Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West.

John Wesley Powell's exploration of the Grand Canyon in 1869 required mental and physical heroism of Randian proportions. The one-armed Civil War veteran led expeditions down the uncharted Green and Colorado rivers, overcoming torrential rapids, near starvation, and hostile Indians. In the process, he mapped thousands of miles of unexplored territory and gained dramatic insights into the challenges confronting the Western United States, challenges that remain today. Sadly, one of the best American writers of this century, Wallace Stegner, uses Powell's exploits as the foil to showcase his radiant defense of Progressive Era policies as the way to meet these challenges.

The first half of Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (Penguin, 1954) is devoted to the gripping account of Powell's two trips through the beautiful canyon country. Stegner chronicles the action and natural grandeur to potent effect. The excitement builds as one appreciates how the explorers confront disaster and death countless times. Yet Powell, with his quiet resolution to advance scientific understanding of the West, never wavers in the face of staggering adversity.

As a result, one begins the second half of the book with great admiration for Powell and his vision of the West. Stegner carefully plays on this to draw the reader into sympathetic agreement with Powell as he turns his vast energy into forming one of our first Progressive Era bureaucracies, the U.S. Geological Survey. Powell envisioned an agency run by well-informed, scientifically trained elites who would ensure that the fragile ecology of the West would be managed to provide the greatest public good for his and future generations. The USGS served as the model for many later government agencies and the training ground for countless bureaucrats who staffed these new agencies. Powell, "both the bureaucrat and the idealist knew that private interests, whether they dealt in cattle or sheep, oil, mineral, coal, timber, water, or land itself, could not be trusted or expected to take care of the land or conserve its resources for the use of future generations. They could be trusted or expected to protect neither the monetary nor the nonmonetary values of the land."

This book should be read by anyone concerned with liberty or the American West. Stegner writes with authority and sensitivity about real problems that to this day plague the West: water allocation, political control over resources that leads to exploitation or misuse, and the myths and realities of economic existence in this arid region. Though the book was written in 1954, it offers a persuasive case for why Powell's vision should still be pursued. Stegner subtly validates the basic premises of enlightened rule by scientific experts, premises all too popular in Washington today.

This book is an excellent example of how the case for activist government can be successfully advanced using romance, history, adventure, and human interest. Until classical liberals are able to bring similar forces to bear in support of our arguments, we will lose more often than we will win. With respect to the West, a good start has been made in Free Market Environmentalism, by Terry Anderson and Don Leal, and Visions upon the Land, by Karl Hess Jr. But the ultimate refutation of Stegner is yet to be written.

William H. Mellor III is president and general counsel of the Institute for Justice in Washington, D.C.