tis reed marston was and is the preeminent historian of the Colorado River and its tributaries. No one before or since has amassed together the amount of material dealing with that subject as he did (see entry 1980 herein describing the Marston Collection).
Biographic sketches of “Dock,” as he was called, can be found in several sources, most notably in his 1976 interview for the Utah State Historical Society. Suffice to say here that he was born February 11, 1894, in Berkeley, California, and lived there in the San Francisco area the entirety of his life, until his death on August 30, 1979. Unlike some historians in their “field,” Dock was intimately acquainted with and had a close, personal knowledge of his subject, the Colorado River and its tributaries. From his first trip on the river, through the Grand Canyon in 1942, he spent the next thirty-plus years traveling its stretches in nearly every type of craft imaginable, and at many different seasons and stages of water. And in the last 37 years of his life he accumulated literally everything that he could in his chosen field.

Some of Dock's contemporaries have criticized him as over-bearing, egotistical, and on occasion, down-right rude. At times he was most likely all of those, but he certainly does not stand alone in that regard. Many people who devote practically all of their adult lives, at least, to a particular subject seem to develop a rather possessive and proprietary attitude about it. In this respect, Dock was no different. But the fact remains that he was and is the foremost authority on Colorado River history.

For gathering such a massive amount of material, or perhaps because of it, Dock himself wrote comparatively little about the river. In my several years of searching I have discovered but 28 items that he penned. Five of these are unpublished manuscripts, while three of them are written transcriptions of audio-recorded interviews. The remaining twenty are articles that appeared in various periodicals and books. Perhaps Dock himself explained this best in a 1964 interview: “I've avoided articles because while you (Francis P. Farquhar) advised me some time ago that I ought to get a few things into print in order to become known, at the same time I find that the writing of articles does take time, so I've tended to avoid them. [But] if anybody comes in and really wants one I'll write it.”

Dock was not a great writer, literarily speaking. Many of his articles have a “wham, bam, thank you ma'am” aspect to them that always reminds me of the signature statement used by police detective Sgt. Joe Friday on the old television series Dragnet: “Just the facts, please, just the facts.” But Dock was not writing to win any literary awards, he was writing to present the facts on a particular topic and to educate a select number of the reading public. And to that end he certainly succeeded.

The following is a chronological listing of Marston's 28 works, where they were printed or can be located, and a short synopsis of what each is about. (Not available online, see hard copy available at GCRG -GCRG webmaster)

Jim Knipmeyer