Journey into the Great Unknown - The Exploration of the Colorado River October 9, 2007

The Bakersfield Adult School Open Forum Travel Series presents this film narrated by Gary Warriner.

Free Admission .
Also presented at 7:30pm

"Exploring the Colorado River--Journey Into the Great Unknown," Filmed and Narrated by Gray Warriner.

The Colorado River remains steeped in mystery and lore. In 1869 the deep, desolate canyons of the Colorado and the Green Rivers remained unexplored...the last blank spot on the map of the United States.

Major John Wesley Powell lost his right arm in the Civil War, but his driving curiosity pushed him beyond any disability. Four wooden boats would carry Powell and nine men on the last great expedition of discovery in the United States. Hungry for knowledge, Powell would repeat the epic feat two years later. On the 1871 trip he brought a camera and recorded incredible images of the wild river of the west.

Today, the Green and Colorado Rivers still flow through some of the most isolated and least known landscapes in the nation. Our modern river journey follows in Powell's wake. We stop where he stopped and go back and forth through time; seamlessly matching his 1871 photographs with live action film images of today. With re-enactments and replica Whitehall boats of Powell's journeys, we travel along with Powell and see the river as he saw it... riding huge waves in small wooden boats.

Setting the stage, we explore the most remote reaches of the Green River, its origins in the high alpine country of Wyoming's Wild River range. We go back in time to 1869 and the newly laid tracks of the trans-continental railroad as it spanned the river at Green River, Wyoming Territory. Like Powell, we board the boats at Green River for the river trip of a lifetime.

This is no ordinary travelogue. Three years in the making, it is shot in film, digitally mastered, and projected in unmatched High Definition Television for unmatched beauty and resolution. The colors are vibrant like the Southwest and are brought to life with the award-winning cinematography of Gray Warriner.