professor and librarian as Head of Technical Services at The Ames Library, Illinois Wesleyan University, where John Wesley Powell taught science following the Civil War. She is the author of John Wesley Powell: An Annotated Bibliography, published by Praeger, 2004. Presentation Abstract... John Wesley Powell and the Popular Press:   When John Wesley Powell began his voyage down the Colorado River in May 1869, he knew that capturing public attention was critical in his bid to acquire public funding for a survey of the unmapped Colorado River Plateau. Major Powell and several members of his ten-man party maintained frequent correspondence with editors of the Chicago Tribune, Rocky Mountain News, and other prominent newspapers. The sensational but false news of his supposed drowning cemented public interest in Powell's great adventure. By the time the Major emerged from the Grand Canyon in August, he had achieved the status of national hero. America's fascination with the dramatic landscape and commercial promise of its western territories meshed perfectly with Powell's ambition to build a strong and prominent role for government science. His savvy employment of the flourishing popular media and his ability to cultivate political allies helped him secure simultaneous directorships of the Bureau of (American) Ethnology in 1879 and the U.S. Geological Survey in 1881. Powell held the BAE post until his death in 1902, but resigned from the USGS in 1894 after unsuccessfully pitting himself against powerful political and economic interests pushing for rapid settlement on public lands in the arid West. Clashes with Congress, his alignment with paleontologist Othniel Marsh in a very public battle with Edward Cope, and his declaration before the International Irrigation Congress in Los Angeles that there was "not enough water to irrigate all this arid region" played out unfavorably in the press. His vision that science would inform a progressive new land policy for western settlement never stood a chance with the people of an optimistic nation ready and eager to occupy the whole of its vast continent.