Great geographers: John Wesley Powell.

Focus on Geography, September, 2007 by Lee, Jeffrey A.

John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) was a towering figure in the early days of American geography, geology, and anthropology. Within those disciplines, he is best known for his contributions to exploration, geomorphology, and ethnography, along with natural resource use and land use planning. He was born in Mount Morris, New York, to English immigrant parents. His family was staunchly religious, and he was named for John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. They soon moved to southern Ohio, where he spent much of his early childhood. There, an amateur naturalist befriended young Powell and taught him much about the local natural history of the region. In 1846, his family moved to Wisconsin and bought a farm, but as his father decided to be a fulltime preacher, that left the...

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