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The Mapping Grand Canyon Conference was an event held at Arizona State University's Tempe campus between February 28 and March 1, 2019. The conference marked an unprecedented exploration of the science, art, history, and practice of Grand Canyon cartography. It was a celebration and critical examination of the cartographic history of a global landscape icon.

Free and open to all, the conference delivered a two-day program of map-based story-telling, transdisciplinary analysis, state-of-the-art geospatial and cartographic demonstrations, engaging hands-on activities, and open community dialogue.

Inspiration and justification for convening such a conference was the confluence of two milestones in Grand Canyon history: (1) the centennial (1919-2019) of the legislation that led to Grand Canyon National Park, and (2) the sesquicentennial (1869-2019) of John Wesley Powell's famous first exploration and mapping survey through the canyons carved by the Colorado River, including the Grand Canyon.

The Mapping Grand Canyon Conference originated as a component of a larger research project supported through an ASU Institute for Humanities Research (IHR) seed grant -- Mapping Grand Canyon: A Critical Cartographic History.

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Legislating the Boundaries: Redrawing the Map in 1925 – Video Recording

Description
It is a truism that maps cannot exist without boundaries, whether those boundaries are the borders of the map itself or the geographic coordinates circumscribing the limits of the physical space being mapped. Grand Canyon National Park, like all national parks, has written and legislated descriptions that form the basis for…

It is a truism that maps cannot exist without boundaries, whether those boundaries are the borders of the map itself or the geographic coordinates circumscribing the limits of the physical space being mapped. Grand Canyon National Park, like all national parks, has written and legislated descriptions that form the basis for mapping the evolving nature of the park. The year 1925 saw the first significant re-writing of the legal boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park since its legislative creation in 1919.  This presentation will discuss the “sausage-making” involved in re-writing the borders of Grand Canyon National Park.
ContributorsOetting, Ed (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)
Created2019-02-28
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Conference Program

DescriptionOfficial program of the Mapping Grand Canyon Conference. Document was designed and optimized for digital dissemination and mobile device (smartphone, tablet) viewing and interactive browsing. Document was deliberately not printed in paper format with the intent of minimizing the event's ecological footprint through a reduction of paper and ink waste.
ContributorsWatson, Amy Carolyn (Compiler, Designer) / Toro, Matthew (Compiler, Cartographer) / Avila, Theresa (Contributor) / Field, Kenneth (Contributor) / Fry, Michael (Contributor) / Griffin, Dori (Contributor) / Kaplinski, Matt (Contributor) / Karlstrom, Karl (Contributor) / Manone, Mark (Contributor) / Oetting, Ed (Contributor) / Patterson, Tom (Contributor) / Quartaroli, Richard David (Contributor) / Runge, Peter (Contributor) / Semken, Steve (Contributor) / Smilovsky, Nikolas (Contributor) / Smith, Stephanie (Contributor) / Spindler, Rob (Contributor) / Trapido-Lurie, Barbara (Contributor) / Upchurch, Jonathan (Contributor) / Deitrick, Stephanie (Contributor) / Lemar, Shea (Contributor) / Messinger, Ellen Murray (Contributor) / Sherwood, Jill (Contributor) / Wilhelm, Karina (Contributor)
Created2019-02
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John Wesley Powell and Crew’s 1869 River Mapping: What Did They Know and When Did They Know It? – Video Recording

Description
The intent of the 1869 river expedition of Major John Wesley Powell was to map the course of the Green River to its junction with the Colorado River, and then through the Grand Canyon, ending at Callville, Nevada, filling in somewhat terra incognita of the plateau country of the southwestern…

The intent of the 1869 river expedition of Major John Wesley Powell was to map the course of the Green River to its junction with the Colorado River, and then through the Grand Canyon, ending at Callville, Nevada, filling in somewhat terra incognita of the plateau country of the southwestern United States. Starting at Green River Station, Wyoming Territory, one of the four boats wrecked in the Cañon of Lodore, resulting in one crew member leaving the trip at the Uinta River. Weather, rapids, hard work portaging and lining boats and supplies, and other time-consuming activities curtailed much of the needed survey and mapping work. Loss of the maps due to wetting caused the need for them to be recreated. Even with that, plus broken barometers and wet chronometers and watches, at least one map remained so that Powell’s return river trip of 1871-72 could carry it with them, compare it with their longer-term surveying, and update the 1869 results. However, by the time they reached about river mile 240 in the Grand Canyon, Powell still could not tell how far west they had boated or how close they were to Callville. Because of that and other reasons, three men left the party at what has been named Separation Rapid and up Separation Canyon on the north rim. Powell and the remaining men exited Grand Canyon soon thereafter at the mouth of the Virgin River, not far above Callville; the three men perished somewhere on the Arizona Strip. This talk will cover how the men used their scientific instruments to survey and map, and speculate about what they knew of their location along their trip, focusing specifically on Grand Canyon.
ContributorsQuartaroli, Richard David (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)
Created2019-02-28