Cruise Control; The History of Western River Allocations
In September of 1947, NPS Director Newton Drury instructed his Regional offices to keep the “venturesome” off Park rivers while allowing commercial river undertakings. An attempt to give a river running concession to Norm Nevills at Grand Canyon National Park failed in 1949 when Nevills died in a plane crash.
During this time, river running was becoming very popular, and in 1949 included the First Through Royal Gorge (today’s FIBARK) Race and the Wind River Races.
In 1952, Dinosaur National Monument gave a river running concession to Bus Hatch, a Vernal, Utah, building contractor. The concession was revoked soon after when Hatch failed to secure the necessary insurance.
Both service units allowed the commercial river operators to use Special Use Permits and by 1956 Grand Canyon and Dinosaur had River Permit Regulations in place. These regulations allowed for unlimited commercial river trips while turning away any do-it-yourself permit applicants if they had no prior river experience on the permitted river section.
Enforcement of the new permit regulations combined with controlled river flows from Flaming Gorge and Glen Canyon dams allowed commercial river use to skyrocket from 1965 to 1970 while do-it-yourself river running was held in check.
This explosion in commercial use required further actions by the NPS to manage river travel. The Park Service created river running concessions in the early 1970s as a way to stop commercial growth and the first ever River Management Plans for both service units were completed in 1979. None of the 1950s river management actions were mentioned in either of the 1979 planning documents.
This history of excluding one use group while benefiting another must be acknowledged in all future allocation considerations.
You can see a short film I put together about this on YouTube.
