May Colorado River History Dates

 

Evie Mull in Grand Canyon, May, 1952 photo courtesy The Huntington Library

May Colorado River History Dates

May 1, 1948 – The Esmeralda II, the first inboard motorboat to run all the way down the Colorado River in Grand Canyon and designed to uprun the Grand, is launched in Morro Bay, California, for trial runs. Twelve years later to the day, the first jet boats are launched at Lees Ferry, Arizona, for a downrun and uprun attempt. The jets succeed later that summer.

May 2, 1918 – After his photography work on the 1909 Julius Stone river trip from Green River, Wyoming, to Needles, California, Raymond Cogswell attends Case School of Applied Science and graduates on this date with a degree in Chemical Engineering at the age of 36.

May 3, 1938 – Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Minor Tillotson writes to Norm Nevills that the Secretary of Interior had been notified by Tillotson of a need to implement a permit system for river runners, but the Secretary “was loath to put it into effect because of the practical difficulties in enforcing it.” Tillotson notes that “because of the dangers involved, especially to inexperienced boatman and adventure seekers, we naturally do all in our power to discourage such trips. Although I have some knowledge as to your experience as a boatman, and in handling such parties, I still wish to go on record as very strongly urging against your proposal.”

May 4, 1889 – In an amazing feat of surveying and boating skill, Frank C. Kendrick, T. P. Rigney, and Messers Knox, Cost, and Brock, bring a level line survey from Grand Junction, Colorado, to the Confluence of the Grand and Green Rivers. They immediately begin traveling up the Green River in their oar powered boat, arriving at Green River, Utah, Eleven days later.

May 5, 1957 – Frank “Fisheyes” Masland hosts a weekend gathering of river runners at his Kings Gap estate in Pennsylvania. Attendees include kayaker Alexander “Zee” Grant, his wife Margaret, artist Mary Abbott, NPS Interp Chief John Doerr and his wife Nancy, Powell Biographer William Culp Darrah and his wife Helen, Robert Stanton’s daughter Ann, river runners Evie and John Mull, and Margaret and Otis “Dock” Marston.

May 6, 1942 – Harry Aleson and Doyle Parham uprun the Colorado River in Grand Canyon to 220 Mile in Harry’s outboard motorboat Up Colorado, setting a new uprun record.

May 7, 1956 – Grand Canyon National Park Acting Chief Ranger Peter H. Schuft mails letters to river runners with directions on how to apply for a Grand Canyon boating permit. The application had to be filled out in duplicate and “returned to this office as soon as possible.” On receiving the necessary applications and meeting the Park’s “minimum safety requirements in equipment and experience,” a separate permit “will be forwarded to you.”

May 8, 1957 – The body of Hite Ferry operator Reed Maxfield is recovered from the Colorado River at the Glen Canyon Damsite. It is surmised he slipped off the ferry and drowned. He did not know how to swim.

May 9, 1955 – 750 workers at the Evinrude outboard motor factory in Michigan go back to work after a month-long strike.

May 10, 1909 – Frances Johnson Holmstrom gives birth to Haldane “Buzz” Holmstrom. The newborn’s father is Charles Magnus Holmstrom.

May 11, 1949 – Margaret and Otis “Dock” Marston visit with Bert Loper and discuss boats. When discussing the Nevills boats, Loper acknowledges their “success but that does not mean I must like them.”

May 12, 1942 – Norm Nevills completes a run of the San Juan River. Advertising Agent Neill Wilson is on that river trip and agrees to help promote Nevills river trips for a 50% discount in the fare for a river run through Grand Canyon later that year.

May 13, 1954 – The Vernal Express runs a story on Dinosaur National Monument installing permanent campsites along the Yampa River.

May 14, 1948 – The first documented river trip to run the Dolores River launches at Dolores, Colorado. Trip members include Becky and Preston Walker and Margaret and Otis “Dock” Marston.

May 15, 1939 – Haldane “Buzz” Holmstrom almost drowns in an uprun attempt of the Snake River in Hells Canyon. Earl G. Hamilton pulls the drowning man out of the river.

May 16, 1955 - Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Preston Patraw writes Harvey Butchart that an air mattress is not safe or appropriate float equipment.

May 17, 1959 – The Boston Globe runs an article on a new type of watercraft titled “Jet Age Here in Boating.”

May 18, 1955 – Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Preston Patraw writes A. M. Hopwood of Bisbee, Arizona that under no circumstances will he approve Hopwood’s request to run the Colorado Rive in a wingless seaplane.

May 19, 1942 - Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Harold Bryant writes the Director of the Park Service that it is “becoming more and more evident that the trip down the river is one of the most outstanding and thrilling trips in America.”

May 20, 1948 – The first documented river trip to run the Dolores passes the confluence with the Rio San Miguel then spots what remains of a hanging flume pinned to a sheer sandstone cliff face 100 feet overhead. The flume had been constructed in the 1880s as part of a placer mining operation.

May 21, 1949 - Psychoanalyst Thad Ames predicts that the success of Hudson’s motor cruise through Grand Canyon will bring about Nevills’ death and it was probable that he would use his plane to do so. On September 19, 1949, Nevills and his wife were killed when their light plane crashed into a cliff.

May 22, 1871 – The second river trip led by John Wesley Powell departed Green River, Wyoming.

May 23, 1913 – Ellsworth Kolb leaves Needles, California, in a small boat headed to the Sea of Cortez, intending to complete the fourth recorded voyage from Green River, Wyoming, to the Sea.

May 24, 1869 – Major John Wesley Powell and others boat away from Green River, Wyoming. Many of the crew are bleary-eyed and snarly haired from the bad whiskey consumed the previous few nights to celebrate the men’s farewell from their friends.

May 25, 1889 – A group of river runners led by Frank Mason Brown departs Green River, Utah, intending to survey a railroad line from the Confluence of the Green and Grand rivers to the Sea of Cortez.

May 26, 1959 - Five members of the Underwater Demolition Team #11, Naval Amphibious Base out of Coronado, California, were intercepted at Phantom Ranch and sent hiking up the trail to the Rim as they lacked a permit to run the river.

May 27, 1952 – The first motorized commercial river trip to run the Colorado River in Grand Canyon leaves Lees Ferry. Evie Mull, the only female on the trip, becomes the first woman to run Lava Falls in a motorboat.

May 28, 1970 – Preston Walker, participant in the first documented run of the Dolores River in 1948, dies on the Dolores River of a heart attack.

May 29, 1959 – Bill Cooper launches two 18-foot-long motorboats in Lake Mead in an uprun attempt. They are powered by twin 70 HP Mercury outboards. One boat flips in Lava Falls and Cooper retreats.

May 30, 1941 – Claude Hale Birdseye, leader of the 1923 USGS river trip through Grand Canyon, dies at the age of 63.

May 31, 1948 - Earl “Bub” Williams used a plywood sheet attached to inner tubes to win the Wind River Boat Race and the First Place prize of $1,000. Roughly 8,000 people jamming the two-lane road along the river with 2,000 automobiles watch him do it.

Ps... Yes, this post is a challenge to see if I can find a Colorado River Basin fact for every day of January... Done! If you like this sort of stuff you might enjoy reading Dock Marston: Grand Canyon’s Colorado River Running Historian Volume 1 available at Vishnu Temple Press. The four-part Kindle version of the same book is available here.

Canyon History Tidbits

Here's where you'll find a lot of information about the human History of the greater Grand Canyon. For South Rim and River History, you'll want to got to those tabs.

Indiginous Peoples In Grand Canyon
A Pictorial Reminder That Indigenous Peoples have been in Grand Canyon for many millenia.

Batchit Arizona: The Rise and Fall: This post is about a western Grand Canyon guano mine, tramway, and mining camp.  

Two Reviews of False Architect: The Mary Colter Hoax by Fred Shaw

April Colorado River History Dates

 

Airing up the Hatch rubber bridge pontoon at Marble Canyon, April 24, 1954

April Colorado River History Dates

April 1, 1952 – Thomas Delbert “Del” Reed died of a heart attack in Bluff, Utah, and he is buried there. Del rowed a boat on the Clover Expedition of 1938, and again for Norm Nevills in 1940. He and Norm became the sixth and seventh to make a second traverse of Grand Canyon and the first to make two traverses together. Rowing for Norm again in 1941, Del and Norm became the first to make three traverses of the Marble and Grand canyons and were also the first people to make three trips through the Grand Canyon together.

April 2, 1917 - In a letter to Bob Stanton, Julius Stone writes “It is not only unbelievable, but physically impossible that White should have made the trip from above the head of the Colorado to Old Callville on a raft in fourteen days when it took us over a month with the best possible equipment plus a very considerable experience. It beats all how difficult it is to kill a lie after it has been repeated a sufficient number of times.”

April 3, 1949 – The second annual Wind River Boat Race near Thermopolis, Wyoming, is announced in the Billings Gazette. There is a $1,000 First Place cash prize.

April 4, 1956 – Otis “Dock” Marston and Jimmy Jordan spoke by phone to sort out the complexities of arranging 8 outboard motors for Dock’s 1956 Grand Canyon cruise.

April 5, 1955 – Bill Beer and John Daggett wade into the Colorado River at Lees Ferry. Surfers from California, the two plan on floating the river through Grand Canyon sitting on straps suspended between waterproof gear bags.

April 6, 1950 – Three University of Arizona students launch a 12-foot-long decked metal dory named Deacon’s Dilemma at the Paria beach sans permit. The boat is built and piloted by Dave Jensen. Seven days later they arrive at Boat Beach below the Kaibab Suspension Bridge in great shape. Grand Canyon Superintendent Harold Bryant is not impressed.

April 7, 1960 – Harry Aleson visited with Dock Marston in Berkeley, California. The two men went over what Harry remembered about the loss of Bert Loper in 1949. Harry tells Dock that just before Bert and Wayne Nichol capsized, Nichol shouted “Row! For God’s sake, Row!”

April 8, 1947 – Disney director and producer Erwin Verity invited Dock Marston to bring his river films to the Los Angeles studios for a showing, starting a long friendship between Walt Disney and Marston. 

April 9, 1908 – Norm Nevills is born in Oakland, California, to Mae Davies and William Eugene Nevills.

April 10, 1948 – Ed Hudson writes to Dock Marston that 50 gallons of gasoline is headed to the mouth of Diamond Creek and another 50 gallons to the mouth of Havasu Canyon. The fuel is for an uprun attempt of the Colorado River in Hudson’s boat Esmeralda II.

April 11, 1956 -- President Eisenhower took a brief time-out during a round of golf at Augusta to sign the $760 million Colorado River Storage Act. Dams in Dinosaur National Monument were no longer in the bill.

April 12, 1928 – Bessie Haley Married Glen Hyde in Twin Falls, Idaho.

April 13, 1953 -- A Canadian and a German wrote Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Harold Bryant asking for a river permit, intending to take Klepper folding kayaks through Grand Canyon. Even though the two had impressive river skills, Superintendent Bryant denied their request. Dock Marston thought Bryant’s denial pointless, certain “there was no one who knew how to run the Canyon well enough to justify a government recommendation.”

April 14, 1948 – In response to a memo from National Park Service Regional Director Minor Tillotson, Big Bend Superintendent Ross Maxwell wrote to National Park Service Associate Director Demaray that he “attempted to scare everyone off that I could from taking a boat on any kind of a trip within Big Bend National Park.”

April 15, 1915 – Emery Kolb gives his first lecture while showing film footage of river running at the Kolb Studio on the Rim of Grand Canyon. Protected by contract with the NPS, no one else could show a similar film at the South Rim till after Kolb died in 1976.

April 16, 1958 -- Gaylord Staveley didn’t help his reputation when he applied for an exclusive franchise to operate boat tours through Grand Canyon with both oars and power. The Park Service did not go along with the request, nor did the river community when they heard about it.

April 17, 1959 – Walt Disney film producer Jim Algar writes Dock Marston he has decided to have two Whitehall replicas built from scratch for the filming of the movie Ten Who Dared.

April 18, 1906 – A massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake devastates and burns San Francisco, killing an estimated 3,000 people. In Berkeley, 12-year-old Otis Marston views the terrifying spectacle of the famous city across the Bay enveloped by sheets of flame and billowing clouds of evil-hued smoke.

April 19, 1955 – Grand Canyon Superintendent Patraw had a face-to-face meeting with the swimmers Beer and Daggett. He notes he “advised them to discontinue the trip.” Beer and Daggett “insisted they were going to continue.” In his consideration to let the two men return to the river, Patraw noted that Daggett just happened to be a first cousin of Daggett Harvey, president of the Fred Harvey Company that managed the El Tovar and Bright Angel hotels at the South Rim.

April 20, 1890 -- Leaving Denver by train on this date, Bob Stanton returns to his river party still camped at Needles, California. They reach tidewater at the Sea of Cortez, Saturday, April 26, 1890.

April 21, 1950 – Grand Canyon Superintendent Harold Bryant writes Regional Director Tillotson that he intends to “continue issuing informal permits to those who cooperate, and thus let it be known that a permit is required.”

April 22, 1954 – Dock Marston was not averse to boating with women. In fact, he found the historic writings of women river runners stood “up on average better than the men. And there is nothing wrong with the women having opinions. The men of the River would be wise to listen.”

April 23, 1955 – Reed Jensen and 4 others in two 10-man oar powered rafts valiantly fight the spring winds in Grand Canyon. They find unusual tracks in the sand above rapids made by two-tailed beavers. At Phantom Ranch, they learn Beer and Daggett are a few days ahead of them.

April 24, 1954 – An oar-powered bridge pontoon is rigged at Lee’s Ferry for a Grand Canyon cruise, a first. The craft is affectionally named Millipede.

April 25, 1958 -- Gaylord Staveley’s letter to the editor, printed in the San Juan Record, suggests the lake behind Glen Canyon Dam be named Lake Nevills.

April 26, 1954 -- Leslie Jones writes Grand Canyon National Park that he plans to resume his river trip using the decked canoe he left at Phantom the year before. Without stopping at Park Headquarters and without a permit, Jones hikes in at Phantom a few days later and heads downriver alone in his canoe.

April 27, 1955 – The Jensen trip pulls into the mouth of Havasu Canyon. After a few minutes stop, they head on down river, never seeing Beer and Daggett. This marks a first for Grand Canyon; one trip passing another without encountering them.

April 28, 1955 – The first documented use of a paddle boat in Grand Canyon occurred when 5 college students packed a 7-man paddle raft down the Tanner Trail and headed downriver. Two days later they arrived at Phantom Ranch and hiked their raft out.

Ps... Yes, this post is a challenge to see if I can find a Colorado River Basin fact for every day of January... Done! If you like this sort of stuff you might enjoy reading Dock Marston: Grand Canyon’s Colorado River Running Historian Volume 1 available at Vishnu Temple Press. The four-part Kindle version of the same book is available here.

Canyon View Information Plaza

 In the 1990s, Grand Canyon planners put together a bold plan to get visitors out of their cars. The concept was designed to have visitors leave their cars outside of the Park boundary and ride a light rail train into the Park. The train would end at the Canyon View Information Plaza, called CVIP for short. 

After CVIP and its train station were built, the plan fell apart. Chief planner Brad Traver wrote a manuscript about how the planning process failed. . In the end, the Park Service built a large parking lot around CVIP.

Brad Traver retired from the Park Service after more that 30 years of service. He held a number of positions at Grand Canyon National Park, from park engineer to project supervisor. He also led the development of the 1995 general management plan for Grand Canyon.

Brad Traver's manuscript is here. This document courtesy the Grand Canyon Museum Collection.

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 and increasing private 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." 

Canyon View Information Plaza Vision Impaired Manuscript by Brad Traver

March Colorado River History Dates

 

The Stanton River Trip below Scanlon's Ferry on March 18, 1890 courtesy The Huntington Library

March Colorado River History Dates

March 1, 1949 – Powell biographer William Darrah writes to Otis Marston about the importance of using historical military records, claiming Powell’s bravery had been thoroughly documented by an Adjunct General. Marston replied such records could be overblown by skilled politicians playing to the grandstand.

March 2, 1890 – The Stanton Expedition departs Granite Park and boats to 224 Mile. On arrival, Stanton thinks it is Diamond Creek.

March 3, 1845 – Birthday of Cass Hite, the son of ’49er parents.

March 4, 1908 – When the 225-foot-deep exploratory oil well “Crossing No. 1” blows oil 75 feet in the air, the event causes enough excitement to create the town site of Mexican Hat, Utah.

March 5, 1958 – Bus Hatch’s deflated pontoon Brontosaurus sits draped across the Boat Beach at Phantom Ranch, left there in late July of the previous year by a quite drunk and irate Hatch. In the high water of 1958 the boat will be swept away downriver with a little help from Ranger Dan Davis.

March 6, 1909 – David Rust paddles Emery Kolb three miles up the Colorado River from Phantom Ranch in a 14-foot King Canvas canoe. Kolb then begins using a similar craft to explore both upstream and downstream from Phantom Ranch.

March 7, 1944 – The Boulder City News runs an article on Harry Aleson’s latest uprun attempt in his boat Up Lake.

March 8, 1890 – The Stanton Expedition continues their resupply at Diamond Creek. It rains hard all day.

March 9, 1899 – Harry Leroy Aleson is born at Waterville, Iowa, to Carl Adolph and Andra Tysland Aleson. Harry is the youngest of their five children.

March 10, 1953 – After Grand Canyon Superintendent Harold Bryant initiated a new river running permit requiring prior Grand Canyon river experience to get a permit, Dock Marston writes Bryant on this date. Marston notes that he looks forward to visiting Superintendent Bryant later that month “about the matter of river permits. I feel more strongly than I can write.”

March 11, 1914 – Doris Margaret Drown, the future wife of Norm Nevills, is born in Portland, Oregon. Botanist Lois Jotter is also born on this same day.

March 12, 1945 – Ernie Untermann, second in command at Dinosaur National Monument, writes to the Superintendent at Rocky Mountain National Park that “even the novice has such a healthy respect for the Yampa and Green that no party I ever heard of launched a boat without the assistance of veteran river men to lead the expedition, nor without the best equipment obtainable.” Untermann ignored the reality that most of the documented Lodore and Yampa river trips up to that date lacked both veteran river men and the best equipment obtainable.

March 13, 1890 – While running Separation Rapid, Robert Stanton falls out of his boat near the foot of the rapid. He is pulled out of the river below unharmed but cold.

March 14, 1920 – The Tombstone Epitaph runs an article titled “Grand Canyon to be Greatest Impounding Reservoir In World.” The exact phrase comes from a speech Secretary of Interior Frank Lane gave three days earlier when he stated he planned to make “the Grand Canyon the greatest impounding reservoir the world has ever known.”

March 15, 1957 – Dock Marston writes to his good friend Bill Belknap about “the crowds going through the Canyon this summer. Bus Hatch has two trips for May but is lacking deposits. Don Harris has cancelled his run for June. There is a new man from Oregon who wants me to go along. Georgie has four trips planned but I now hear she has cut one. Pat is running but has not set his date. Frank Wright is set to some extent for two trips.” Dock continues planning his own river trip, and there are a few he doesn’t yet know about.

March 16, 1950 – Dock Marston writes Ian Campbell and John Maxson about the benefits of the rubber rafts flooding through Glen Canyon. “All observers agree that the raft was slower acting than the wood boats but it was adequate to the task. It has the advantage of ease in portaging and can be run over a rock sticking as much as six inches out of water with no inconvenience to the occupants.”

March 17, 1890 – The Stanton Expedition exits the Grand Canyon at 9:15 a.m. after an hours run. Camp for the night is at Scanlon’s Ferry.

March 18, 1949 – Dock Marston and his wife Margaret visit with Don Harris and his wife in Salt Lake City. Dock interviews Harris about river running and Harris tells Dock “One of the first essentials of a good boatman is that he must like it.”

March 19, 1949 – In order to learn more about the operations of a sweep scow, Dock Marston joins Don Smith and others on a Main Salmon river trip in Smith’s scow City of Salmon.

March 20, 1957 – Mary “Becky” Beckwith writes to Dock Marston that she, Weldon Held, and Superintendent Harold Bryant all think Dock will never complete his book on the first 100 river runners to boat all the way through Grand Canyon. Becky proves to be right as Dock’s book, From Powell To Power, is published after his death.

March 21, 1907 – Egbert Andrew “Ed” Hudson is born in Oakland, California. Hudson begins formulating the use of motorboats in Grand Canyon soon after meeting Harry Aleson in 1942.

March 22, 1954 – After 34 years of dedicated work for the National Park Service, 13 of which he served as Superintendent at Grand Canyon, Harold Bryant retires.

March 23, 1924 – U.S. District Judge Fred Jacobs orders construction work at the Diamond Creek Dam to stop. Jacobs agrees with the U.S. Attorney that the Federal Power Commission is within its rights to deny a final permit allowing work on the dam.

March 24, 1936 – Norm Nevills departs Mexican Hat leading his first commercial group down the San Juan River. When passenger Jake Erwin first sees the boat they would be traveling in, he asks Nevills “What’s that bag of boards? Is that what we’re going down the river in?”

March 25, 1895 – Glen Ernest Sturdevant is born in Laceyville, Pennsylvania.

March 26, 1956 – Word hit the Press that Leslie Jones discovered a skeleton while searching for firewood at the foot of Whirlpool Rapid in Westwater Canyon, today’s Skull Rapid.

March 27, 1954 – About the Echo Park Dam being built in the heart of Dinosaur National Monument, Dock Marston writes his good friend Frank “Fisheyes” Masland “I am suspicious that this dam in Echo Park is another one of Strauss’ promotions that is being put over. The conclusion I have been able to draw is that the beauty of that area would justify the spending of considerable more money elsewhere rather than flood this section.”

March 28, 1941 – Doris and Norm Nevills celebrate the birth of their second child, a girl they name Sandra.

March 29, 1942 – Harry Aleson attempts an uprun in a Bureau of Reclamation motorboat. He capsizes the boat at 234 Mile Rapid. Aleson stands up on top of the capsized boat and takes off all his wet clothing to stay somewhat warm as he floats four miles back to the drilling barge at the Bridge Canyon damsite. As he approaches the mid-river drilling barge, Aleson shouts to the surprised men “I’m taking in washing. Got any to be done?”

March 30, 1960 – Dock Marston begins arrangements for the 1960 Jetboat downrun and uprun. He calls Cliff Dwellers Lodge and places an order for “a couple of thousand gallons of gas.” He also requests “no announcements of my plans so please keep it under your hat.” That same day he sends a letter to Grand Canyon National Park asking for the latest permit paperwork.

March 31, 1948 – National Park Service Associate Director Arthur Demaray writes the following to Region Three Director Minor Tillotson about Grand Canyon river permits: “There is attached for your consideration, a proposed application form to be submitted to all would-be permittees. I think you will agree that the tenor of this application form will tend to discourage all but those who in no event would be deterred from trying the venture.”

Ps... Yes, this post is a challenge to see if I can find a Colorado River Basin fact for every day of January... Done! If you like this sort of stuff you might enjoy reading Dock Marston: Grand Canyon’s Colorado River Running Historian Volume 1 available at Vishnu Temple Press. The four-part Kindle version of the same book is available here.