uppose you spent two weeks traveling half way around the world to be at Grand Canyon for all of 10 minutes. Should you be counted among the 5 million presently visiting the Canyon, or should you have to stay say... at least an hour? How about hikers? Should we only count those who make it to Phantom? Or Indian Gardens?
As for travelers on the river, how should they be counted? If you have over 200 trips in the canyon should you only get credit for your first, and only if it was all the way from Lee's Ferry to Grand Wash Cliffs? Finally, if the mighty Colorado claimed your life during a traverse and became your watery grave, should your presence be acknowledged?
For decades, the year 1949 has been viewed as a somewhat mythical milestone in Grand Canyon River travel. It has been used in multiple reports as the year when river travel in Grand Canyon finally topped one hundred people.
Total? Like most everyone I assumed this number included everybody as it was never annotated to indicate otherwise. Pretty mind-boggling number when one considers that twenty-some thousand (I'm getting ahead of myself) are going in a given year now. I also assumed that it was completely schist solid accurate. Untouchable. After all, it came from the guru of Colorado River historian gurus, Otis “Dock” Marston, the indefatigable river lore packrat, (to whom I feel deeply grateful for his foresight, motivation and perseverance toward his invaluable contribution to our historical understanding of river running in the canyon). And out of no disrespect for Dock, it was never actually an intention to challenge, or discount this figure. It just sort of happened.
A few years ago, I got curious about the fatality rate of river running in Grand Canyon. So, I just started counting numbers. First, I tried to track down every river running related fatality known to have occurred within Grand Canyon boundaries as we know them. Then, I took my numbers of deaths, and divided it by numbers of travelers per Marston's list, the only list I knew of. After a while, it dawned on me; the numbers didn't add up. Much to my surprise, I found none of the people who died were counted on his list, and that wasn't all. Neither was anyone who didn't make the full traverse from Lee's Ferry to Grand Wash Cliffs, and he gave you credit for your first trip only, even if you made multiple traverses. Subsequently, he left off a lot of people. For example, Norman Nevills, despite seven traverses by 1949, was only credited for one. Among those completely excluded were the Howlands and Dunn from Powell's first trip, Powell's entire second trip, Stanton's entire first trip, and Glen and Bessie Hyde. Why? Seemed pretty exclusive and misleading, and even unfair. I mean gee whiz, if you died there, you at least should've been counted as having been there. Well, there are probably several reasons Dock did it this way. First, it's tough to get full numbers of everybody. Second, he may have looked at a full traverse kinda like reaching the summit of a mountain. Anything less, didn't count even if the last 40 miles of it had to be on Lake Mead (Ironically, Howlands and Dunn had actually gone further on the wild Colorado than Marston, all the way to Separation Rapid, which was under Lake Mead by Marston's first trip, but he still didn't give them credit). Finally, and probably most importantly, it was the only way Marston could've been counted in his own honorary “First One Hundred” list of river travelers.
Right or wrong, I started making my own list, and initially, it wasn't too hard. However, after exhausting the common, accessible sources, things changed. Reliable accounts became more obscure and harder to find, especially if you didn't know they existed in the first place. Fortunately, I found Richard Quartaroli.

Richard is research librarian for Glen Canyon Environmental Studies and had been working on a historical list as well. Together, we were able to collaborate to get historical numbers together. And they kept pouring in at first, from old trip logs like P.T. Reilly's, to newspaper accounts of little known traverses forwarded to us from Diane Grua at NAU Special Collections. After a while, we felt we had gotten a pretty darn close to the total numbers of historical river travelers, at least to about 1951. Much to our surprise, it turned out the river was a much busier place than is widely believed. About three times busier at that. In fact, total travelers topped 100 by 1914, and 300 by 1949. And although Dock only considered 12 of the 45 river runners from ‘49 for his exclusive list, he sort of indirectly acknowledged the presence of the others, albeit somewhat less glamorously, by suggesting a stoplight for the river in 1950. By the mid 1950s as numbers of travelers increased, and more people were leaving and joining trips from different locations, even indefatigable Dock fagged out on keeping his list going. That's when the Park Service took over, and they continued to count numbers similarly to Dock, at least for a while. As the fledgling river travel industry matured and river use skyrocketed into thousands in the late 1960s, the NPS realized more accurate tabulation was necessary to monitor use. So in 1967 separate distinction was made between commercial passengers and crew, and noncommercial (private) river runners, and in 1970, the “user day” system was established. From my perspective, this really didn't matter much because I still just simply needed totals. At that point it also seemed pretty ridiculous to worry about a few dozen travelers or even a hundred or two with the kinds of numbers that were now popping up. So, with a sigh of relief, I felt the job was pretty much done, and it was just a simple matter of addition. By this time I had also fortunately managed to beg Larry Stevens and Chris Becker to help me out (and they foolishly agreed), as well as co-authoring a monumental, painstaking study incorporating river injuries too. Well, unfortunately, we did a mountain of statistics using NPS reported numbers of “total recreational users” (currently at over 23,000 per year), before we discovered this didn't include everybody. “Recreational users” make up only commercial and “private” noncommercial passengers. So who's left? “Non-recreational users” of course, who are: commercial crew (guides), NPS related personnel, (administrative, patrol, resource etc.), researchers (GCES, USGS, etc.), and “other” (i.e. special use). Nonetheless, as we still needed totals to give our fatality and injury rates any sort of validity, it was necessary to continue to pester Susan Cherry of the NPS River Office for the numbers on these individuals as well. Fortunately, she patiently obliged. Surprisingly, when it was all said and done, we found that total river travelers actually surpassed 27,600 in 1991, and nearly a half million people made trips in the last 25 years alone. No wonder it seems crowded.
Anyhow, the good news is we were able to come up with the fatality rate, and it's low (another long story). As for the total numbers of river travelers, it was nice to clear the water somewhat. And while I'm sure that numbers like Dock's 100 by ‘49, and his “First One Hundred” list will always be around, out of respect for the adventurers and explorers who were there but weren't counted, especially for those who lost their lives along the way, I think they deserve at least a footnote.

Tom Myers, MD
Grand Canyon Clinic