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JOHN WESLEY POWELL 
‘ A Tribute to a Great Bureau Chief and Man of Science, “‘the Father of Reclama- 
. tion,” to Whom the Nation Has Just Accorded High Honor in Recogni- 
tion of His Attainments and Distinguished Services 
By Grorce A. WARREN 
Department of the Interior 
; It has often been remarked that, although the progress and development of the United 
States have been along essentially peaceful lines, comparatively few monuments have been 
erected to commemorate the virtues and deeds of those who have risen to greatness in civil 
life. The event which is here recorded—the raising of a monument in honor of the late 
Major John Wesley Powell, not as a soldier but as a civilian—challenges all the more, therefore, 
our attention and interest, apart from the fact that for many years Major Powell occupied a 
commanding position among both men of science and the administrative heads of our civil serv- 
ice. To thousands of men and women in that service, especially to those whose lot was cast 
in the National Capital during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Major Powell 
was a well-known figure.—EprTors. 
GREAT character, one who in his 
day and generation strives might- 
ily for the advancement of his 
fellow-men, needs no monument 
of stone or bronze to perpetuate his fame. 
He “lives in the hearts of his country- 
men,” if not of the world, once his work 
- is known and appreciated. 
| Yet mankind has ever loved to honor 
its great by erecting outward, visible 
signs of its inward, invisible appreciation 
and approbation; and so, on May 20 last, 
a modest monument of stone, surmounted 
by an altar, was dedicated to the memory 
of John Wesley Powell, best known to- 
day, perhaps, as “the Father of Reclama- 
tion” in the arid West, and pioneer ex- 
plorer of the Colorado river, but whose 
fame may yet rest on an even broader 
_ basis—his contributions to science in its 
larger aspects and to philosophy. His 
valuable, if less spectacular, work as 
soldier, organizer, and administrator, 
tee out, as it were, a peculiarly useful 
ife. 
The monument itself seems the result 
of real inspiration. It is an open secret 
that the small appropriation made by 
Congress for its erection would not nearly 
have paid for all expense connected MAJOR JOHN WESLEY POWELL 
therewith, the balance representing a 
labor of love on the part of Powell’s wonders of Nature, perhaps the world’s 
admirers, notably Stephen T. Mather, greatest existing testament of geology, the 
chief of the National Park Service of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. It over- 
Interior Department. As typically sim- looks the scene of Powell’s most dra- 
ple as Powell himself, the monument matic triumph—the last stage of his 
stands upon the rim of that Titan of the famous descent of the Colorado in 1869, 
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