Fun With History

In an online discussion recently, river historian Roy Webb wrote: “A question just popped into my head regarding Deer Creek, certainly one of my favorite places in the Grand; who first went up there from the river, and how did they know of it? “
I thought it might be fun to try to find the answer. Not only was it fun, but I learned some things I didn’t expect. Here’s how I approached it, and what I learned. I started with a process of elimination.
James White—if you believe his story—floated past here on or about September 4th, 1867 and described how he looked at a stream of water
…about as large as my body that was running through the solid rocks of the canyon about 75 feet above my head, and the clinging moss to the rocks made a beautiful sight. The beauty of it can not be described.
Hiking was not a big feature of White’s alleged trip, and in any event, when he was pulled out of the river at Callville three days later he couldn’t even stand up. So White, even if he did go by here, missed his chance to be the first to discover what’s up above the falls.
Next I looked at the journals kept by George Y. Bradley and Jack Sumner on Powell’s first trip, which passed by here on August 23rd, 1869. Sumner wrote:
Passed 2 cold streams coming in from the north, one of them pouring off a cliff 200 feet high.
Neither Bradley nor Sumner mention any hiking—they were, in fact, racing to get out of the canyon before they ran out of food altogether. So they missed their chance, too.
The next trip down the river was Powell’s 2nd expedition, in 1872. On this trip, Stephen Vandiver Jones wrote in his journal:
Friday, September 6th, 1872 ... made Camp No. 105 on right side just below the mouth of a clear, cold stream, coming from the north. It is the prettiest stream and the coldest yet seen flowing into the Colorado. Fifteen feet wide and a foot deep, it flows from one ledge of rocks to another, not in falls, but miniature rapids. From Beaman’s description this must be the creek that he and Riley visited coming up the river from Kanab Cañon, 15 miles below....
Saturday, September 7th, 1872. Waited for pictures up the creek. Nothing to eat except bread and coffee. Started after dinner and ran rapid after rapid, none of them very bad for 4 miles, when we came to a small clear stream pouring out of the cliff into the river with a fall of about 175 feet. Stopped for pictures. This is the fall—Beaman has photographed and called “Buckskin Cascade.” Ran into the granite 2 3/8 miles below camp and found a narrow, swift river for a mile and a half. Ran this afternoon one of the worst rapids on the trip. Near sunset heard some one halloo on right bank. Pulled in and found Adair, Adams and Joe Hamblin with rations and mail at the mouth of lower Kanab Cañon. The water from the river had backed into the cañon, so ran our boats up 300 yards and made Camp No. 106 on right side of the Colorado and in Kanab Cañon.
Sunday, September 8th, 1872.... The view at the mouth of Kanab Cañon is grand, but gloomy. The walls 2000 feet high and very narrow. Silence and solitude reign. Numerous signs of the visit of the miners last spring. Thousands of dollars were spent here to no purpose. This evening the Major told me that owing to the shattered condition of our boats and the high stage of the water that we would leave the river here.... So tomorrow morning we bid the Colorado good-bye and start for Kanab.
When they camped on Friday, September 6th, Jones was mistaken about where they were: Tapeats Creek was not the place Beaman had visited. But obviously, Powell’s men already knew something about the area, and the next day, on the 7th, they found “Buckskin Cascade”—today’s Deer Creek Falls—which they recognized as the waterfall that Beaman had photographed.
E. O. Beaman was the photographer who had accompanied Powell’s river trip down the Green and Colorado to Lees Ferry in 1871. But what was he doing taking pictures at Deer Creek before Powell’s 2nd trip got there?
Jones’ next journal entry provided the necessary clue when he mentioned “the miners last spring.”. E.O. Beaman left the 2nd Powell expedition in February, 1872, while it was wintering in Kanab, Utah. This was just before the ill-fated “Kanab Creek Gold Rush” which was set off when, at Powell’s request, some packers investigated Kanab Creek as a possible resupply point for his river expedition, and reported finding some colors from gravel they panned at the river. A couple months later, as miners poured into the canyon, Beaman headed down Kanab Creek to check out the excitement.
Expedition leader John Wesley Powell also kept a journal on that 2nd trip, and here’s what he had to say on Sept 7th, 1872:
Spend forenoon in exploring Tapeats Creek below. Tis a deep gulch in wall of trap. Find Shinumo Ruins. Come down after dinner to cataract. Make Picture. Climb over into Surprise Valley. Run down to mouth of Kanab.
This wasn’t all that informative, so next I looked at the “official” history of the expedition, written by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, and published years later under the title “A Canyon Voyage”, where I read:
...as soon as we launched forth after dinner, we began to look longingly for the mouth of Kanab Canyon and the pack-train. The river was much easier in every respect, and after our experiences of the previous days it seemed mere play. The granite ran up for a mile or two, but then we entered sedimentary strata and came to a pretty little cascade falling thru a crevice on the right from a valley hidden behind a low wall. We at once recognized it as the one which Beaman had photographed when he and Riley had made their way up along the rocks from the mouth of the Kanab during the winter. We remembered that they had called it ten miles to the Kanab from this place, and after we had climbed up to examine what they had named Surprise Valley we went on expecting to reach the Kanab before night.”
Now Powell’s entry was beginning to make sense. After dinner (“bread and coffee” for the mid-day meal), the expedition left the vicinity of Tapeats Creek and shortly arrived at Deer Creek Falls—the “cataract”that they photographed—before climbing up to “Surprise Valley.” Afterwards, they continued the rest of the way down to Kanab Creek for camp.
But what’s this about “Surprise Valley?” Today that’s a long hike to be doing on a nearly empty stomach, especially on an afternoon where you’re also boating all the way from Tapeats Creek to Kanab Creek. To find out, I looked in Dellenbaugh’s other book, “The Romance of the Colorado River,” thinking I might find more details. I didn’t, but I did find one of E. O. Beaman’s photographs, a picture of what we call “Deer Creek Falls.” The caption reads: The Outlet of the Creek in Surprise Valley, near the Mouth of Kanab Canyon, Grand Canyon
Could if be that Beaman’s “Surprise Valley” was really the Deer Creek Valley? After all, someone hiking upstream wouldn’t see any valley from river level, and if they climbed up past Deer Creek Narrows they’d probably be surprised when they looked down into Deer Creek Valley.

In 1874, Beaman published an article about his adventures on Powell’s second expedition, and explorations in and around the area of the Grand Canyon, including his visit to the mouth of Kanab Creek during the “gold rush.” After describing his trip down Kanab Creek to the Colorado River, he wrote:
The day after our arrival I visited a mining camp, of which one John Riley was chief... Expecting to find them hard at work “panning out,” we were somewhat surprised to find only one person in camp, Riley having gone up the river a week previously with a small rocker to work a newly-discovered flat, and the others of the company being absent on a “prospecting trip.” Near the place was a water-fall of three hundred feet into the river from a lateral gulch called Marble Canyon.
As the scenery was reported fine, I resolved to visit it; and so, shouldering my camera, I started, with one assistant, for a ten-mile climb over limestone and marble bowlders. I found the cataract fully equal to the description given of it. The walls rise perpendicularly five hundred feet, and the fall is unbroken and magnificent.
....
We had now advanced one mile up the river from the Buckskin Cascade, as I named the fall, but, before retracing our steps, we determined to go on over the shelf, and, if possible, explore a strange fissure we had observed in the wall of the cañon. Expecting to find a narrow gorge or chasm, what was our surprise and wonder at suddenly emerging into a lovely valley, flower decked and verdant! In its centre stood a grove of young cotton-wood trees, through which flowed a limpid stream of water, fed by a dozen springs gushing from the foot of the mountain. Almost involuntarily we named this Surprise Valley, although paradise it seemed to our rock-wearied eyes. Bent upon enjoying the “good the gods had provided,” we scrambled down the mountain, and under the shade of the cotton-woods enjoyed the refreshment of sleep and food.
The valley, or mountain-basin, as it really is, is a half-mile wide and two miles long. It is the outlet of a gulch, and is surrounded by mountains three thousand feet high. The summits of these mountains are covered with eternal snows, and greatly resemble the glaciers as seen from the valley of Chamouni. On the river-side a wall of slate and sandstone rises to the height of eight hundred feet, and through this a mountain-stream has cut a narrow channel or crevice, from which a lateral crevice cuts through to the river—a distance of three hundred yards—from which there is a beautiful view of the Colorado. The stream, running through the lower crevice, drops down in gradual cascades until it makes the final plunge, where it is precipitated into the river in a sheet five feet wide by a fall of one hundred feet drop. Because of its serpentine course, I was unable to take a picture giving the entire crevice, and was obliged to content myself with taking views at different points. Walking about on projecting ledges, in many places so narrow as scarcely to afford foothold, with yawning chasms beneath us, and the muffled sounds of water running far below confusing the ear, gave photographing a charm unknown to the studios; and, while pursuing our perilous way, a curious archaeological observation was made. In many places the ledge seemed to be formed artificially of stone and mortar, and in one place the impress of a beautiful feminine hand graced the wall. This hand was like a dark blood-stain in color, and was neither carved nor laid on with any material the chemicals would act on. Could it be that this was the mausoleum of some long-extinct race, and this hand so symmetrical and womanly reached out from the eternal rocks to tell the tale of its ossification? Just where two stately cotton-woods flung tricksy shadows over a noisy little cascade, we paused to weave fancies weird and strange around the evidences of generations unknown, who “rolled down the ringing grooves of time,” and left nothing to tell their story.
Our provision now running low, it became necessary to get back to the Kanab-Cañon as expeditiously as possible, and, rather than climb the rocks, we determined to sail down the Colorado on a raft. Having constructed a float, it was found not sufficiently large to carry two; and my companion, preferring the overland route to the water, started on foot, leaving me to solitary navigation. In three minutes after pushing off, I had run a terrific rapid, and in less than an hour reached camp, a distance of twelve miles.
In company with Mr. Samuel Rudd, I again climbed over the cliffs into Surprise Valley. After remaining for two days in the valley, during which time I was busy with the camera, we returned to the deserted rendevous at Kanab Cañon...
And he concludes his account by mentioning that he reached Kanab again on the 10th of May, 1872. Powell’s 2nd river trip didn’t leave Lees Ferry until mid-August, so there was plenty of time to find out all the details of Beaman’s adventure, and look at his pictures.
I’ve quoted at length from Beaman’s description, because—in addition to the wonderful prose and quaint spelling—he managed to answer my questions and throw in some other interesting information besides. His description of “Surprise Valley” is unmistakable, it’s what is known as “Deer Creek Valley” today. So it was the men of Powell’s second expedition who were the first to climb up there from the river, on September 7th, 1872. They had heard about it from E. O. Beaman, who in turn had learned about it from the would-be gold miners. While the miners may have wasted thousands of dollars “to no purpose,” a few of them must have gone home with unforgettable memories of Deer Creek.
But that’s not all. At the end of the second Powell expedition, the water in the Grand Canyon was running high enough to row 300 yards up Kanab Creek to camp. The only time I’ve done anything like that, it was running 50,000 or 60,000 cfs. Another interesting item: at this point on the 2nd trip, they were reduced to eating meals of “bread and coffee”—not much different than the first trip.
And how about this: in late April, or early May, in 1872, the snow covered cliffs above Deer Creek Valley resembled a scene in the French Alps! Even allowing for some artistic elaboration, that’s remarkable. I’ve been to Deer Creek in early May each year for a quarter of a century, and never have seen anything to match that. Global Warming today, perhaps? Or just a late, bad, winter in 1872?

Drifter Smith