Country Never Trod

Country Never Yet Trod: William Lewis Manly’s Voyage Down the Green River, traces Manly’s little-known descent of the Green River, twenty years before John Wesley Powell’s famous first expedition, followed by his overland trek through some of the most desolate stretches of Utah. Previous scholarship has Manly floating only 292 miles to the Uinta Basin, but as he researched, Kane became convinced Manley went 150 miles further, all the way to what is now Green River, Utah. To prove it, he did all the primary research he could, and then he built his own wooden canoes and made the trip himself, tracing Manly’s footsteps and comparing notes with the earlier traveler. This book lays out Manly’s story, interspersed with Kane’s journal entries and photographs documenting his own trip.