Tag: Glen Canyon

OVERLAND to FORT MOKI in GLEN CANYON —With a Sad Update by Tom McCourt (ZX#91)

by stiles • December 3, 2023 • 15 Comments

By the end of 2004 the water level in Lake Powell had dropped more than a hundred feet. Seven years of drought had greatly reduced water flow into the lake. At the same time, an ever-increasing demand for irrigation and municipal water was sucking the lake dry. Utah, Arizona, California and Nevada all had straws in the water. Competition over who could get the most was intense.

But, for some of us, the fading fortunes of the lake were not all dark and gloomy. The dramatic drop in water level presented a possibility that intrigued some of us. If the water was that low, what had happened to the old Indian fort at the mouth of White Canyon? Was it possible that Old Fort Moki would be coming out of the water again?

WHITE CANYON…The Drowned Little Town Beneath Lake Powell …Tom McCourt (ZX#81)

by stiles • September 24, 2023 • 20 Comments

My last trip to White Canyon was in December 1959. It was just a few days after my thirteenth birthday. Grandpa was going to the desert again to do assessment work on his uranium claims, and he asked if Reed and I would like to go along. I was thrilled. I had been given a little box camera for my birthday, and I was excited by the opportunity to take some pictures before Lake Powell covered my favorite place forever.

Before we even started, I had a feeling about that trip; a premonition I suppose. Somehow I knew that this would be my last visit to that special place of my childhood. I was going to White Canyon to say goodbye….

1963-64: GLEN CANYON’S LAST DAYS…w/ Hite’s Beth & Ruben Nielsen (ZX#72)

by stiles • July 22, 2023 • 26 Comments

Arth Chaffin and Ruben Nielsen thought there might be non-archaeological treasures to be salvaged as well. The river had seen its share of mining operations over the last century, and even old cabins and sheds. Most of them, like Bert Loper’s old cabin, were drowned by the rising waters. But there was other possible salvageable booty, and I’m just speculating here, but they have been looking for more practical treasures, like compressors, small Diesel or gas engines, scrap iron, copper wiring, discarded tools, old drill steel, tools, ladders…the kind of material that mechanics and people tied to the mining industry might find of value.

And so Arth and Ruben built a “barge.” It was constructed from empty sealed 55 gallon drums–about fifty of them— which they lashed together and over which, constructed a deck of sorts. On the deck, they pitched two canvas tents for their personal use.

JANUARY 1931: THE STRENUOUS LIFE — by Harvey Leake (ZX#71)

by stiles • July 13, 2023 • 9 Comments

On January 6, 1931, as darkness fell over northern Arizona, veteran explorer John Wetherill and his young companion, Henry Martin “Pat” Flattum, huddled by their campfire in the depths of Glen Canyon of the Colorado River. They had taken refuge from the biting wind in an alcove eroded into the base of a high sandstone cliff. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire, their soft conversation, and the “sh-sh-shush” of the drifting ice floes as they rubbed against the shore ice.

…Wetherill, who was sixty-four years old, seemed unperturbed by their difficulties. “Signs of many beaver on the river but no other animals until tonight, when we camped in a cave, where the Ringtail cat seems to have made its home. The canyon walls are getting lower,” he wrote.

DOWN the ESCALANTE RIVER w/Ken Sleight —By Edna Fridley (ZX#63)

by stiles • May 21, 2023 • 3 Comments

FROM KEN SLEIGHT,
“Edna soon came to Escalante and met many of the town folk. Coming and going from trips, we spent a lot of time at cousin Mohr Christensen’s Moqui Motel. My clients met there and at the other rustic-looking motels in Escalante when coming on trips.

“Edna loved Escalante Canyon and became intimately familiar with its features. We frequented Coyote Gulch more than any other canyon. It contains Jacob Hamblin and Coyote natural bridges and Jug Handle Arch. At its mouth and across the river, Stevens Arch looms high on the skyline. Negotiating this country often came hard. Going down Coyote Gulch on one trip, a giant part of the wall broke away and crashed into the creek bottom below, forming a natural dam. My old intrepid friend Vaughn Short, who helped me a lot through those years, aided me in fashioning a detour around the slide and I got our horses and mules around the long pool of water. Edna followed that trail on numerous occasions, as it led to Indian wall writings.”

A GLEN CANYON ALBUM: THE NIELSEN RANCH at HITE (1949-1964) #2 (ZX#56)

by stiles • April 2, 2023 • 15 Comments

In the first installment of this series, called “Glen Canyon’s Nielsen Ranch at Hite: The Untold Story,” I provided a considerable amount of background information on the history of the Hite (Dandy) Crossing, and the political history behind the building of Glen Canyon Dam.

In addition, I needed to explain just how Beth and Ruben Nielsen wound up at Hite and spent the next 15 years, from 1949 to 1964, in this place they called Heaven on Earth. (I urge all of you who missed Part 1 the first time, to go back and read it. You need the history, especially of Beth and Ruben, to fully appreciate what follows.

In this edition of the “Untold Story” is more of an album than a narrative. This is the first of several albums I plan to post over the coming weeks and months. When Leslie sent me a thumb drive with the complete collection of images, even I didn’t realize the full extent and number of photographs that I had just received. The index that Leslie sent me identifies each photo—the index is almost 50 pages long! That should give Zephyr readers just how much photographic history is here. It is a treasure beyond my ability to express it

EDWARD ABBEY: 34 YEARS LATER in a BRAVE NEW WORLD—Jim Stiles (ZX#53)

by stiles • March 12, 2023 • 28 Comments

He once said, “ If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule. That was the American Dream.”

Many of the older New Westerners love Ed Abbey but have no idea what that means. They’ve read all his books and they follow and “LIKE” his quotes on Facebook, but they understand far less than they realize. Many of the younger New Westerners are too busy recreating to care. Solitude isn’t even a priority (And please note, in the spirit of Abbey, I’m generalizing here and judging a generation who I know has its own shining stars. If there is any hope to be found, it is in those young people.)

What Abbey always hoped we’d take away from his writing and from his life was a sense of ourselves as individuals, as men and women who could take control of our own lives and our own destinies. Abbey spoke disapprovingly of a “nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses.” He longed for a people with dignity and courage and he loathed the mindless “bleating” that he found even in his own readers

GLEN CANYON’S NIELSEN RANCH at HITE—The Untold Story Pt. 1 —Jim Stiles (ZX#51)

by stiles • February 26, 2023 • 8 Comments

Even as the Utah governor and crowds of celebrants cheered the opening of Chaffin’s Hite ferry , plans were already underway to make the ferry obsolete. But the notion of a 700 foot high dam flooding almost 200 miles of the Colorado River and burying Hite under 150 feet of water was almost too much to comprehend. Or even believe. Its reality seemed eons away. And it was more than that. There was something magical about the place. Something special. Surely no one could do harm to such a place.

It was to that incredibly remote, hidden Eden that drew Ruben and Beth Nielsen to Hite and the Colorado River, already knowing, though barely believing the stories, that their new home might someday be wiped (or drowned and buried) from the face of the earth. They were coming to the isolated canyon and the recently opened ferry to make a home for themselves. It was the ferry itself that made the dream possible, but for Beth and Ruben, it was a dream come true. Their love for Glen Canyon and the crossing at Hite was only exceeded by their love for each other. That mutual love for Glen Canyon cemented their personal connection even more. It was such a shared love that their life and their marriage, in a way, was bound together in one living breathing joyful experience. Over the years, everyone who met Beth and Ruben could feel that bond and be a part of it. Fern Frost may have called their home “a little Heaven of your own,” but the truth was, the Nielsens loved sharing Heaven with everyone they met.

E.C. LaRue & the Colorado “River of Menace & Destruction” (ZX#33) By Gene Stevenson

by stiles • October 30, 2022 • 5 Comments

“The river of menace and destruction”… In the early 20th century, that’s the way farmers in the Imperial Valley of California viewed the Colorado River after it breached its banks and flooded into the Salton Sink in 1905-07. This wasn’t the first time the mighty river had jumped its banks, but the agriculture industry was determined this HAD to be the last. And it was – maybe. I’m not going to rehash how the Colorado River Compact of 1922 came to be passed by a bunch of politicians who gathered together in some isolated resort lodge near Santa Fe, New Mexico. But one key player is seldom mentioned when the history of the grossly inaccurate Compact is discussed. Or the devastating effect it poses on the future of the Colorado River Basin. His name was Eugene Clyde LaRue.

Even though erroneous assumptions were made and compiled in various tables, E.C. LaRue knew the Colorado River better than almost anyone, and was the most experienced engineer, even if his goals for the river were as wrongheaded as everyone else. He had personally surveyed just about every tributary and segments of main stems of the entire Colorado River Drainage Basin. Why did his compatriots give him a place at the table? Who was this guy anyway?

REMEMBERING GEORGIE (WHITE) CLARK— “Woman of the River” by Anne Snowden Crosman (ZX#22)

by stiles • August 21, 2022 • 14 Comments

Then she met Harry Aleson, a fellow Sierra Club member and explorer. Aleson showed her slides of his hikes in the canyon country of Arizona and Utah. Georgie was hooked. A new world opened up and she suggested they hike it together. She and Harry became friends, and over the years, they covered many miles. Twice they floated down the Colorado River of the Grand Canyon.

“I was out here on the river 25 years when there was absolutely nobody here,” she recalls. “All the people on my trips depended on me, period. There wasn’t nobody else. There was no helicopters, there was NOTHING down here. The park rangers were not here. That was before the dams were built. These were long trips, one- and two-week trips.” At 80, she is strong in body and mind. She takes pride in not being emotional. “My mother taught us not to cry. We don’t have that emotion. I don’t have it about marriage or nothing. I was never one who had stars in my eyes. I was not one who grew up wantin’ or being man-crazy. In fact, the men had to prove theirself to me!”

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