Park Planning

Field Hearing at Grand Canyon April, 2010. Photo courtesy Tom Martin

 

 Park Planning

Preserving a place like the Grand Canyon requires a lot of planning by staff of the National Park Service. When that planning runs afoul of commercial interests, special interest legislation changes the landscape at Grand Canyon. 

From promoting more overflights in the skies overhead to blocking Wilderness Designation to increase motorized commercial river tours in the Canyon's bottom, it's all here at Grand Canyon National Park. 

One retired National Park Service Superintendent called it "Vision Impaired." You can read all about that here: Canyon View Information Plaza Vision Impaired Manuscript by Brad Traver

Then there's Fire. The Great North Rim Fire of 2025, also called the Dragon Bravo Fire, has burned 145,500 acres, destroyed over 100 structures including the Historic North Rim Lodge, and fire fighting costs to contain the blaze have exceeded $100 million.  Gere's a copy of the Parks 2025 Fire Management Plan: Grand Canyon National Park 2025 Fire Management Plan

Remembering Art Greene's Tseh Na-ni-ah-go Atin'

 

Remembering Art Greene's Tseh Na-ni-ah-go Atin' 

The Esmeralda II wasn’t the only motorboat ascending Grand Canyon's Colorado River in 1949 and 1950. Having taken more than a year to construct and de-bug, a different new boat left Lees Ferry July 3, 1948, and headed upriver into Glen Canyon. The boat was called Tseh Na-ni-ah-go Atin’, a Navajo phrase that meant “trail to the rock that goes over.” 

 

Built by Phoenix boat builder Seth Smith, the twenty-foot-long steel hull had an unusual power plant: a 450-horsepower Pratt and Whitney Wasp Junior radial aircraft engine and aviation propeller. 

This airboat was the brainchild of Art Greene and fueled by his desire to run boat tours up the Colorado River to Forbidding Canyon where passengers could then walk six miles up a twisting sandstone canyon to Rainbow Bridge. The Atin’ attained a downstream cruising speed close to 50 miles per hour, making it the fastest watercraft ever on the river up to that time. 

 

For sheer novelty, the blue smoke and flames shooting out the exhaust on startup couldn’t be beat. The craft, however, proved deafeningly loud, challenging to steer, and it consumed up to 500 gallons of 100-octane fuel on each roundtrip. The excessive gasoline use required special fuel caching. 

 

The three-day trip cost $250 per person plus a pair of earplugs borrowed from pencil erasers. According to Greene, everyone who took the Atin’ ride became deaf for two days afterward despite the earplugs. Those who refused the earplugs were deaf for at least a week, if not forever. 

 

In all my years of searching for film of Art Greene's airboat, this short clip is all I have. This clip is from a film of a 1950 river trip through Glen Canyon. Art ran this craft from Lees Ferry to Forbidding Canyon. He'd park there and walk his passengers the 6 miles up to Rainbow Bridge and back. The film is from the Utah State Historical Archives. Someone out there has more film of this craft in action... If that's you, please let me know. Thank you. 

 

Cite Dock Marston: Grand Canyon's Colorado River Running Historian Vol 1 by Tom Martin. 

 

 

 

 

A Few Happenings at Diamond Creek Over the Last 155 Years

 

A Few Happenings at Diamond Creek Over the Last 155 Years 

 

Diamond Creek meets the Colorado River approximately 226 miles downstream of Lee’s Ferry in western Grand Canyon. Between Lee’s and Diamond Creek, there is no automobile access to the Colorado River. Downstream of Diamond Creek, there is no automobile access for another 53 miles. Indigenous peoples have used Diamond Creek, with it’s permanent flowing stream, as easy access to the Colorado River for many millennia. 

 

Here are a few images of Diamond Creek from Photo Volume 92, the Otis Reed Marston collection, The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. 

 

 

 

 

October 20, 1871

This drawing is of the Wheeler Party in a group at Diamond Creek. The party worked their boats up the Colorado River from Camp Mohave to Diamond. The group consisted of Mohave, excellent swimmers and boaters. The majority of the group then headed overland to Truxton Springs. A small crew turned the boats around and down-ran all the rapids and returned to Camp Mohave in 5 days.

 

 

 

January, 1912

On Friday, January 5, Ellsworth Kolb, his brother Emery, and Bert Lauzon packed their exposed and surplus film the twenty-five miles from the mouth of Diamond Creek out to Peach Springs. A woman at the Santa Fe Railroad water pumping station fed the tired and hungry trio, and John Nelson provided them with beds for the night. On Sunday, with telegrams sent, film shipped, and provisions bought, John Nelson and his brother William took them in a wagon halfway to the river. With Will astride one horse and the dunnage packed on the other, they reached camp about dark. Ellsworth’s feet were swollen from the walk. The Nelson brothers watched them run Diamond Creek Rapid and returned to Peach Springs. Photo of John and Bill Nelson visit with the Kolb brothers boats at Diamond Creek, January 8, 1912.

 

 

 

February 20, 1924

A proposed dam at the mouth of Diamond Creek was to be served by a 23 mile long railroad starting at the Santa Fe mainline in Peach Springs, Arizona. A tramway would supply equipment to the damsite from the rail terminus. The dam was never built.

 

 

 

January 1, 1929

The pain of loss is clearly etched on the face of Rolland Hyde at the mouth of Diamond Creek. He’s searching for his son and daughter in-law, Glen and Bessie. On December 30, Hyde and Deputy John L. Nelson, of Peach Springs, came to the mouth of Diamond Creek, and then climbed upriver along the rocky left bank. Hyde theorized they might not have reached Diamond Creek. 

 

 

 

January 1, 1929

Hyde and Nelson met Bob Francy and John Harbin when they rowed in having boated all the way from Bright Angel. Francy and Harbin were “about done up.” One remarked he would not make the 138-mile trip again for $5,000. The boat, named BRIGHT ANGEL, had been abandoned at the mouth of Bright Angel Creek just weeks earlier by the Pathe Bray film crew. 

 

 

 

November 20, 1937

The first time on record that two river trips met in the Grand Canyon was at Diamond Creek on November 20, 1937. Buz Holmstrom in his boat JULIUS is on the right. The boat on the left is part of the 1937 Cal Tech geology river trip. It’s possible Frank Dodge is on the oars of the boat on the left.

Spices in the Stew of History

In April of 2000, Grand Canyon National Park Museum Collection Archivist Kim Beson let me tag along and participate in two oral histories she was doing. The first was with 1940s and 50s river runner Susie Reilly. The second was with two gents who in 1956 were flying helicopters out of Luke Air Force Base. They were first on the ground at the TWA-United wreckage near Temple and Chuar Buttes. The stories I heard that day got me hooked on oral histories. 

Kim was instrumental in this. She gave me an hour-long training including the loan of a digital recorder and a stack of release forms. Those forms are the key to my efforts. That was 25 years ago. Since then, I’ve participated in more than 660 interviews of over 200 people resulting in 330 transcripts. None of these interviews are mine because they all are in the public domain. 

The scope of my study has been the greater Grand Canyon region. Here’s a tip-of-the-iceberg look at the breadth and depth of the oral histories it has been an honor to participate in. 

To the west, Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom talked about growing up in Boulder City. He was on the 1963 low water Sport Yak trip from Lees Ferry to Bright Angel. To this day, he regrets hiking out with his sister and father. Bill and Buzzy Belknap along with Dock Marston and Mac Miller kept going all the way to the reservoir slack water called Lake Mead. Buzzy had a good friend named Jimmy Jordan Jr. Before he passed away, Jimmy told me stories of his father, Jimmy Sr., boating Grand Canyon in 1951 and about how he happened to light Rampart Cave’s sloth dung deposit on fire in 1976. 

To the south, Jannie Turner spoke about growing up in Flagstaff and Sedona in the 1950s. Her grandmother was the first woman on record to fly over the Grand Canyon in the 1920s. Guy Williams also grew up in Flagstaff. He volunteered with Gene Foster on a Glen Canyon salvage archeology river trip she put together in 1959. 

To the east, Harry Thompson at Green River, Utah, talked about winning the Canyon Country Marathon in 1961 and ‘62. Yeah, I know, that’s way up basin. Gail Nelson recounted working at the White Canyon Uranium Concentration Mill in 1951 next to the Hite Ferry. Gus Scott and Keturah Pennington recounted running Glen Canyon multiple times in the 1950s and early 1960s before Glen Canyon Dam drowned Glen Canyon. Alice Talakte talked about growing up near Page on the Navajo Reservation in the 1940s and ‘50s before Page was built. 

To the north, Bonnie Bundy recounted working with her father Chet to supply river runners with food and gas at the mouth of Whitmore Wash in the 1950s. Pipe Springs Interpretive Ranger Allen Malmquist recounted his pet coyote named Rusty, building the Whitmore airstrip, and starting the horse drag-out of river running passengers at the Whitmore Trail in the 1960s. Allen and Sam Wolfskill had John Riffey stories. Sam recounted working on the North Kaibab for the US Forest Service, also in the 1960s. Mike and Muriel Kanan recounted working at the North Rim Lodge in the 1950s. They sang the “Sing Away” song for me. Ironworkers Mike Charley and Dennis Endischee recounted building the second Navajo Bridge in 1994. 

 Photo of Rusty the coyote courtesy Allen Malmquist.

Bruce Wilson took me the farthest back in time to running the Colorado River in 1942 with his father Neill, Otis Marston (nicknamed Doc on that trip), and Norm Nevills. Bruce was 12 years old when the trip launched at Lees and had his thirteenth birthday party at Phantom Ranch. Just a few years ago, Peter Brown and I recorded a series of interviews on a river trip through the Grand Canyon when Pete paddled a tule reed raft the length of the Canyon. 

In the center there were people like Mary Hoover. Mary came to the South Rim in 1946. She was the election manager and recalled a lot of the locals from the ‘40s and ‘50s. Jim Haggart recounted his solo hike from Fredonia to the South Rim in 1973. Dick Hingson recounted decades of work on the overflights issue and Carl Bowman recounted decades of work on monitoring air quality. 

And what have I learned? People’s recollections, including my own, can be wrong! I have come to think of oral histories as the spice in the stew of history. We can't live on spices alone, but we can live on stew without spices. Keep that in mind and please don't use oral histories as your sole source for historical understanding. That said, I’ve discovered making oral histories is easy, educational, and a whole lot of fun! 

You can find a complete archive of my oral histories at https://grandcanyonazus.com/oral-histories.html

Indiginous Peoples In Grand Canyon

Indigenous Peoples have been in Grand Canyon for many millenia. Here's a pictorial reminder that not only have indigenous peoples been living on the Grand Canyon landscape for thousands of years, but they continue to live here and have been an important presence and workforce in Grand Canyon National park.

#10148: Havasupai basket maker, circa 1900.

#15927: Navajo gentleman, possibly named Manitajah, circa 1900.

#09936: Native artists demonstrating at the Hopi House, circa 1910.

#08307: Portrait of Fred Kabotie, Hopi artist, circa 1932.

#00733: Fred Harvey Hopi employees near Hopi House hogan, 1932.

#05424a: Hopis at the Desert View Watchtower dedication ceremony, May 1933.

#07079: Navajo silversmith demonstrating at the Hopi House, circa 1940.

#00982: Havasupai Tribal Council meeting on the South Rim: L to R: Jim Crook, Council member; GRCA Superintendent Bryant; Tom Dodge, Truxton Canyon Indian Agency; Lemuel Paya, Tribal Council Chairman; Reed Watahomagie, Secretary and interpreter; Dudley Manankach, Supai Tribe Chief; William Zeh, Regional Director of Indian Services; Big Jim, Council member; GRCA Assistant Superintendent Garrison; Foster Marshall, Council member. Circa 1947.

#01911: Hopi Eagle Dance being performed at the Hopi House, circa 1949.

#04578a: Retirement ceremony for Elmer Watahomigie, after 30 years of government service, February 1964.

#11010: Navajo weaver, Jean Mann, at the Visitor Center, circa 1979.
Thanks to Kim Besom for assistance with this post.

The Amazing 1914 River Trip of J. H. Hummel

 

 

Of note during the pioneering days of river running is the run from Green River, Utah, by 33-year-old J. H. Hummel, whose quest was “for nothing but adventure.”

Late in August of 1914 on the river’s bank at Green River, Utah, Hummel and David Miller built a pair of flat-bottomed, fourteen-foot-long, less than four-foot-wide boats. Each was pointed on one end but flat-sterned. Canvas covered the otherwise open top of each boat except for the rower’s position. 

 

Oddly, at the junction of the Green and the Grand rivers Miller’s boat caught fire and burned beyond repair. Miller quit the river and hiked overland to Moab, Utah. 

 

Hummel carried on solo, navigating Cataract, Glen Canyon and upper Grand Canyon, trapping fur-bearing mammals as he went. A month later, in late September, he rowed to shore at the mouth of Pipe Creek at Mile 89, as gawking tourists stared in surprise. 

 

On stepping out of his boat, Hummel asked them, “Where am I?” A mule guide informed him he was at the foot of the Bright Angel Trail. Hummel exclaimed, “Bright Angel, Thank the Lord!” He tied up his boat and hiked to the rim. Upon visiting Emery Kolb, he bequeathed Kolb his boat then walked off, vanishing into the mists of time.

 

Excerpt from "Dock Marston: Grand Canyon's Colorado River Running Historian, Vol 1, by Tom Martin. Photo courtesy The Huntington is of the Stone Party above Boucher Canyon, November 6, 1909.

 

 

Errata

 

Errata.... an error in printing or writing. A list of corrected errors appended to a book or published in a subsequent issue of a journal... Why? Because I do get things wrong and can correct that with an errata update.

2025 March 8 

In the Historic Boats 16 video film series, Chapter 12 (the twelfth video) on the jetboats, I was incorrect to state the boats proposing in the water loosened the decks from the hulls though that did hurt Dock's ribs. Both the Wee Red and Wee Yellow were repeatedly wrecked hitting rocks along the shore at high rates of speed. George Morrison, representing the Turbocraft Corporation, ordered both boats be scuttled. The rest of the crew refused and kept patching them up. You'll notice the DOCK has no such fiberglass holding the deck to the hull. All credit for that goes to Buzzy Belknap's excellent piloting of the DOCK. 

    

A 1967 Walk-away Emergency Landing in the Bottom of the Grand Canyon

 

Wayne Learn flying to the rescue, 1967. Photo courtesy Louis Hudgin

I do oral histories with people who worked or hiked or boated or flew in the Grand Canyon. This is an interesting story so go get some coffee and settle in...

Fifteen years ago, the Grand Canyon High School Coach Dan Lopez had told me that one of the Hudgin Air Service/Grand Canyon Airlines sightseeing planes had made a dead-stick landing on a large sandbar in Grand Canyon. Dan said he helped a pilot named Wayne Learn take that plane apart and Wayne flew the pieces out by helicopter.

During an interview last year with retired Park Engineer Dan Cockrum, he recounted the 1966 construction of the Silver Bridge near Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Dan mentioned taking many flights in and out of the Canyon by helicopter. The pilot was Wayne Learn. Learn and Bob Thurston started helicopter tours at Tusayan, Arizona, in April of 1966, forming Tusayan Helicopter Service, INC. Wayne used a Hiller OH-5A for this operation.

After interviewing Cockrum, I interviewed Ellen Hudgin and her sons Doug and Louis. This story tumbled out and it all came together. 

Ellen’s husband Henry flew several thousand tours in the Grand Canyon with his older brothers Al and Palen. In 1950 they started flying early high wing PIPERs over the canyon from the Red Butte Grand Canyon Airport. When PIPER introduced the low wing Apache and Commanche in the mid 1950's they discovered that the view was much better when flown below the rim and looking up. Another benefit with the low wing was in a turn the wing moved out of sight whereas in a high wing your view was blocked in a turn. They continued to fly low wing tours after moving their operation to the present day Grand Canyon Airport when it opened in the mid-1960s. Two decades later after a midair collision in the Canyon, the FAA required all tours be flown above the canyon rim.

In the late 1950’s, Al introduced a Turbo Charged Bell 47 Helicopter to the flightline and did tours with the helicopter while Henry, Palen and other pilots flew Pipers and a De Havilland Dove during the busy summer season. Tragically, Al died in that helicopter on the San Francisco Peaks on July 11, 1961, but that’s another story. 

On July 11, 1967, Henry’s flying day started in Nogales, AZ, after the funeral for his mother. He’d loaded his wife Ellen and their children into a Piper PA-32-300 Cherokee 6 and flew north across the state of Arizona to the new Grand Canyon Airport at Tusayan. On arriving back at the Canyon, Henry got right to work flying that afternoon’s tours in the same Cherokee 6.

Later in the afternoon he flew a sightseeing tour over the east end of the Park. The tour proceeded as normal up to about Hance Rapids when the diaphragm that controls the fuel/air mixture in the fuel injection failed. At that point the engine was still running but had lost most of its power and was surging badly out of control. With the loss of power, the airplane began to lose altitude with no hope of regaining it back. Running out of altitude and options, Henry knew of a sand bar past the confluence of the Big and Little Colorado Rivers by Kwagunt Rapids. It was perfect for an emergency landing and Henry nursed the airplane there. He arrived with little altitude to spare. Without missing a beat, as he continued to lose altitude, he calmly told his passengers to make sure their seat belts were securely fastened. His passengers thought nothing of it. This was, after all, a tour flight and they assumed they were landing along the river as part of the tour. 

 When Henry touched down on the soft sand and gravel bar, the main landing gear collapsed, quickly followed by the nose gear. He slid the plane to a stop and asked everyone to get out of the plane. It was baking hot in the bottom of the Canyon but at least the plane was not on fire. The plane’s radio worked, and Henry started making a mayday call. 

The Cherokee on the ground 1967 courtesy Louis Hudgin

 

 

The Cherokee on the ground 1967 courtesy Louis Hudgin

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Hudgin tour plane heard the call, and on returning to the Airport, got word to Wayne Learn that a helicopter rescue was needed. Wayne flew his Hiller into the Canyon, landed nearby, loaded everyone up and flew them out of the Canyon. With approval from the National Park Service, Wayne flew back a few weeks later, took the plane apart with Dan Lopez, and flew the pieces out.

 

Flash forward to January 2025. I’m on a 30-day river trip in the Grand Canyon. I have a few pictures Louis Hudgin let me copy. Those pictures were taken that afternoon in 1967. And I’m at Kwagunt in the morning and the shadows are all wrong! Regardless, the rematch was a lot of fun. The area where the plane landed was scoured by the Colorado River during the highwater of 1983. That may be why I found nothing of the damaged airplane and disassembly. Still, everything lined up and we were at the location where Henry and his passengers walked away from an emergency landing in the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Rematch photo January 2025 courtesy Tom Martin

 

Rematch photo January 2025 courtesy Tom Martin

 

 

 

 

Thanks to technical advisor Louis Hudgin, his brother Doug, their mother Ellen, NPS Park Engineer Dan Cockrum, and Coach Dan Lopez.