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| Rod Sanderson on the flipped boat Rattlesnake below Lava Falls, June 13, 1958, courtesy The Huntington Library |
June Colorado River History Dates
June 1, 1959 – A Walt Disney crew of 11 men flew into Page, Arizona, to begin preparations for the filming of “Ten Who Dared.”
June 2, 1955 - Big Ed Hudson and Ed Nichols arrive at Lees Ferry in Hudson’s motorboat after launching at Glenwood Springs, Colorado. This trip connected a 1,400-mile-long motorboat line for Big Ed from Glenwood to the Gulf of California.
June 3, 1954 – Otis “Dock” Marston arrives at Lees Ferry with three 18-foot-long aluminum hull Smith-Craft. Elwyn Blake of the 1923 USGS river trip is at the Ferry and helps launch the fleet.
June 4, 1956 – Harry Aleson and Wilson “Willie” Taylor visit at Lees Ferry, their 30-minute conversation punctuated by frequent outbursts of laughter. Willie would die of a heart attack just below President Harding Rapid two days later.
June 5, 1959 – Contractors continued digging dam foundations at the Glen Canyon Damsite.
June 6, 1950 – The Flagstaff newspaper ran an article about helicopter tours starting up at the South Rim of Grand Canyon.
June 7, 1950 – Dock Marston, Edwin J. Montgomery, and Elmer B. “Red” Carson, of the Arizona Helicopter Service at the South Rim, plan some Hance Rapid helicopter filming of Marston’s upcoming Grand Canyon river trip.
June 8, 1954 – National Park Service Chief Council Jackson Price creates the term “private boater” and writes NPS Director Worth about it.
June 9, 1869 – In Major Powell’s Report to Congress, the No Name flips on this date, losing precious supplies and much of the expedition food. Frank Mason Brown is born in Blue Hill, Maine, on this date in 1845.
June 10, 1951 - As all the boats cleared the South Canyon beach, the Chris-Craft Chariot backed into submerged rocks and limped back ashore. The crew careened the damaged craft with a winch and nylon line, then changed the propeller and straightened the rudder.
June 11, 1954 – Marston’s 3-boat Smith-Craft motorcade runs Horn Creep Rapid on about 14,000 cfs.
June 12, 1950 – While Dock Marston prepares to launch a river trip at Lees Ferry, Frank Wright and Jim Rigg row in, completing a Glen canyon run. Wright and Rigg admit to Marston that Norm Nevills ignited a Marston fuel cache at President Harding Rapid in 1949.
June 13, 1956 – Joe Desloge flips the Smith-Craft Rattlesnake in Lava Falls, the first record of a boat flip in that rapid. After the flip Rod was asked when he knew the “boat was going over what did you think and what did you say?” Rod grinned his slow smile and said, “What I thought I’ll keep to myself but what I said, was ‘Goodness gracious, what’s going on here’?” During the rest of the trip, someone would say “Oops Vulcan” and the others would burst out laughing.
June 14, 1869 – The Powell expedition camps just above Triplet Falls.
June 15, 1958 - Just before departure from Boat Beach near Phantom Ranch, Dock Marston discovers the coffee, bacon, and butter are still on the rim at the Babbitt’s General Store. Replacements are found at the Ranch and the trip departs on a dropping flood of 61,300 cfs. The group stops for the night at what Dock describes as a “perfect camp,” a large sandy camp with a harbor for the boats known today as Bass Camp.
June 16, 1957 – The Marston river trip camps at today’s Hotauta Camp. The river is at 105,000 cfs and falling from its peak of 124,000 cfs just four days earlier.
June 17, 1943 - Harry Aleson pilots the 16-foot Up Lake, a Thompson Brothers outboard pine skiff with a fifty-two-inch beam, up the Colorado River in Grand Canyon. The 22½-hp Evinrude outboard motor gets him to the foot of Diamond Creek Rapid and no further.
June 18, 1869 - The Kitty received more repair, and a run at “almost railroad speed” for five miles per Bradley, and six miles per Sumner, took the Powell expedition to the mouth of the Bear River, which is now generally known as the Yampa.
June 19, 1960 – Four jetboats departed Lees Ferry on June 18. On the 19th, they place 180-gallons of fuel in the vegetation behind the beach at President Harding Rapid. The group got along well and the evening consisted of much singing, including Throw Out The Lifeline.
June 20, 1938 - At 7:10 a.m., 9:00 a.m. according to Dr. Elzada Clover, the pith-helmeted party departed from Green River, Utah, on a moderate flow gauged at 17,400 cubic feet per second, but estimated by Norm Nevills to be 35,000 cfs.
June 21, 1960 - On the recommendation of Dock Marston and Bill Austin, Margie Mannering and Buzz Belknap hike to Phantom Ranch to join the jet boat trip. All the while, Dock eyes the river gauge as it slowly drops below 38,000 cfs.
June 22, 1854 - In October, 1852, the side-wheel steamer Uncle Sam was unloaded from a sailing vessel and assembled at the head of the Sea of Cortez. She was sixty-five feet long and had twelve to sixteen feet of beam, with a depth of 3½-feet amidships drawing twenty-two inches. The boat was powered with a 20 to 25-hp locomotive-type boiler. Her crew struggled for fifteen days with the deficient power and unfamiliar river to get her to Yuma on the morning of December 3, 1852, with thirty-five tons of freight. She sank at Ankrim’s Ferry below Yuma on June 22, 1854.
June 23, 1960 - After scouting Vulcan Rapid (Lava Falls), Dock Marston and Bill Austin climbed into Big Red. What happened next is still debated to this day but it appeared that Austin entered too fast and at a spot that set the big cathedral hull up for a ski-jump run. Dock judged the craft’s speed at close to 50 miles per hour and estimates put it 10 to 25 feet in the air. Anticipating the rough landing to come, Dock crouched into a low ski position with Bill at the wheel standing next to him. The boat hit the water hard then started a turn toward the left. Dock assumed Austin wanted to do a U-turn at the bottom of the rapid and began looking for rocks ahead when he heard Bill calmly say “You better take over Dock, I have a compound fracture.” Dock looked over to see Bill Austin “sitting on the deck with a shin bone sticking out of the front of his leg.”
June 24, 1960 - The early morning stillness shattered into a loud roar as a Kaman twin rotor turboshaft engine powered HH-43 Huskie flew low over the camp and landed on today’s Tequila Beach. After loading Bill Austin on the ship, Phil Smith climbed in too. The chopper lifted the two men out of the Canyon and took them to the Grand Canyon Hospital at the South Rim.
June 25, 1950 – The Bureau of Reclamation strings a 3,726-foot-long tramway from the rim of Grand Canyon to the top of the Redwall Limestone at the Marble Canyon Damsite. They claim it is the longest tramway in the world.
June 26, 1939 – Don Harris meets Bill Gibson and Chester Klevin as they alight from the train at Green River, Utah, at 3:15 a.m. The men load their boats onto a truck and drive to the mouth of North Wash on the Colorado River, arriving at 9:30 p.m. the same day. They rowed into Glen Canyon early the next morning, visiting Music Temple, Rainbow Bridge, and Crossing of the Fathers, before meeting Bert Loper at 24.5 Mile on the night of July 2.
June 27, 1889 - the Brown expedition splits up. Five men continue the slow line survey of Glen Canyon, while Reynolds and the members of an advance party headed for Lee’s Ferry to start the “eye survey” into Marble and Grand canyons. This advance group consisted of Brown, Stanton, Hislop, Gibson, Richards, Hansbrough, Nims, and the new man, McDonald.
June 28, 1882 On this date Seymour Sylvester Dubendorff is born. Dubendorff struggled with his father, Charles Wesley, and a brother, Edward Arthur, to make a good living and care for their mother, Mahala Oliva, who was crippled from having been “… blowed away in a cyclone in Kansas.”
June 29, 1906 - Congress passed an Act to protect wildlife in a Forest Preserve, creating the Grand Canyon National Forest Game Preserve.
June 30, 1956 - Two commercial airliners collided over the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers, killing all 128 passengers and crew aboard.
Ps... Yes, this post is a challenge to see if I can find a Colorado River Basin fact for every day of June... Done! If you like this sort of stuff you will enjoy reading the 4 e-book series Dock Marston: The Colorado River Historian Volume 1 on Amazon Kindle or the hardback book at Vishnu Temple Press.
