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I was born in Mount Morris, New York, the son of Joseph and Mary Powell. My father, a poor intinerant preacher, had emigrated to the US from Shrewsbury, England in 1830. My family moved westward to Chillicothe, Ohio, then Walworth County, Wisconsin, then finally settling in Illinois in rural Boone County. I studied at Illinois College, Wheaton College, and Oberlin College, acquiring a knowledge of Ancient Greek and Latin but never graduating. I had a deep interest in the natural sciences, with a restless nature. As a young man, I undertook a series of adventures through the Mississippi River valley. In 1855 I spent four months walking across Wisconsin. In 1856 I rowed the Mississippi from St. Anthony to the sea, in 1857 I rowed down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to St. Louis, and in 1858 down the Illinois River, then up the Mississippi and the Des Moines River to central Iowa. I was elected to the Illinois Natural History Society in 1859.
During the Civil War, I enlisted in the Union Army, serving first with the 20th Illinois Volunteers. At the Battle of Shiloh, I lost most of one arm by a steel ball. The raw nerve endings in my arm would continue to cause me pain the rest of my life. Despite the loss of an arm, I returned to the army and was present at Champion Hill and Black River Bridge. Further medical attention to my arm did little to slow me; I was made a major and served as chief of artillery with the 17th Army Corps. In 1862 I married Emma Dean.
After leaving the Army I took the post of professor of geology at the Illinois Wesleyan University. I also lectured at Illinois Normal University, helping found the Illinois Museum of Natural History, where I served as the curator, but declined a permanent appointment in favor of exploration of the American West.
From 1867 I led a series of expeditions into the Rocky Mountains and around the Green and Colorado rivers. In 1869 I set out to explore the Colorado and the Grand Canyon. I gathered nine men, four boats and food for ten months and set out from Green River, Wyoming on May 24. Passing through dangerous rapids, our group passed down the Green River to its confluence with the Colorado River (then also known as the Grand River upriver from the junction), near present-day Moab, Utah. One man quit after the first month and another three in the third, only days before our group reached the mouth of the Virgin River on August 30, after traversing almost 1,500 km. The three who left the group late in the trip were later killed; exactly how and why they died remains a mystery debated by my biographers (although there is an interesting theory proposed by Jon Krakauer in his book " Under the Banner of Heaven "). I retraced the route in 1871 with another expedition, producing an accurate map and various papers.
In 1881 I became the second director of the US Geological Survey, a post I held until 1894. I was also the director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution until my death. In 1895 I published a book based on my explorations of the Colorado originally titled Canyons of the Colorado, now known as "The exploration of the Colorado River and its canyons". I was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Taken from Wikipedia entry for John Wesley Powell .

Some excellent references:
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian by Wallace Stegner
The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons
A River Running West by Donald Worster
A Canyon Voyage: The narrative of the second Powell expedition by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
Powell of the Colorado by William Culp Darrah
Selected Prose of John Wesley Powell edited by George Crossette
Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada by Clarence King
The Explorer King by Robert Wilson
Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West by Joni Louise Kinsey
The American West as Living Space by Wallace Stegner

If you get a chance, visit: John Wesley Powell Memorial Museum

Note: This site maintained by ChrisJX .

More links about Powell:

Grand Canyon National Park Museum Collection

Grand Canyon National Park Museum Photos