Good morning. Wow, that sounds absolutely terrible. Good morning,
everybody. I've been telling everyone, I hope, the rumors spreading far
and wide that I'm running on about two or five percent of voice remaining.
And that's notwithstanding the fact that I'm running about forty percent
energy right now, but as you’ll see, even at forty percent, I still have a
lot to spare. So, first and foremost, I just want to say this is a really
seeing all this materialize, seeing all of you here. It really means a lot to
me. This has been a very Herculean effort and I hope that effort shows in
the manifestation of first your attendance first and foremost the caliber
of the speakers which without exaggeration, are among the highest caliber
the highest quality speakers that can possibly be assembled on a
conference related to the intersection of history, cartography, geography
and, moreover, that the geography of the Grand Canyon. So we have truly
some giants from the worlds of cartography, geology, libraries and
archives history applied cartography. I'm repeating myself, but truly
every facet of map making that we can consider. We have rock star
representation here and I am so proud to be even part of the program.
Kind of commemorating and with such strong representation. Excuse me. So
I'm going to do myself a huge favor because, frankly, I'm exhausted and
most of the hard work has been done. The conference is going, and it's
going to continue without a hitch. I believe I'm going to transfer briefly
to my presentation. I want to give a quick introduction and kind of
contextualized a little bit more. Why we're all here that if you don't
mind cuing that up. Um, yeah. So in the meantime, in the thirty or forty
five seconds it takes to cue that up, I just want to say thank you again
for coming. I personally offer you my promise that you will not be
disappointed with the fantastic program we've laid out over the next two
days. And I just ask that you all are patient with me, as I struggled to
use what what last modicum of my voice remains as I introduce why we're
here. I'm going to give a quick introduction on a mapping Grand Canyon or
for those grammatical sticklers who are offended that I omitted the
article, the mapping, the Grand Canyon and this is part one. So, of course
, is my colleague Paul mentioned. We're here, of course, to celebrate a
well known milestone in the Greater Grand Canyon time line. It is the
centennial, of course, of the legislation signed in nineteen nineteen. The
led to the creation of Grand Canyon National Park, which protects portions
of the greater Grand Canyon region as a U. S National park, with some of
the strongest environmental and land designation that that our country
offers. So that's a significant milestone.
Less well known, of course, is the fact that it's the sesquicentennial ah
, vocabulary word that I learned over the course of several months marking
the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the famous John Wesley Powell,
eighteen sixty nine exploration through the canyons of the Colorado River.
Including, of course, what is now known as the Grand Canyon, which
effectively got its name from John Wesley Powell's eighteen sixty nine in
subsequent eighteen seventy one in eighteen seventy two exploration and
effective mapping survey through the canyons of the Colorado River. And
what we're looking at right now is a nineteen nineteen map published by
Rand McNally, and I just wanted to kind of illustrate the demarcation, the
formal demarcation of space. Although this is a private map, there was a
subsequent map published in nineteen twenty six by the National Park
Service, one of the most iconic maps of the grant of Grand Canyon National
Park Ever produced.
So So this gentleman here, this is Ah, one of our iconic protagonist, John
Wesley Powell, and this is him. In his younger years, he was probably up,
and we have some historians who can fact check me in the crowd. But he was
in his early mid thirties when he commenced his first survey through the
canyons of the Colorado River, which was effectively Terra incognito. Uh,
there was a conspicuous blank space on the maps of this region of northern
Arizona. And mind you, this is an era of the mid nineteenth century, when
the United States is newly discovering itself Just about a little bit more
than a decade earlier, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in
eighteen forty eight, which is sex was essentially ceded to this new
country, the United States. Large swaths of was formerly or what is now
Mexico. So you have a new country in the middle of the nineteenth century
, gaining self awareness, learning about its own territorial identity,
effectively seeking to rectify the ignorance it had about itself and
geographic knowledge. Of course, the most effective way of capturing and
encoding and packaging geographic knowledge is, of course, through maps.
And as I just mentioned, there was this conspicuous blank space this
unacceptable. Frankly, for the bureaucrats and the policy makers in
Washington, this unacceptable blank space that needed cartographic
rectification there needed to be a filling in of the geographic knowledge
that would be effectively manifest in the in the science and art of
cartography, those visual those powerful visual manifestations that we all
rely on. So I'm gonna cruise through because I'm not the star of this show.
Like I said earlier, we have assembled some true rock stars and giants.
But, um, I want to briefly just make a bold statement, and it's bold
because many people in here have perhaps height, rim to rim on multiple
occasions. I know at least one of our speakers, at least a few of our
speakers have been multiple river rafting trips through the entirety of
the Colorado River and seen portions and nooks and crannies of the Grand
Canyon that many of us can only I can only hope to see in the course of
our short lifetimes. But the bold statement I wish to make is that none of
us none of us truly knows the Grand Canyon. Even the most seasoned Kenyan
adventures those rafters and hikers those season canyon adventurers and
explorers throughout the course of our short lives can only hope to see a
small fragment a small, small fraction of the entirety of this vast space
that we now kind of matter of factly and almost take it for granted.
Conceive of as this unified regional space. So indeed it's It's the work
of maps the, abstraction, the heuristic, the mental heuristic that allows
us to take this huge space that if we were to deposit ourselves and many
of us have had the privilege of actually sitting on the rims or standing
on the rims are hiking down to the depths of the Grand Canyon
if we've had that privilege you’ll know that in relation to this giant
space, we're just mere specks, relatively insignificant specks. It's very
humiliate, humbling. It's it's definitely an acting and humility growing
very inspiring.
A very inspiring realization about our own roles in nature and the
universe and our own scale. And one thing that I want to emphasize with
maps is the role of scale, that very practical operational
character are characteristic of maps. The most of my library colleagues by
Wendell colleagues know intimately. So I just want to give a quick primer
on scale, and it's very big straightforward. When we report scale, we're
going to report it in ratios, representative fractions and the denominator.
The bottom part of that fraction, the larger that fraction gets, the
smaller the cartographic fix Kayla, meaning one unit on that map refers to
multiple more units on the real world. So when we're there when we're in
the depths of the Grand Canyon or at these arconic points like you, on a
point which many of us have probably visited or here visiting the
confluence a very sacred place for many of the native and made many of the
indigenous communities of the region,
it is really the work of maps that allow us to take these small fragments
of this huge space and help us through our feeble human minds make sense
of it through this through this literal grand scale. This is a two
thousand two and Landsat satellite image, multi spectral satellite image,
false color, multi spectral satellite image. And it's a fantastic image
that reflects really what we're looking at here. But again, without these
geographic and geospatial technologies, cartographic technologies, we
would not have the luxury of viewing this space holistically as we do so,
there's been a perpetual quest for better map, and I need a rush through
this very quickly. But we're going to hear throughout the course of the
next two days, we're going to hear a lot of hear a lot about some very
important characters in the chronology of Grand Canyon mapping. We're
gonna learn about some some certain maps. They're going to be repeated
throughout this program regularly. One of them. One of the most iconic
maps of the region is this July nineteen seventy eight production,
National Geographic map production called The Heart of the Grand Canyon,
and we have multiple experts who will tell you all about it. But I'm just
going to mention it briefly to highlight the fact that this map was sought
after the gentleman who lead the expedition for this topographic survey
started in effectively in the early nineteen seventies. Mind you, this is
a full century, a full one hundred years after that famous John Wesley
Powell, eighteen sixty nine, expiration in eighteen seventy one seventy
two explorations. But still, even a hundred years later, there was still a
quest for a better basement. There was still a desire to improve, to
refine our geographic understanding of it, because the best maps at the
time were those surveyed in 1902, 1903 by character
, you’ll hear a lot about as well Francoise, a mill mutt. And that map was
not significantly or materially improved until a full sixty years later,
when the USGS United States Geological Survey started integrating remote
sensing an aerial aerial photography methods. So
the point I want to make here is that although yes, we live in the in the
early twenty first century, inundated by living in a geospatial revolution
inundated with big geographic data, there's always still new knowledge to
be gained. There's always a better map to be pursued, and I totally missed
time. This, and the fact that I'm half conscious probably exacerbates it,
but I want to just highlight a couple important maps. Nick's gonna have to
indulge me. And hey, I put this together and when I told you myself, But I
want to highlight this very important antebellum this pre Civil War map
and highlight some key, uh, cartographic specimens, if you will. Of what?
What? The mapping landscape with the cartographic landscape, you will what
the State of geographic knowledge was during the time of John Wesley
Powell's, uh, exploration one hundred fifty years ago. This is a not so
well known map. It is the
eighteen. Excuse me. A map drawn in eighteen thirty five or eighteen
thirty six is actually not fully known when the map was drawn, but it's
about published in nineteen forty in a publication. So the actual
publication in which this map was included wasn't actually didn't go to
print until a full century later. But this map was shown in eighteen
thirty five eighteen thirty six. Bye, Warren Angus Ferris. And it is a map
of the Northwest for country to the north, west of the Rocky Mountains.
And it may be the very first depiction or explicit cartographic reference
to the Grand Canyon ever made. If we look here at the southern tip of this
map, we see here this text it says, quote Great Canyon of the Colorado and
mind you, this was an eighteen thirty five eighteen thirty six by our
modern cartographic sensibilities, it isn't the most sophisticated,
refined map of the Arab, but think about it in the early nineteenth
century. Still, before the middle of that century, the state of
territorial knowledge was really limited. So this map may indeed marked
the first explicit reference to the greater grant to the Grand Canyon ever
made and you hearing about another map as well, and I'll really go quickly
through this. This is Baron Frederick on a glove Stein's eighteen fifty
eight map of the Rio Colorado of the West, and it is a fantastic, a
fantastically gorgeous depiction. But as you can see, uh, it is a
significant act of artistic and cartographic licenses you could see here
in this big canyon of the Colorado. The course of the Colorado River
itself is not known. It's a pure act of speculation. If we were, if we
were to move, we were to proceed with this sense of geographic knowledge.
We would think that the Colorado River is a giant lake or has a giant lake
in the middle of it, so but nevertheless, this is a very innovative map.
In that egg love, Stein introduced some cartographic innovations,
especially with regard to the way he chose to depict three dimensional
topography through hill shading. So my point with this is that mapping, as
my colleague Paul said, is not merely a an act of scientific data
gathering, but it's also very much an artistic practice of decision making
and exercising creative energies to correctly and sometimes with
imagination, go about depicting and imagining geographic space. And I want
to quickly go through this because again we have experts who could talk
all about these things. But I do want to highlight one last bit and I'll
just go through this slide quickly, some of some more cartographic license
that was exercised in a map published in eighteen fifty eight again. The
course of the Colorado River is purely speculated, and you have some
interesting design work done to kind of illustrate the many sub canyons
and tributaries of the Colorado River.
Remarking Lieutenant Ives, eighteen fifty eight. Journey Overland. Journey
through the canyon lands. But I want to hide like this, my friends, as we
go as we go through these maps and we see multiple unexplored territories
. I want to highlight the fact that when John Wesley Powell set course
with nine men to map the Canyon of the Colorado River, too, the first time
collect information about the Canyon of the Colorado River, the maps that
he were that he was work that he was working with were completely
speculative and ill informed. Very unreliable data was used to populate
these maps and the map that John Wesley Powell likely used on his visit. I
learned from one of our speakers from reading the publications of one of
our speakers are renowned historian Richard Quarter Rowley is likely this
map, this eighteen fifty eight U. S. Government publication that sought to
omit any unreliable data so and an abundance of caution rather than lying
by commission, they chose to simply omit it. So we have this conspicuous
blank space, and that was part of the geographic ignorance that John
Wesley Powell sought to rectify through his intrepid mapping endeavors.
So as you can hear guys, friends, I'm really struggling. But it doesn't
matter. Uh, the the program we have lined up ten totally make up for how
I'm struggling here. But importantly, John Wesley Powell's eighteen
seventy five publication in Scribbler, Scribner's monthly magazine, was
the first map to effectively rectify to correctly depict the course of the
Colorado River. And that's important. Um, in eighteen seventy four before
US House Committee, he spoke, he wrote. Or he declared, The work has been
completed. You have on the wall one of the preliminary maps of the region.
It is but a tracing. The fields catches the computations for latitude,
longitude, and altitudes are not yet completed. Nor have the triangle's
been computed so that it is not a final map. But he proudly boasted,
there's now left within the territory of the United States. No great
unexplored region, and exploring expeditions are no longer needed for
general purposes.
I want to leave you with a final note and hopefully I'LL be feel be
feeling a little bit better tomorrow, and I can add some additional
context This but all of us here are standing, even myself. Humble
geographer dabbles in cartography. I appreciate the kind words of my
colleagues to celebrate my my my small contribution to the cartography,
the Grand Canyon. But in the presence of cartographic rock stars like Tom
Patterson, I'm a little embarrassed to get any accolades for my humble map
here. But we all stand on the scientific shoulders of giants people like
France, while mill mutt Eglow Stein and Joseph Christmas Ives the
gentleman, the lieutenant on whose expedition a glow. Stein was the
cartographer and illustrator and, of course, John Wesley Powell. And I'm
omitting dozens of other key visionaries luminaries, scientists, explorers
, intrepid people who bravely ventured into Terra Terra incognita too kind
of build our collective geographic knowledge that we all enjoy and take
for granted today. So the point I want to leave now as I transition to our
real speaker, who can who can help fix up the mess I've left behind is
that we all stand on the cartographic shoulders of Giants, and I think no
one knows that better than our next speaker, Tom Patterson and I
regrettably don't have with me. I came ill equipped and I should have a
long list of accolades, but I'm enough of a fanboy of Tom Patterson to
know that without question, he is one of those absolute cartographic
giants and rock stars. And in the humble world of cartography, it's nice
to be acknowledged as such because Tom Patterson is certainly over the
course of his decades long career has earned the title. Tom Patterson is a
recently retired cartographer for the National Park Service, and when I
speak proudly about high caliber presenters we have, it's some Patterson
whose name I probably bring up first when we all visit the Grand Canyon
and receive those fantastic visitor maps. It's Tom Patterson who likely
created those maps almost certainly, and he's going to talk a little bit.
And there's not one map of the Grand Canyon that Tom Patterson has
created. He's created dozens, and apart from his work at the National Park
Service, is senior cartography, recently retired senior senior
cartographer, making dozens of Matt products, not only for the Grand
Canyon, but for all of the national parks throughout the national park
system. He's also a generous contributor to the open source cartographic
community, which is critical. Tom Patterson is one of the lead designers
and kind of originators of a project called Natural Earth. It is one of
the best open source GPS data repositories for So for guys like me,
amateur dabblers in cartography who go looking for that raw cartographic
base data I depend on. Resource is like natural earth and the generosity
of the people who are not only skilled and talented, like Tom Patterson,
but are also generous and willing to share their knowledge to help young
people like myself and the students here in Asia and across the country
continue standing on the collective cartographic and scientific shoulders
of giants. I have eaten eaten far too much into this program into end into
Tom Patterson's time. But without further ado, let me introduce the
keynote for the first day of the Mapping Grand Canyon conference. Mr Tom
Patterson, please give a round of applause.