Nowadays we run the river as an adventure vacation, but in earlier years it was run for different reasons, and through the years the reasons for running it have changed significantly.

Early in the 18th century, trappers worked their way down sections of it to obtain beaver pelts for the North American fur trade, and prospectors came to see what gold and silver they could find in its bars and beaches. An ex-soldier with a bent for exploration ran it to see where it went and what was along the way. A survey expedition was organized to see whether a railroad could be built along it. Then came some sportsmen adventurers, who ran it because of intellectual curiosity, or the desire for distinction. And finally, it became a vacation adventure organized and led on a scheduled basis by professional outfitters and guides.

We invite you to come along on a short voyage through history, to see how these trips have evolved from the experience of earlier adventurers.

Powell was a civil war officer who later took a teaching position at Illinois Normal University. He was by nature an explorer and spent considerable time tramping the upper Midwest. In the summer of 1867, he and some of his students made a field trip to the headwaters and tributaries of the Green River. Intrigued with the country, he returned in 1868, wintered there, and decided to mount an expedition to explore the course and navigability of the river.

On May 24, 1869, Major Powell and a small band of men launched four boats to begin what would be a 99-day expedition from known territory in Wyoming to known territory in Nevada. Between the two settlements lay some 1000 miles of what Powell called "the Great Unknown." He and his men basically had to invent expedition river running. The boats, stout and heavy, were off-the-shelf navy longboats with sharp cutwaters, meant to be rowed bow-first on the sea rather than down rock-studded rivers.

Powell's discovery run, fraught with excitement and tragedy, proved that the river originating in northwest Wyoming was the same river that ended in the Gulf of California, that it went through the Grand Canyon, and that it could be traveled by boat. As they came down the river they took periodic observations of latitude and longitude, elevations, and estimates of distance that allowed mapmakers to show the river's course. In 1871-1872 Powell led a second expedition over most of the same route. Several accounts of the expeditions were published in government documents and popular publications of the time and were read avidly by those who planned to try the river later.

Frank M. Brown was a Denver realtor and businessman interested in investing in "a railroad scheme." Knowing that Powell had been able to get boats down the entire course of the river, Brown hired an engineer named Robert Brewster Stanton to determine the feasibility of a railway along the river from Colorado to California.

Brown, noting Powell's experiences with heavy boats, took a contrary approach. In a naive attempt to go as lightly as possible, he supplied the survey expedition with five boats of the "hunting and pleasure type." They were so fragile that two of them already had splits in their planking when they arrived on the train, and they were so shallow that they had almost no freeboard when loaded. Stanton had requested experienced oarsman but Brown chose to have the surveyors do the rowing and brought two "guests" along to help with it. Life jackets were purposely excluded to save space and weight. These mistakes and omissions were largely responsible for distractive incidents on the Green, and then the deaths by drowning of Brown and two other members of the expedition in the first few miles after they set forth into the head of Grand Canyon.

With the loss of the three men, Stanton and the remaining members of his crew climbed out of the canyon. Stanton, succeeding Brown as leader of the expedition, reorganized and re-outfitted the trip, with heavier and deeper boats made of oak. They left Lees Ferry on December 28, 1889, reached the end of Grand Canyon at Grand Wash Cliffs on March 17, 1890, and ended at the mouth of the Colorado on April 27, 1890. Stanton's account of the expedition wasn't published until thirty years later, but it too became required reading for those who would follow.

Nathan Galloway, a Vernal, Utah, trapper and prospector, is credited with having introduced the idea of running a rapids-filled river by backing down it stern first to slow the boat and see where he was going, a technique that made it far safer. Galloway's first known trip into the Grand Canyon area was in December-January of 1893, down the river through Glen Canyon to Lees Ferry. Whether he actually introduced the stern-first technique or not, he was instrumental in spreading it among a large group of fellow prospectors and trappers who were working the river bars and beaches in the 1890's and early 1900's.

George Flavell, the son of a New Jersey farmer, began wandering as a young man, and at about age 25, ended up in lower California where from 1890 to 1893 he made his living as a commercial hunter and trapper, roaming back and forth across the border with Mexico.

In the summer of 1896, Flavell and a sidekick named Ramon Montez went to Green River, Wyoming, and built a flat-bottomed boat fifteen and a half feet long. They launched it on August 27 and ran down the Green and Colorado, arriving sixty-five days later back in their old hunting grounds in lower California.

Flavell is noteworthy because his journal leads to the conclusion that Flavell either talked with Galloway or that by 1896, the stern-first technique was in fairly wide use on the canyon-locked upper river. Flavell, who came from the lower river a thousand miles downstream, was not familiar with this approach and he got it backwards; he ran by putting the stem (bow) downstream, and pushing on the oars to maneuver. Our other inheritance from Flavell is his expedition journal, The Log Of The Panthon, which, besides being informative, is very entertaining.

In September 1896, with Flavell and Montez already 500 miles down the Green River, Nathan Galloway and William Richmond started down Henry's Fork (which joins the Green from the west at the Utah-Wyoming state line) and then ran down the Green and through Grand Canyon, reaching Needles, California, February 17th. Although theirs was primarily a hunting-trapping-prospecting expedition, this established Nathan Galloway as a boatman with Grand Canyon experience.

As a youthful explorer, Julius Stone had, in 1877, visited the headwaters of the Green River. In ensuing years he became a wealthy Columbus, Ohio, manufacturer. By 1898, Stone had developed a personal interest in a Glen Canyon dredging enterprise being pushed by Robert Brewster Stanton, the man who had conducted the1899 railroad survey and Stone became the dredging company's president. Because of this, he met--and for a time employed--Nathan Galloway, the prospector-boatman.

Stone became enthralled with the canyon country. In 1909 he organized a trip, built four boats, and hired Galloway, then age forty-five, to guide him down the river from Green River, Wyoming, to Needles, California, first having Galloway come to Ohio to collaborate on boat design.

The expedition left Green River on September 12th and reached Needles on November 19th. The boats were run by Galloway, Stone, Charles Sharp, and a Vernal newspaper shop helper named Seymour S. Dubendorff, for whom a Grand Canyon rapid is named. Dubendorff noted in his diary that the trip "proved the efficacy of Mr. Galloway's method of running fast water."

Ellsworth and Emery Kolb, then running a photo studio at the rim of Grand Canyon decided to film the river. Ellsworth had applied to be photographer on the 1909 Stone trip, but when the position wasn't available the brothers decided to run their own trip. Using drawings obtained from Julius Stone, they built two boats similar to his 1909 boats. Ellsworth and Emery launched at Green River, Utah, on September 8, 1911, and ran to Needles, California, arriving there on January 8, 1912. The film of their expedition was shown to tourists at the south rim of Grand Canyon four times a day for 65 years; undoubtedly the most sustained campaign ever of letting people know about river running.

Colonel Claude H. Birdseye was Chief Topographic Engineer of the U.S. Geological Survey, which, in collaboration with Southern California Edison Company, set out to survey the riverine portion of Grand Canyon for dam sites. This expedition, which was on the river from August 1, to October 20, 1923, was notable in that Emery Kolb was head boatman and that the resulting "Birdseye" maps were extremely useful to succeeding river runners.

It had for years, Clyde Eddy wrote later, been his dream "to go by boat down some turbulent river." In 1919 he rode a tourist mule down the Hermit Trail, saw the Colorado rushing by, and concluded, "this is my river." Eight years later, married, working in New York City, and having read accounts of the Powell, Kolb, and Birdseye expeditions, he ordered three heavy oak boats, hired Nathan Galloway's son, Parley, as guide, and recruited some young men from several college campuses as crewmen. His group of thirteen men, an Airedale dog, and a cub bear left Green River, Utah, on June 27, 1927, entered the head of Grand Canyon on July 18th, and reached Needles, California, on Aug 8, 1927, an 800 mile journey. After his expedition Eddy wrote a book titled Down The World's Most Dangerous River.

Russell Frazier, a Utah doctor, and some of his friends decided to go down the river to put up a plaque honoring the men who left Powell's expedition at Separation Canyon. At Vernal, Utah, they hired Alton and Bus Hatch, then known for their frequent trips on the upper Green, to build boats and take them down the river. In 1929, Bus Hatch had established Hatch Expeditions on the Green and Yampa, which subsequently led to the company establishing operations in Grand Canyon.

In 1937, Haldane "Buzz" Holmstrom, a service station attendant from Oregon, built his own boat and ran it solo down 1100 miles of river from Green River, Wyoming. His boat incorporated the best features of successful whitewater boats to date. Holmstrom skillfully used the stern first technique of whitewater boating brought to the river in the late1800s.

Norman Nevills of Mexican Hat, Utah began carrying passengers for hire on the San Juan River in 1936 and in the summer of 1938 took the first fare-paying passengers down the Green and Colorado rivers. In preparing for his 1938 expedition, he read the published works about previous expeditions and talked with as many living river runners as he could. His boats reflected the advances in whitewater boat design made by Galloway and Holmstrom. Nevills created the first public awareness of professionally led whitewater expeditions and the stern-first technique, which he called "facing your danger." After his death the company was renamed Mexican Hat Expeditions and, several years later, Canyoneers.

Bus Hatch, Frank Hatch and "Smuss" Allen ran eight paying passengers through Grand Canyon, using the first known motorized pontoons--a twenty-eight foot bridge pontoon and a ten-man life raft--and established Hatch River Expeditions in Grand Canyon.

Georgie White, later known as "Woman Of The River," explored the upper and lower sections of the Colorado river for several years, began running Glen Canyon trips in 1951, and then in 1952 rowed herself through Grand Canyon in an inflatable ten-man life raft.

In1955 she began carrying passengers through Grand Canyon in motorized war-surplus bridge pontoons. Her introduction of "soft boats", large and small, provided a new way of running the river, and she used a then-infant phenomenon called television to boost the public awareness and popularity of Grand Canyon river trips.

P.T. "Pat" Reilly was a Nevills boatman in 1948 and 1949 who subsequently began experimenting with wooden fishing dories as Grand Canyon boats. Between 1955 and 1965 he made a number of "family and friends" trips in Grand Canyon, experimenting with wooden and fiberglass hulls, and oars of various calibers and constructions.

Martin Litton, a magazine travel editor, had taken a 1955 trip through Grand Canyon as a passenger with P.T. Reilly. Litton became a Reilly boatman, and about 1962, the two men began modifying fishing dories to carry paying passengers through big whitewater, eventually creating the "Grand Canyon dory" which could carry four passengers. In 1965 Litton acquired Reilly's dories, and in 1969 he established the company called Grand Canyon Dories, making dory trips a viable addition to the spectrum of professionally led choices available.