author
Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh
1853–1935
An artist-explorer who helped map the Grand Canyon, he brought the early American West to life through sketches, paintings, and vivid firsthand writing. His adventures with John Wesley Powell and later journeys in Alaska gave him a rare front-row view of some of the country’s most dramatic landscapes.
4 Audiobooks
The Romance of the Colorado River : The Story of its Discovery in 1840, with an Account of the Later Explorations, and with Special Reference to the Voyages of Powell through the Line of the Great Canyons
by Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh
A Canyon Voyage : The Narrative of the Second Powell Expedition down the Green-Colorado River from Wyoming, and the Explorations on Land, in the Years 1871 and 1872
by Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh
Breaking the Wilderness : The Story of the Conquest of the Far West, From the Wanderings of Cabeza de Vaca, to the First Descent of the Colorado by Powell, and the Completion of the Union Pacific Railway, With Particular Account of the Exploits of Trappers and Traders
by Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh
About the author
Born in Ohio in 1853, Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh became an American explorer, artist, and writer with a lasting connection to the Colorado River country. As a young man, he joined John Wesley Powell’s second Colorado River expedition from 1871 to 1873 as the expedition’s artist and an assistant topographer.
That journey made him part of one of the great exploring efforts of the American West. Sources from the New York Public Library and the University of Arizona note that he helped prepare the first map of the Grand Canyon, and he later became an important historian of both the expedition and the river itself.
Dellenbaugh continued to build a life around art, travel, and Western history. He later joined the Harriman Alaska Expedition as an artist and wrote books that helped preserve the story of exploration in the West. He died in 1935, remembered as the last surviving member of Powell’s 1871–1873 expedition.