Dan Davis, Sr.
An interview at Grand Canyon River Guides’ Guides Training Seminar—April 1993

Brad Dimock: We’ve got a completely different perspective coming up here on river running back a while ago. This is Dan Davis. He was the first fellow that you might have called a River Ranger. He was a Canyon District Ranger.
Davis: Yes.
Dimock: We’ve got one with the same name, now. What a coincidence!
...Dan was working back before they had any boats, so he had to go down with a lot of the other folks, like Georgie and Gay Staveley and Dock Marston and all. Here he is, Dan Davis. (applause)
Davis: Thank you! I do feel a little embarrassed to be here with so many people like Don and Bob Rigg, and so many others. But it’s sure been a pleasure to be here and meet many of you.
What I want to talk about, it says several different things in several different programs, and none of them are what I’m going to be talking about. What I’m going to be talking about is pretty much the evolution or the beginning of river management in the Park. Some people—and I’m not going to be apologizing for anything, and I’m not going to be bragging about anything, because there are some—I think we heard last night an indication that there might be too much regulation. But that came from Alaska where no one believes anybody can tell anyone what to do. (loud agreement from audience) In fact, they blew up all the National Park Service’s planes in Alaska not too many years ago because they wanted to do it their own way. I’m almost half kidding, Bob, but not quite. But anyway.
Bob Rigg: Can I have one minute rebuttal?
from the crowd: You had your chance last night!
Rigg: ...From the faa standpoint, they always love to say, “Hi, I’m So-and-So from the faa and I’m here to help you.” The same thing happens with the nps, the National Park Service, “Hi, I’m from the National Park Service, I’m here to help you.” Have you ever had that experience? If you haven’t, I’m sure you will. I’m not sure I believe we’re always here to help you.
Davis: I know that, but…
Rigg: You aren’t like that.
Davis: Just a few statistics—and excuse my notes, I didn’t know whether I was going to be talking outside, and I’m kind of geared for talking outside with a podium. A little background of river management: some groups, none of you, really, have criticized the National Park Service because we didn’t start managing the river and coming up with some regulations long before we did. Other groups feel that it’s over-managed, but I’m not going to get too deep either way in that. But on the non-management in the early years, Sierra Club and the lot have really thought that a lot more should have been done. But there’s some statistics that will show the National Park Service’s position. From the establishment of the Park, until the end of 1953, which was about when I showed up, there had only been 41 trips in the whole history of the National Park System. It was made a Park in 1918. Through 1953 averaged 1.1 trips a year. Through that period, and all through the fifties, the National Park Service had, at the most, nine permanent field rangers for the whole Park. That includes the supervisor ranger for the North Rim, Desert View, the Grand Canyon Village, and everywhere else. By 1950 the National Park was getting over a half-million visitors a year, up above, and one party a year coming down the river. So it’s pretty obvious where the priority had to be. Whether they wanted it there or not, didn’t matter, because when you have a half-million people visiting the rim and one boat party a year coming down the river, it has to just kind of take the back seat. …Well, one party a year, you really don’t need to regulate too much. (audience laughs) Of those trips, only fifteen were commercial parties, like most of you represent now, in that whole history of Grand Canyon National Park, through 1953. Again, only fifteen were commercial trips. There were very few commercial operators then: Hatch had maybe just a couple trips, Nevills quite a few, Harris-Brennan had some, and Georgie. Georgie, really, was about the only one that was running every year there after 1953. But the commercial parties really were giving no one any problem. The Park Service, at least they felt—and that was passed on to me when I arrived here—that the commercial parties were all cooperative and no big problem.
Starting in about 1950, a lot of completely unprepared people started coming down. Well, this was after World War II, all over the country: a whole different kind of people started showing up everywhere. Some were absolutely maniacs, some were extremely ingenious and imaginative people. So many of them…well, I’m still talking very few numbers, that started to come down the Colorado River, had no idea what they were getting into, and of these forty-one in that whole history of the National Park, since it was established, ten quit at Bright Angel in a state of panic, because half of them had lost all their food and gear, a couple of them were drowned and never found. So that was the way the situation [was], when I got here.
In 1954, a number of incidents happened that all of a sudden made us think that, really, we got to start watching the river, because the traffic, the number of parties, really started increasing. By 1954, ten came down that particular year, which is pretty wild. That’s at least two parties a month leaving Lees Ferry! (audience laughs) But the real problems—and there were some real problems, and stop me if this is common river lore, but it’s a story that should be, it’s such a horror story, that everyone should be aware of it, and it should be passed on to everyone’s grandchildren and all. The Elmer Purdiman [phonetic spelling] party in 1954, which was really my first year, since I was the newest ranger, they assigned the Canyon to me—not officially, the rest of them really weren’t that much interested, and I really got interested pretty fast in it. But anyway, in 1954, Elmer Purdiman… And as you may recall, last night—I don’t know who, whether it was Gay or who—mentioned that Purdiman is the man that was running a party in Glen Canyon and hit the only rock in Glen Canyon (audience laughs) and the fellow drowned, or swam underwater to Las Vegas or something.
But anyway, the next year, Elmer Purdiman organized a commercial trip to come down through Grand Canyon. He had never been here before. He’d messed around up in Glen. I don’t know if he’d even messed around in San Juan before. But anyway, he organized this trip, and on the trip he had his nephew who was seventeen years old. Does everyone know this story, so I can quit and move on?
Many in audience: No! Start it! Go for it!
Davis: Okay. He had his nephew with him. Again, seventeen years old, that’s big enough to row a boat. But anyway, he promised his sister, the boy’s mother, that he would walk him around the four worst rapids. Well they got to Hance and so he and the boy took off walking. Instead of just walking around the rapid, they got up on the Tonto Platform and three days later, the boy—Elmer hurt his leg on the Tonto between Hance and the Kaibab Trail. So the boy, three days later, showed up at Phantom and reported that his uncle was disabled on the Tonto about a day’s trip east of there. And this boat party of customers on this commercial trip were still sitting above the rapids at Hance! (audience laughs)
So he did have a boatman that assumed command—he’d never been on any river (audience chuckles). So they finally gave up and came through on their own to Phantom. We had to go pick up Elmer Purdiman with a mule and haul him out. Then the boat party finally showed up at Phantom Ranch and they spent a couple of days debating whether to quit or go on. They decided to go on, and did, and got as far as Monument and decided that they’d had enough. The alleged, or so-called “leader” at that time had hurt his leg, and so two of them gave up at Phantom and walked out, and there were still six there when they decided to quit at Monument Creek. They walked out the Hermit Trail, leaving two of them there, because one had busted his leg up. So we had to send a mule down and get him. They abandoned their boats.
Then that was really Georgie’s second commercial trip. She came through and saw these boats there and tied them all together and just cut them loose. They ended up in Lake Mead by themselves. There is nothing more dangerous than boats sitting on a bank waiting for someone to get in and head down the river. But anyway, this really caught a lot of people’s attention that there are potential problems in this river. (audience laughs)
And then the same year—and I happened to be at Phantom both times on these things, because I was living there. In fact, I lived ten days down and four days off to go out and then back down to Phantom for ten days. Anyone I could catch a ride with, I did, because the Park didn’t have a boat. In fact, I would be very reluctant to call myself the River Ranger because the Park had no boa—didn’t have a boat in 1960 when I left, either. (audience laughs) But it’s just as well, because they didn’t have anyone to run it (audience laughs) because we still only had eight permanent rangers and a handful of seasonal. So to put together boat crews, we had no staffing. The only river equipment that I inherited or had when they said I was in charge of the river, was a grappling hook (audience chuckles) which someone years ago… Long before that Boy Scout tried to swim across the year before there at Phantom, they figured anytime there was a drowning, they could go down, really—at Pipe Creek there was a pretty good swirl there at that time—and grapple (audience groans) and maybe that would be the eddy that whoever it was, was in. And two life jackets. They were cork and the canvas was rotten--you could stick your finger right through them. They were big hunks of cork. I don’t think they’ve used those since—I think the Titanic was probably the last (audience laughs) they used cork life jackets. But those were my three items of river equipment. But anyway, that kind of explains why very little attention has been given to the river by the Park, until things started happening that were causing us and them real problems on the Rim. Because this Purdiman thing, God, we had mules going everywhere! (audience laughs) And wondering where any of the people were. But I just can’t imagine that all of you hadn’t heard that story, because this is absolutely true with absolutely no embellishment whatsoever. (audience laughs)
Then the same year, Daggett and Beer swam down. I was at Phantom Ranch when they came through. These are the two that swam down in wet suits and fins, and towed most of the time or rowed on—each of them had two of the…I don’t know if they even have them any more. They were these rectangular, Army surplus, rubber boxes. When they got to Phantom, they tried to tell them they couldn’t go down. One of them was of the Fred Harvey family, and he had more clout than we did. (audience chuckles) And so they really were pretty good. They had done a lot of homework, but not enough. To give you an idea, so many of the people coming down, they were kind of prepared in a way, but Daggett and Beers had decided they might have to portage or go around or hike out, so they decided that golf shoes were the most sensible shoes (audience laughs) in the Canyon, for hiking. Maybe the river trail, which is all sand, maybe golf shoes would be alright. But they tried to walk around the head of Sock, and it took them just about ten feet, trying to…their only other shoes were swim fins (audience laughs) and you sure can’t climb rock with those. They just barely got started trying to get around Sock, and the golf shoes—they hadn’t ever tried them, that was the first time they’d tried them on rocks and all, and it was a disaster. So they jumped back in the Sock, still almost at the head of it, and when they got to Phantom, they had some tennis shoes brought down by Fred Harvey, and both of them gave me their golf shoes! (audience laughs) I don’t play golf, and the shoes didn’t fit, either. (audience laughs and applauds)
Some of the people going down were really brilliant people in some ways, and behind where I lived was my mule corral. There’s my whole staff. I’ll show you a picture of it, with a horse. (audience chuckles) Behind the corral there were more boats and canoes and beat up things, because so many people just abandoned everything. As I said, and it’s very obvious to you, just a loose or abandoned row boat on the beach on Phantom Ranch—or anywhere else—is extremely dangerous, because you don’t know what kid is going to get in it, or what. So all chained together behind the barn were more boats than you can shake a stick at—mainly little tin rowboats from Sears Roebuck, a canoe or two—all the goofy kind of boats you could have. But one that people made fun of, but I was really kind of impressed with him: his name was Jones, Utah Highway Department, and a relative of Bus Hatch. I don’t think it was a close relative. But anyway, he had made this canoe, regular stock canoe, but he had reinforced it—almost armor-plated it—with aluminum, and covered it. And then he had a helmet, a hard hat, that he rigged up with a spotlight.
Dimock: A camera.
Davis: And a camera—he had both.
Dimock: They called him Bucket-head Jones.
Davis: Yeah, that’s who I’m talking about, is Bucket-head Jones. (audience laughs) Does everyone know about this?
Several: No.
Davis: Well his canoe was behind my place. And this hat, he put a camera on his head—he was alone—in the daytime so he could take movies when he was paddling. The controls were rigged up so he could paddle and still take movies. And then at night he switched it to a spotlight so he could run at night, with this big spotlight on his head and paddle and still see where he was going.

I haven’t seen any river maps or charts since 1960, but he made a scroll that was the finest thing I had seen ‘til the time I left. But he was, again, a highway engineer, Utah Map Department—made this scroll of the whole darned river, so you didn’t have to mess around with the sheets and all. I’m sure there are things similar now. So he could do all these things, and see where he was going and what was ahead, and paddle, and take movies, and everything all at once.
He got to Phantom and quit, but came back the next year and finished the trip.
Audience: In a canoe?
Davis: In a canoe, yeah.
Audience: He went everywhere in a canoe.
Davis: But had put a tremendous amount of work in reinforcing it with aluminum. It was a penyang [phonetic spelling] canoe, a short canoe, a fourteen-footer, which is a short canoe.
And you might wonder why we allowed Jones to continue on, why we allowed Daggett and Beer to continue on. One of the biggest problems that faced us all through the fifties was a matter of jurisdiction. Marble Canyon was not part of the Park at that time. The Park boundaries started at Nankoweap, and so there was nobody…Well, there’s a gaging station at Lees Ferry. There wasn’t even a pit privy, as I recall, in those days. Don, I think, showed some pictures—or someone did—where there was just a beach there and the old historic houses. And absolutely nothing else.
Yeah. And so there was no control up there. That wasn’t the National Park Service’s. I suppose Bureau of Land Management at that time. But the Bureau of Land Management at that time did not really manage much. They do now, but they’ve had some chores added by Congress, to their duties. There’s the blm. And this put us in a real jurisdictional problem, because most of the people that would show up at Phantom Ranch…Well, the Park had no control over anybody until they got to Nankoweap, and we sure weren’t going to station someone at Nankoweap or put a submarine fence across there. And so, really, our first contact with anybody was at Phantom Ranch. No, seriously, several went by just because they couldn’t control their craft and land.
But the National Park Service having no authority whatsoever above Nankoweap meant that anybody that wanted to, could put in at Lees Ferry and do anything they wanted. And then when they got to us, it was too late. By rights, some of them, we should have said, “No, you can’t go any further.” But there were other major problems that made it impossible for us to even do that, because the state, at that time, claimed that the Colorado River was navigable, and we were in heavy lawsuits with the Department of the Interior solicitor and the State of Arizona. And this was before the upstream trip was completed. To be navigable, a stream has to be navigable both directions. And when the state and the Park Service were fighting about jurisdiction over the river…
Audience: I thought it was the Coast Guard, that was claiming…
Davis: No, the state wanted it, because they had planned on running power lines, at high water line, down, just like Stanton’s railroad.
Audience: That was before the Coast Guard got in it?
Davis: Yeah. And they wanted jurisdiction just so they could have the right to run power lines at high water line all the way down Grand Canyon. And we, of course, were fighting that. And so no one really knew who owned the—not “owned,” that’s not the right word—but who had the responsibility and authority to do anything on the river during that period. So some of these people that really had no business whatsoever being on the river… Fortunately, most of them that had no business being there realized that long before they got to Phantom Ranch and bugged out. But others did go down, because we didn’t have the authority to say you couldn’t. In spite of that, because of these problems, that year, the end of 1954, I came up with what really was kind of a phony permit system that really had no clout at all. Some of the boat operators will maybe remember it. It was a very, very simple application form, and the only requirements were—and I don’t see how anyone could object—was that on this party, someone had to have gone down Grand Canyon once, anyway. And that was the minimum requirement for that. And then, because there were so few parties on the river, you could be two months stranded without seeing another soul, the other requirement was that you had to have enough boats so that you could completely lose one boat and still take your whole party on out to safety somewhere. And the manifest, or list of passengers. Those are the only three things in this permit. And a lot of people squalled like heck—some of the commercial people. But I still think that was a pretty modest set of requirements for a river like that.
Audience: We’d take that right now.
Several others: Yeah!
Audience: Have you talked to your son? (audience chuckles)
Davis: In many ways, it was way more dangerous then for the parties, because all through the sixties we averaged out about two parties on the river at the same time at any time in the boating season. That’s on the whole 275 or whatever miles it is. Only two parties, or less, on the whole river. So if you were stranded or got in trouble, it could be a month before someone came by. The commercial parties always did notify us—well, one didn’t notify us, but they always made reservations at Phantom Ranch and Phantom Ranch told us. But we would know when all the commercial parties were coming through, but this made it a little more formal: we knew who their passengers were, and things like that, and we knew when to expect them at Phantom Ranch, and when they expected to get out on Lake Mead. The danger there is obvious: when you’re the only party on that whole river from Lees Ferry to Lake Mead, you could have sat there all winter before anyone would have found you if you were in trouble. So I wrote two little—someone told me Staveley still uses them—two little mimeographed booklets, “Escape Routes from the Colorado.” I said, “If you’ve mussed up your gear at Mile such-and-such, that the nearest way to get out for help—because you’re on your own, is… And then I wrote a trail guide that kind of went with this, because again, if they got into trouble, they had to get word to us. At that particular time, there was not one single civilian helicopter in the state of Arizona. There had been helicopter service on the Esmeralda period, but they busted up all their helicopters—in fact, I think there’s probably still some rotor blades up in the Hance Mine area, which was the only place they could land legally.
Audience: I’ve seen that! Still up there.
Davis: That was their base in the Canyon. See, the Hance Mines were owned by William Randolph Hearst, and we had condemned Grandview Point. Hearst owned all of Grandview Point. That was his mill site, the old Hance mill site. And then Hearst acquired that land. It was a very ugly combination to get Grandview. And Hearst was so mad that he—this was a public offer—he would give all of the asbestos mines to any mining company in the country that would go in there and work them, just out of orneriness or spite to us. It was so bad that I got in there with a similometer [phonetic spelling] and went through every one of them, because this was in uranium days. And, God, had there been uranium there, we’d have been really dead. But fortunately, there was nothing but asbestos. I’m rambling, I know, but…
Audience: That’s okay.
Davis: But anyway, these “permits” that we gave to commercial operators weren’t really permits, because they didn’t have the effect of a legal, binding, permit, but it was just our way of finding out who was coming. With the exception of the commercial parties, we never knew when anyone left Lees Ferry, because we had no communications or anything else with them. The first, like Daggett and Beer, the swimmers, a number of other really marginal outfits—the first time we ever knew they were on the river was when they showed up at Phantom Ranch. So they could have been rotting away upstream for months and no one would ever have known it—or we wouldn’t know it.
But anyway, I started to mention helicopters. There was a helicopter, Bob was involved… Well, no, he didn’t go out on it. The people that abandoned the Esmerelda went out on it.
Rigg?: I rode one down there in fifty [1950?].
Davis: Yeah, but that outfit went broke. They busted up all their helicopters. And helicopters at that time were really marginal things. They were Korean War—well, the civilian helicopters were very small Bells. I’ll show you a picture of one. The closest civilian helicopter was in Denver, and it would take two days—they trucked them, they didn’t fly them. (audience laughs)
Audience: That gives you an idea!
Davis: And we did use those helicopters later on when the two big planes… But it’d take two days for them to trailer the helicopter to the Grand Canyon. And there were none that we could get in California, which was a surprise. The military had helicopters: H-19s and H-21s. Both were the basic Korean War helicopter. They would come if there was absolute sign of life, but never for a body. The first bodies they ever came for was when the twa and United planes crashed. And that was the last time they ever came for a body, to my knowledge.
So we had no helicopters available, quick. And so it was to everyone’s advantage to let us know that you’re going down the river. But a lot of people resented that, because that was the government telling you what to do. But as Bob said, “All we want to do is help you.” (audience laughs)
Audience: It hasn’t changed.
Davis: (laughs) Yeah. But the only rejection in the whole… Again, this permit did not have the legality of, you know, like a driving permit or something. So there was only one party that was rejected in the whole 1960s that I was there: Had he left Lees Ferry without telling us, why, he’d have either killed himself or showed up at Phantom Ranch. But this was a guy that wanted to come down in a seaplane without wings. (audience laughs) The wings were off of it. But fortunately, he thought a permit was required and so he wrote for a permit and we turned him down. Really, he could have gone to Lees Ferry and kicked off, and there was nothing we could have done about it.
Audience: Floated on down the river.
Davis: Well, with no wings.
I don’t know whether a hull seaplane or floats, because he didn’t described it—he just said a seaplane without wings.
Audience: Maybe with little oars coming out of the side, instead of wings.
Audience: I think he would have made it.
Audience: …wings back on, and fly it back out.
Davis: It’s hard to say. But I think we said “no,” and he believed us.
Audience: Are those illegal now?
Davis: Seaplanes? I think now the permits would have the effect of law if you were denied a permit—very definitely. But again, we still didn’t even know who owned the river at that time, because, again, the state wanted to run power lines down. The Coast Guard did get into it. We used them on our side in proving that the Canyon was not a navigable stream, and they agreed with us. But again, this was before the first successful upstream trip. That would almost make it navigable, in a marginal way. But by then the dam was…
Audience: Seems like I remember a George Van der…
Davis: He was here way after me. I think he was Chief Ranger or something, oh, ten years after I left.
I did mention one thing that was quite impressive to me: Up until the fifties, every boat party had about 130-140 miles of river that was their, in effect, private river, to do what they wanted, camp where they wanted. Now, with 100 parties at any given time in the summer, each boat party, if you split it up, has two and a half miles per party. That kind of means that you do need to have some control on when people leave Lees Ferry, and a whole lot of other things. But when there were two parties a month, it was great.
I’ve talked way more than I should. Let me show…the slides I have will be repeats of some. I don’t have too many, less than a half tray, and I’ll go through them fast, because I know it’s getting late. These are mainly just quick shots of what it looked like then. Tad and Bob talk about burning driftwood, but they never showed you any real piles of driftwood. (audience laughs) (slide show starts, people move around) This, of course, is the Bright Angel confluence. My cabin is in those cottonwood trees there…