River Runners for Wilderness announces a new book in our online store. Hot off the press and just in time for Christmas giving: From Powell To Power: A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon, by Otis “Dock” Marston.
https://rrfw.org/product/powell-power.
Order by December 19th for Christmas delivery.
Most Grand Canyon enthusiasts know of legendary historian and early river runner Dock Marston. What most river runners don’t know is that Marston began to write a history of Grand Canyon river running in 1947. Marston assumed it would take six months. He quickly found that much of what had previously been recorded was incorrect and incomplete, and had still not quite finished it before he died in 1979.
Marston resolved to compile as thorough a recounting of the first 100 river runners through the Grand Canyon as he possibly could, when many of the pioneering river runners from the late 1800s and early 1900s were still alive. Over the next thirty years, Dock amassed a huge collection of first-person accounts of these river runners, from James White on a log raft in 1867 to the first powerboat runs of 1949 through 1951.
Marston ran rivers throughout the American west from the 1940s to the 1970s. His first cruise through Grand Canyon was in 1942. Dock ran on the lowest and highest flows on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon. He also ran many types of watercraft from a one-man Sportyak, through sadiron cataract boats, a decked dory, and a variety of power boats.
River Runners for Wilderness co-founder and author Tom Martin edited the Marston manuscript and worked with the Marston family and the Huntington Library to obtain permission to publish the work.
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 10, 1909: Business with Pleasure, where Marston describes Seymour Sylvester Dubendorff’s calamitous run of the rapid that now bears his name:
Having successfully run the primeval fury without a boat, Dubendorff crawled out near the foot and came down to help bail. He “…looked like Hell.” Blood was streaming down over his face from a 1½-inch gash where the boat had hit him on the forehead and he had sprained a knee. Gritty as a flapjack rolled in sand, he exclaimed, “I’d like to try that again. I know I can run it.” Nature had surely wrapped Dubendorff’s skin around a real man.
The soft cover is 532 pages. The price is $35.00, which includes US shipping. Order this softcover book from our store:
https://rrfw.org/product/powell-power
Your purchase helps us continue our work to permanently protect the backcountry and river of Grand Canyon as wilderness. Check out our store for more great gift ideas or to donate.