As a graduate student thirty years ago, I chose for my thesis a stretch of buckled rock along the Colorado River within Grand Canyon that could only be reached by boat. I carried the most up-to-date equipment—kapok-filled Mae West life preservers, a pocket calculator that could actually determine square roots, and plan-and-profile maps of the river corridor that Claude H. Birdseye had prepared fifty years earlier. I was a little troubled that the Birdseye maps were sprinkled with references to twenty-nine dam sites between Lee’s Ferry and Black Canyon. But I wasn’t too worried; hadn’t David Brower and his...

Our interest in the 1923 expedition in Grand Canyon came from several sources. First and foremost, this U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) trip was the first that our agency sponsored in Grand Canyon. This is a notably poignant reason given that some USGS scientists, including the authors, have spent much of their careers in the challenging environment of the canyon, toiling to collect scientific data. Despite its significance, the 1923 trip is underrepresented in our agency’s written history.¹ Second, USGS has a rather onerous review process of its publications, passionately attempts to stay nonpartisan, and avoids advocacy by its employees. A...

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Colorado River well deserves its nickname as “the American Nile,” first suggested in the early years of the twentieth century.¹ One of the most regulated watercourses in the world, and certainly in the United States,² each drop of Colorado River water is reputedly reused five times before it reaches the ocean. It is used so thoroughly that only a small percentage still reaches the Sea of Cortés. Most of the runoff from the headwaters evaporates from large reservoirs, evaporates or transpires from agricultural fields, is diverted to the large metropolises in the...

The 1905 disaster and the subsequent need to reestablish the irrigation network in the Imperial Valley focused national attention on the lower Colorado River. The ongoing flood troubles held that attention, even through the turbulent years of World War I. It greatly helped that the Los Angeles Times, a hardly unbiased newspaper given its owners’ land holdings in Mexico, continued to beat the drum for river management and irrigation projects. Politicians could not ignore the enormous agricultural potential of the region, not to mention the large profits associated with fully implemented water development. The coastal areas of Southern California—rapidly...

In 1922, at the insistence of Arthur Davis, the U.S. Reclamation Service staked its reputation on a dam site in Boulder Canyon, putting all water into one reservoir. Elsewhere in the Colorado River basin, the surveying of potential dam sites fell to USGS, with financial and logistical support provided by private power companies, notably Southern California Edison and Utah Power and Light Company. USGS teams were able to perform much of the work from land, but simply getting to some potential dam sites required full-fledged river expeditions. The crews had to be carefully chosen. Expeditions needed at least one boatman...

On July 18, 1923, Claude Birdseye, the members of his expedition, and an extended traveling party left Flagstaff en route to Lee’s Ferry.¹ They had spent several days sorting groceries, packing equipment, and loading the new boat on a truck, well padded to minimize damage during transit over the rough dirt road. They started their trip before noon, taking three trucks and three automobiles to accommodate twenty-three people, equipment, supplies, and the new boat. They camped at Cedar Ridge, roughly halfway to Lee’s Ferry. That evening, they enjoyed Frank Word’s cooking. All was not jovial on the first night: Kolb...

On August 13, 1923, the 1923 USGS expedition camped at Crash Canyon, a small tributary on river right at river mile 62.6. This small canyon became infamous in 1956 after two commercial airliners collided over Grand Canyon and the debris spread over this drainage and several smaller ones nearby. Just downstream, the Colorado River corridor opens into a reach fondly known as Furnace Flats for the extreme temperatures encountered in summer. This reach spelled more work for the surveyors, since any dams built downstream would impound reservoirs that would expand to this stretch.

The expedition had to deal with frequent...

In early September, the 1923 USGS expedition found itself out of the Inner Gorge and away from seemingly continuous rapids, but all was not well within the crew. Although Birdseye had placated Kolb, who chose to remain with the expedition after his mutiny at Hermit Rapid, Birdseye faced an undercurrent of bickering. Word, who had the ready excuse of eye problems, would leave the trip but later blame Kolb’s attitude for at least part of his decision. La Rue continued to irritate, Freeman failed to pull his weight, and the others chose sides. While many diarists noted conflict among the...

They faced down a flood and managed to pull through without losing any equipment. Their head boatman flipped his boat in what until then was an unnamed rapid. Their original cook, who had eye problems but also could not stand the incessant squabbling among the crew, left at Havasu Creek and was replaced by a man who was illiterate and spoke poor English. In some ways, Felix Kominsky would become the iconic image of the trip, and he brought a sunny disposition into an often volatile personality mix. The 1923 USGS expedition lost valuable time during the flood at Lava...

Upon returning to their homes, the members of the 1923 USGS expedition to Grand Canyon were drenched in a maelstrom of hyperbole. Just as Blake and Dodge felt when they saw themselves on the movie screen in Needles, everyone must have found the attention both astonishing and amusing. Dozens of newspapers and magazines across the country carried stories about the expedition, laden with adjectives that spoke of the purported hardship and danger, real and imagined, that they had faced. The Washington Post ran a photograph of Birdseye, looking steely jawed and intense, with the caption, “C.H. Birdseye, who, with his...