Them Old Boats

The Grand Canyon Historic Boat Project is powering downstream. In July we moved three old Galloway-style boats—the Julius Stone boat, Emery Kolb’s Edith, and the usgs boat Glen—out of harm’s way in the old Visitors Center open courtyard, to a clean, weatherproof workshop. Conservationist Brynn Bender headed up a team including nps personnel Jan Balsom, Colleen Hyde and Kim Besom, with volunteers Barbara Powell and Rich Turner. For two painstaking weeks they gingerly cleaned them and brought them back to a luster they had not seen in decades. The next step for these craft will be full stabilization. Meanwhile three boats await movement to the cleaning shop: Norm Nevills’s WEN, The Esmeralda II (the first motorboat through the Canyon), and P.T. Reilly’s Music Temple. At the same time we are designing permanent inflated bladders to preserve the historic raft Georgie. We expect significant progress along these lines by the time you read this story.
Marine architect Todd Bloch, who drew up the lines for the WEN, came out this fall and took extensive measurements of the three Galloways. His architectural line drawings should be ready before Christmas. This important step both preserves the lines of these historic craft, should anything happen to the boats themselves, and will be a great boon to those of us that may want to build a reproduction. (I am champing at the bit.)

We are well into our fund-raising efforts to finance the full stabilization of these craft. The cleaning is affordable; the stabilization is very pricey. And the cost of our long-term goal of getting these boats back into a new, accessible interpretive display worthy of their significance will be extreme. We need your involvement, we need your ideas, and we need your money. Next season we will be asking you all to carry the message to your passengers. Until then, send us your ideas, the ways you think you can help, and of course, your money. We are tax-deductible, and the end of the tax year draws nigh!
We now have posters on sale to benefit the project. Mary Beath designed these beautiful 4-color posters, printed on very heavy stock. They not only help you to spread the word, but are a great piece of art, and will help support this project. They are going for the bargain price of $15 plus $5 postage. T-shirts will be coming soon. Think Christmas presents!
We cannot overstress the importance of this project. We are preserving the very heritage of our community, the story of boating in Grand Canyon. It matters not if you have allegiances to commercial or private, oar or motor, rubber or wood—this is the story of how we came to be here. Please spread the word and add your support.

Brad Dimock

Grand Canyon Historic Boat Project
c/o Grand Canyon National Park Foundation
625 North Beaver Street, Flagstaff, Arizona 86001
928/774-1760 fran@gcnpf.org