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