March 24, 1834 – September 23, 1902

 He was born in Mount Morris, New York in  He was born to Joseph Powell, a poor preacher, and Mary Powell  His family moved a lot when he was young. They moved from Ohio to Wisconsin to Illinois  He attended Illinois College, Wheaton College, and Oberlin College, acquiring the knowledge of Ancient Greek and Latin but he never graduated. He had a deeper interest in the natural sciences.

 Powell enrolled in the army and fought in the civil war in 1861  A few months later, he married his first cousin, Emma Dean  In war, he hurt is arm bad and it was amputated. Because of this he resigned from the army  After leaving the Army, Powell accepted a short-lived appointment at Illinois Wesleyan University as a professor of geology

 In May of 1869, Powell led his first exploration of the Green and Colorado Rivers (the areas now known as the Grand Canyon).  In 1870, Powell published the first account of the Colorado River expedition entitled “New Tracks in North America.“  He also led series of expeditions into the Rocky Mountains and around the Green and Colorado rivers

 The Most Sublime Spectacle On Earth -This poem describes all the things that he saw in the Grand Canyon that were beautiful  The Canyons of the Colorado -a somewhat romanticized account of the first expedition through the Grand Canyon  He also wrote a book called The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons - he wrote this book describing all of his accounts during his journeys

 Powell died from a cerebral hemorrhage at his summer home in Haven, Maine, Sept. 23, 1902  Powell is buried in the Arlington Cemetery