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 ell, I guess all this starts in 1903, when my dad [Rod Sanderson] was born. But in 1929, he went to work for the Bureau of Reclamation. Of course that was during the Depression, so he had a pretty good job—irrigation engineer—out of college. We went to Rivers, Arizona, during the Second World War. That’s when they rousted up all the Japanese and put ’em in prison. That was just north of Casa Grande about thirty miles…Rivers, Arizona. We was there ’til the war was over. Then they sent Daddy to Saudi Arabia to teach those Arabs how to grow crops, ’cause he was an irrigation engineer. Of course he got acquainted with King Ibn Saud who was the king then. He taught ’em how to irrigate crops and stuff. I think the first crop they grew was carrots. He sent a truckload in to the king there. And the king, a week later, sent a messenger back—a runner—and told my dad he was out of camel food. So the government sent a cook over there, to teach him how to cook all these vegetables.
But after he got back in ’52, I think, that’s when the Bureau sent him up here to start investigatin’ the dam sites. And this is where he started, right here at Glen Canyon Dam. That lasted a couple of years. Then on down to Marble Canyon, a couple of years down there; and Bridge Canyon.
Steiger: Was there even a town here [Page, Arizona]?
Sanderson: No, it was called Manson Mesa. I didn’t move here until 1956. In fact, it was still called Manson Mesa at that time. But the bureau had started puttin’ in some temporary trailer houses. In fact, my oldest brother, Larry, and myself was the first ones that moved here—just about this time in 1956. We was the first guys that ever made residence here. It was a lonely place. There wasn’t no bank or nothin’. No hospital.
But in getting back to this river operation, I think it was 1953 when Dad was investigating the Marble Canyon dam site—this Dock Marston came through in an oar boat; and he didn’t know anything about the rapids, so he got Dad to go down the river with him a ways, and show him how to run these things. That’s how he got started. Dock Marston got these power boats. He told Dad if he took him down the river three years, he could have all the equipment. And Dock Marston would only take about—well, they had three boats, and he’d only haul four passengers, so [Dad] could haul three passengers. I remember one year was…Mr. Ballard-Atherton, and he was president of the Hawaiian Telephone Company. He went down. Like you mentioned a little bit ago, what was his name from Prescott?
Steiger: Dr. Euler.
Sanderson: Euler. Yeah, we took him down a couple of years.
Steiger: And so Dock Marston had funded, had built those—these are those boats we looked at, these three power boats here?
Sanderson: Seth Smith built ’em down in Phoenix.
Steiger: Dock Marston paid him to do that?
Sanderson: No, they just give it to him. In fact, Evinrude give him the motors. Didn’t cost him a dime. Because there hadn’t been any power boats down the river, and they wanted to test this stuff out.
Steiger: When your dad was workin’ for the Bureau, he’d already been boatin’ down there. What kind of boats was he using then?
Sanderson: Just a little sixteen-foot with probably a fifteen horsepower Evinrude.
Steiger: And he’d go both ways, up and down, with that?
Sanderson: Not very far.
Steiger: Not very far up.
Sanderson: One rapid to the other. You know, between Marble Canyon. But everything that he used down there was hauled down a cableway—two cableways, actually. They lived on the inner gorge. The cook actually lived up on the rim—the cook and his wife—and he’d come down every mornin’ on the first cableway, cook their dinners, stay there all day. Then his wife would pull him back up.
Steiger: There must have been some kind of big ole’ motor winch deal?
Sanderson: No, actually they used a pickup. She’d hook the long cable on the ball of the truck, and she’d back down until the cable got slack, and she knew that he was down. And then they had a time where five o’clock or somethin’, she’d hook the cable back on the pickup, and she’d start pullin’ him back up. When he got to the top, he’d lock the brake or whatever.
Steiger: Well, now, that was from the top down to the middle?
Sanderson: Yeah, down to the inner gorge.
Steiger: There were two runs of cable, is that right?
Sanderson: Yeah, from the inner gorge down to the river…
Steiger: …was another deal.
Sanderson: Yeah. I don’t know exactly how that worked, to tell you the truth. But they all lived in tents there on the inner gorge. I remember the story goes that the cook up there took all those guys’ per diem checks into Flagstaff and bought the groceries and brought ’em back. That’s what they ate on. He’d take ’em down there, and they didn’t have any refrigeration at that time, so they had to buy groceries quite often. One day the cook got in his chair, cable cage, and he thought his wife had the thing on the pickup, so he let go of the brake.
Steiger: Oh, no!
Sanderson: And the way Dad tells it, she was just gettin’ ready to hook it up, when it jerked out of her hand. And he slammed on the brake. She had to back up the pickup. And she was gettin’ ready to hook it on again, and he let off the brake. Well, this happened about three times. Finally, she got it hooked up, and she pulled him back up. They got in the pickup and hooked up their trailer and they left.
Steiger: That was it! (laughter)
Sanderson: So here all these guys was down there, they had to do their own cookin’. They’d draw straws or somethin’ like that. Everybody took their turn. I don’t know, somebody said something about, “Whoever complains about my cookin’ is gonna cook next.” So this one dude, he cooked a bunch of beans, and he put about a pound of salt in those things. Well, that’s one guy—I don’t want to mention names—’scuse my language, but he tasted those beans and, “[expletive] these beans are salty! But that’s just the way I like ’em!” (laughter) He wasn’t about to cook tomorrow.
But from there they went on down to Bridge Canyon. And of course their theory was at that time—the Bureau of Reclamation—was they would have Glen Canyon and Marble Canyon and Bridge Canyon. They would all be lakes, all the way down to Lake Mead—like from here to Lees Ferry, fifteen miles of river, dependin’ on the lake level.
What else do you want to know?
Steiger: Well, back to Dock Marston. I interrupted you. You were sayin’ that Dock Marston promoted these boats. They were built by Seth Smith, and then Johnson gave ’em the motors?
Sanderson: Evinrude. The first ones, I don’t remember, they started out with two sixteens, and then two 25s the next year. And then they gave him motors for three boats, two engines on each.
Steiger: Was that so you’d have a spare if somethin’ [went wrong]?
Sanderson: No, we had a spare down in the hatch.
Steiger: But it was two anyway? I wonder why two, instead of just one big one.
Sanderson: They didn’t make ’em that big that was waterproof. When I was in high school, Dad bought a hydroplane for me—racin’ boat. It was an Evinrude, 33 horsepower. Had a big ole’ flywheel on the top, and had to wrap a rope around that. A four-cylinder. Wide open. Had to crank that thing. It only had forward speed, no reverse. So you had to make sure your boat was pointed out into the river.
Steiger: It didn’t have a neutral or anything?
Sanderson: No. Direct drive. You had to have it pointed out, where you wanted to go, before you pulled that thing. I remember one time I was settin’ in front there, steering it, [Dad] pulled that thing and it just fired right off, and he fell over the motor, and the flywheel was chewin’ him in the chest, and he had both arms over all the spark plugs. Oh! that was exciting! Of course he killed the engine, ’cause he just shorted out the whole thing.
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Bill Sanderson is one of the brothers of Sanderson Bros. Expeditions, a venerable and glorious old company which has since evolved into a large part of Wilderness River Adventures. Bill’s dad—Rod—was a true pioneer of river running in Grand Canyon and, come to think of it, so was Bill, along with his brothers Jerry and Larry, and their good friend Bill Diamond (not to mention all their wives…who did quite a bit of the work too back then, if several reliable witnesses from the time are telling it straight). The pioneer aspect is no surprise, of course. Sandersons have been doing that stuff for generations: Bill’s great granddad, Roy, at the age of eleven… “witnessed the gun battle of the Earps and Doc Holliday with the Lowry brothers and Billy Clanton in Tombstone. Roy recalled running to the scene with his father when they heard the sound of shots and seeing his father stoop over the body of Billy Clanton to exclaim, ‘He fired three shots after he was hit in the heart.’”
This interview took place in December, 2004, courtesy of a grant from the Grand Canyon National Park Foundation’s Historic Boat Project.
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Steiger: Boy! What was Dock Marston up to? Was he just runnin’ the river for fun?
Sanderson: Well, he’d been oarin’ the river.
Steiger: With Nevills he started that?
Sanderson: Norman Nevills, [Martin] Litton—he knew all those guys. I really didn’t know him that well. Hell, I was just in high school. Him and his wife would come from—I think they lived in Berkeley, California. And we was livin’ in Needles at the time.
Steiger: So that’s where you went to high school, was Needles?
Sanderson: Yeah, I went to freshman and sophomore [years] there.
Steiger: And drove the power boat down there?
Sanderson: Yeah.
Steiger: So comin’ up here, your dad ran those three trips for Marston?
Sanderson: Yeah.
Steiger: And then got those boats?
Sanderson: Yeah. And then he just give him the whole load. And we run ’em for, oh—well, Dad died in ’64. Hell of a thing. He put in his thirty years with the Bureau of Reclamation, retired, and only lived six months after that. Hell of a retirement. He got cancer on not the lobe, but whatever that part of the ear is.
Steiger: Skin cancer?
Sanderson: Yeah. They cut it off, but they didn’t get it all. It went down into his lung. He was takin’ those cobalt treatments, and he kept tellin’ that doctor, “My left arm is sore.” The doc told him, “Well, that’s kind of normal, ’cause that’s pretty high radiation.” We was there at a family deal and all my uncles was there—Dad’s brothers. There was five boys in the family there. Uncle Bill, he was next to the youngest, he smoked cigars, and he give Dad one. Dad took a puff off of that, and he damned near choked to death. And when he went through one of these radiation treatments, he told the doctor, “Boy, I liked to choked to death.” “Well, let me give you a chest X-ray.” And that’s when he found out that he just—his lungs was just saturated. Give him six months, and he barely made it. He wanted to go down to Cholla Bay where we had the cabin, but Jerry and I—you’ve met Jerry, of course—we talked him into stayin’ there in Phoenix. And we got Helen over from Fullerton—the oldest daughter—she was a registered nurse. She took care of the guy for six months ’til he died.
I was workin’ for Lucky Ditch Liners in El Centro, California. We put in concrete ditches for the farmers, and we just happened to be over in Glendale, I think, diggin’ some ditches for the Salt River Project. My next brother, he was two years older than myself—Richard. It was my birthday. Jack Hopkinson and myself was stayin’ in this motel, and Dick stopped by. He said, “Dad just died this morning.” Hell of a note. We went to work anyway—nothin’ you could do.
Steiger: Yeah.
Sanderson: Richard—we called him Dick—see, I was born in ’37, he was born in ’35, two years older than myself. That’s a funny thing about our family, is that Dad died in ’64, Dick died in ’74. He was only forty years old. Bud—Raymond Floyd was his name—he died in ’84. He was only 61. And Mother died in ’94. She was born in ’03, whatever that made it—91 years-old. And when we buried all those guys down there in the cemetery in Page, Jerry says, “Well, I wonder who’s gonna die in ’04?” Well, he just had a bypass, just about three weeks ago.
Steiger: Yeah, I heard. Actually, that’s how come I got here, was I called him. I spoke to him, and he said he didn’t feel up to talkin’ to anybody, and said I ought to talk to you.
Sanderson: I don’t blame him!
Steiger: No, I don’t either.
Sanderson: I know I’m gonna have one.
Steiger: A bypass?
Sanderson: No, I’m gonna die right here on the floor, and they’re gonna load me in the trunk, haul me to Kanab and give me a haircut. Well, actually, they’re gonna burn it off.
Steiger: You got it all figured out?
Sanderson: Oh, yeah. I’ve even got my cookie jar in there [to put my] ashes in. And Craig, he’s a pilot, flies one of those twin Otter, high-wing, fixed-gear, two-engine turbo-prop, nineteen-passenger airplane. And he’s also kind of head of the second command out at the airport there at Grand Canyon, South Rim.
Steiger: Is that your son—Craig?
Sanderson: Yeah, he’s the oldest one. He lives on the South Rim. Anyway, it shows what Craig does.
Steiger: Oh, yeah, director of operations at Grand Canyon Airlines.
Sanderson: Yeah. But he’s gonna take this cookie jar and fly over Gunsite Butte over there, and he can throw it out.
Steiger: Throw the whole jar out?
Sanderson: Yeah. Well, I bought it at—not Marble Canyon, but goin’ to Flagstaff there. Where is that place right there, by the Little Colorado?
Steiger: Oh, Cameron?
Sanderson: Yeah. And it’s Indian-made, you know. And somebody comes over there by Gunsite Butte, “Oh my goodness, there’s some pottery!” (laughter) So that’s about the end of my story. I only got twelve more days to live, ’cause I’m gonna be the next one that kills the pocket. Hell, I’m already on this oxygen.
Steiger: You just holler if you need to hook that stuff up. We can hook it up right now. You got a nasal deal, one of those nasal canulas?
Sanderson: Yeah. Well, a big tank in the closet.
Steiger: Well, if you get to wantin’ to hook it on there, just holler.
Sanderson: I do when I’m out of breath. Oh, I’ve got…(whistles “whew”)
Steiger: Do you want to hook it up right now?
Sanderson: No. Long as I keep talkin’…It’s when I go to sleep is when my oxygen drops down below…once it gets below 83 percent, then you’re in trouble.
Steiger: Yeah. Well, my dad’s been down to thirteen percent.
Sanderson: Oh, he’s a dead person!
Steiger: Well, he definitely isn’t as good as he was.
Sanderson: This little machine…(chuckles) (aside about oxygen apparatus).
Steiger: On those trips with Dock Marston, did you go on those?
Sanderson: Larry and Jerry and I used to go on ’em all the time. I would go from Lees Ferry down to Phantom Ranch. Jerry would hike in there, and he’d go on down to Whitmore Canyon. And Larry would come in there, and he’d make the third part of the trip.
Steiger: Was that just to split it up, or was that ’cause you guys couldn’t be out of school any longer than that?
Sanderson: Well, they couldn’t haul that many passengers.
Steiger: So your dad wanted to spread it around?
Sanderson: Yeah. And each place, like at Phantom Ranch, we’d take on a hundred gallons of fuel, and they would haul that down on mules. At that time, I think fuel was only 38¢ a gallon, but it cost $1.00 a gallon to get it down. Chet Bundy would deliver us a hundred gallons [at Whitmore Wash]. He’d haul that down on horseback. In fact, I think the second trip we took, he took a couple of fifty-gallon barrels in there, and he’d run it along—he had a half-inch hose like that, black plastic hose down there. And we had all the jerry cans settin’ out there, and he started siphoning one of those barrels, and when it got down to the bottom, 3,000 feet, there was so much pressure, we couldn’t hold the hose. So we flagged him off, and he pulled the hose out of the barrel. So we wasted thirty gallons of it. So he had to haul some more down on horseback.
Steiger: Hose didn’t work?
Sanderson: No. Wasn’t no good a’tall. I think the next year it did work, but where it come out of the barrel, he drilled some holes in it, so it was suckin’ a little air at the same time, and that slowed the pressure down a whole bunch.
Steiger: I vaguely remember that line, even when I started. He left it there, didn’t he, that line that went all the way down there?
Sanderson: Yeah.
Steiger: It’s not there now.
Sanderson: Well, the sun just destroyed it, you know, and it fell all apart.
Steiger: What was it like drivin’ a boat your first time down the river?
Sanderson: Well, it wasn’t that big of a deal, because I’d been drivin’ boats since I was out of grade school.
Steiger: Down there at Needles, on the river?
Sanderson: Yeah, on the Colorado River. Every year—well, I think twice a year—I used to take a trip down to Lake Havasu on this hydroplane and boat race, back at Needles. And there’d be thirty boats, something like that—just young kids like me. It was weird, ’cause you was all by yourself—took you about three hours. And I won twice, I think, out of four years, or somethin’ like that. But the old boat got too…Well, the original name of it when my dad bought it there in, I think, ’52, was Mr. Spinach. After I’d flipped that thing three or four times, he renamed it Bottoms Up.
Steiger: You flipped it?
Sanderson: Oh, yeah. It would just go airborne.
Steiger: And then up and over?
Sanderson: Yeah, over backwards. It’d get airborne. Heck, I was doin’ sixty miles an hour with that thing. It’s only a sixteen-foot hydroplane. Had big wings on the outside like that. It wanted to fly, instead of go on the water. And the water’d get so rough sometimes it’d start skippin’. And then all of a sudden (whistles) right over backwards like that.
Steiger: How would you survive that?
Sanderson: We didn’t even know what seatbelts was in them days, or canopies. It was all open, no windshield. (whistles)
Steiger: Did you have a technique for when it went over backwards?
Sanderson: I didn’t even have a life jacket.
Steiger: What did you do?
Sanderson: Just dove underneath and come out and climbed up on the deck—you know, on the bottom—wave for somebody to come by, help you out. That’s all you could do. Those was—well, I’d like to say the good ole’ days, but they wasn’t so good, really. We didn’t have any safety features—nothing like you got nowadays. And it wasn’t so dangerous. These things go 200 mile an hour, you know, and they blow up.
Steiger: On the Grand Canyon, if you had three boats, and you took on a hundred gallons at Phantom and at Whitmore, that’d be thirty gallons to a boat. So that means, if I’m doin’ the math right, it’d be ninety gallons a boat just to get through there. Is that right, does that make sense?
Sanderson: Well, you have to figure we always went through the flood stage. Daddy’s birthday was on June 6.
Steiger: So you wanted the water high.
Sanderson: Oh, yeah, you always hit the flood stage. That water would be goin’ 25–thirty miles an hour. Your boat was doin’ 25 or thirty. You was doin’ sixty miles an hour. Well, it’s only 86 miles to Phantom Ranch, and you wanted to take four days, so you could only run four hours a day, and then the rest of the day you did hikin’. Them days, we didn’t have any ice coolers. We didn’t take beer or pop. The only thing we had was like a little pill. And I don’t think they make ’em anymore. They was called Fizzies. It was like an Alka-Seltzer, and kinda sweet, like orange juice. You’d dip up this muddy water out of the river, and you’d drop that pill in there, and it’d fizz up, and all the mud would settle to the bottom, and you could drink the clear water.
Steiger: That stuff settled the mud out?
Sanderson: Yeah. I don’t think they make ’em anymore. I haven’t seen ’em in years and years.
Steiger: So you didn’t have to pack water or worry about settlin’ it, or any of that…too bad?
Sanderson: Well, we did take lime and alanine and aluminum sulfate. That kind, later in the years, I was filter plant operator in Page. That was after they put the coffer dam in, they eliminated the boat job…Byron Daylen [phonetic], he was the head honcho for the Bureau here. He offered me a job at the water plant or at the warehouse, and the water plant paid a little more money, so I took that. And they sent me to school with the filter plant operator and the sewer plant operator to run that. But anyway, I knew how to clear this water up. So we used to take those chemicals down there and dip up a couple of five-gallon buckets of water every night and put the chemicals in. And you had to cover it. Otherwise, in the morning there’d be a couple of rats swimmin’ in it. (laughs)
Steiger: So your first Grand Canyon trip, what year would that have been? Did you say ’56, was that right?
Sanderson: No, no. Dad died in ’64. We started runnin’ the river in these power boats in ’54—1954 when we started runnin’ the power boats. And we kept runnin’ ’em all the way ’til after Daddy died in ’64.
Steiger: Were you doin’ about a trip every year?
Sanderson: Yeah. In ’65, we made two trips. That year, we’d take about six payin’ passengers—pretty expensive. In them days it cost about $800. In fact, that last year, James Arness from Gunsmoke, we scheduled him a trip. But he got tied up somehow on one of his series, and he sent his skipper…He owned a big sailboat, and this gal, Peggy Slader was her name, he sent her instead, to take the trip. We went for ten days. I don’t like to say this, but she weighed about 320 pounds. (laughter)
Steiger: Had to make her sit in the middle.
Sanderson: We went through, I think it was Deubendorff. She was ridin’ in Jerry’s boat. Jerry liked to do everything fast. I mean, full power. He’d just hit the top of the waves. And Peggy flipped up, and when she came down she just broke the whole seat. That’s the reason nobody liked to ride with me, because I’d just go around the wave like that, and nobody had any fun.
Steiger: A little easier on the boat, though.
Sanderson: Oh, yeah. That was my main concern. That year we had a lot of motor problems. Those motors were gettin’ old. We’d mentioned Bob Euler. One year, when he went down, I think we had Uncle Bill and Uncle Buzz—two of my dad’s younger brothers—and Bob Euler. Of course there wasn’t electric start—you know, you had to pull the handle. And Bob said, “I’ll crank this one.” And he cranked one of those motors, and threw his right arm out of joint. My dad jumped on him, taught him how to pull. One of ’em sat on the chest, and the other stretched his arm out like this, pulled it back into joint. Had one foot on his neck, and one foot here. (squerch) The rest of the trip, he wore a sling.
Steiger: But he got it back in place?
Sanderson: Yeah, they got it back into joint. But you know he had to be hurtin’.
Steiger: He must have had it go out before then, for it to go out…
Sanderson: I think so, he had a problem with it before. But he didn’t realize he was gonna pull it out, just startin’ a motor.
Steiger: As it caught, was that it?
Sanderson: Well, I think it kinda backfired or something, jerkin’. But boy, he was wonderful to go with. We pulled in there at Nankoweap one time, and the river kinda goes in a left-hand curve, but there’s a little wash that if you take off to the right, it’s not very deep, but the river goes around this island. We pulled in there, and he said, “There’s some Indian ruins up there I want to look at.” So we went on up there, against the cliffs there. The walls wasn’t very high, folded in. But that whole place was just covered with pottery and arrowheads. We was all just pickin’ ’em up. When we got back down to the boat, Doc Euler had this tarp folded out there. He said, “Okay, girls and boys, let’s see what you got.” We dug in our pockets, threw ’em out there. He went through ’em, “Yeah, you did a good job.” Then he just folded up the corner on the tarp, and he takes it back up on the beach and throws it back on the beach.
Steiger: “You’re not gonna take those with you.”
Sanderson: No. That was Jerry’s motto, of course, all the time. “Take only pictures, and leave only footprints.”
Steiger: That’s a pretty good motto.
Sanderson: Yeah, that was his motto. So you didn’t haul anything out.
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Steiger: So the typical trip was those three boats that are in that picture, and about three people per boat?
Sanderson: Four.
Steiger: What kind of campin’ gear? Did you just cook on a fire? Did you have stoves and like that?
Sanderson: No, no. Pick up some rocks.
Steiger: Tents?
Sanderson: No, we didn’t have tents.
Steiger: Sleepin’ bag?
Sanderson: Sleepin’ bag.
Steiger: Air mattress?
Sanderson: I don’t think they made ’em in them days.
Steiger: So everybody just put their sleepin’ bag out on the sand?
Sanderson: Smooth the sand out, yeah, and just slept.
Steiger: I guess you were goin’ usually in June, so it wasn’t too rainy or nothin’.
Sanderson: It was rainy a lot of times, as I remember. But like I said, we didn’t run that much a day. And we’d fly in some beach and find a cave or somethin’ to hide in while it was rainin’. But it never was cold, you know, in June, so it wasn’t that bad. But I went on a lot of trips. After these boats was over, when I went to work for Jerry in 1969, he had the rubber rafts then—those 33-footers, and him and I used to make a couple of trips a year. The rest of the time, we was in the office or shop. But that was always good times. But a much slower trip—you’d just float or putz along.
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Steiger: How did he end up goin’ from runnin’ the trips in the power boats to startin’ a company?
Sanderson: He was a police officer here in Page. He was actually, I think, a United States Marshal, ’cause he worked for the United States government. One year, in the power boats we took this fella, Joe DeLoge was his name. He called Jerry, and he said, “I want to make a river trip.” Jerry didn’t have any boats or anything. And Larry was still working for the Bureau. So they run down to Las Vegas, and they bought one of these rubber rafts, 33-footers. They took, soon as it’s…’68, I guess, took Joe DeLoge and twelve of his family. And just all of a sudden, word of mouth got out—bam!—next summer everybody wanted to take a trip. It just exploded like that. And here he was, goin’ down, gettin’ more boats down there in Las Vegas someplace. I forget the name of the outfit, but they had all that surplus stuff from the army.
Steiger: Did he have side tubes on ’em right away?
Sanderson: Yeah, they bought those, too. They took that from—I think they got that from Georgie White. She run that type of thing. They called ’em snouts, snout boats. It was all black, you know. We bought a bunch of silver paint. We’d have to paint ’em every trip, ’cause the water’d be muddy. When we got back, they’d be brown, instead of silver. They was a lot of fun. Took a lot of people down the river.
Steiger: Lot of people.
Sanderson: Airline stewardess’s…Well…
Steiger: Yeah.
Sanderson: …You got to know a lot of people. Jerry sold out the company there in ’83, just in time. That’s when we had the big flood. Had to put those four-foot side boards on top of the dam, to keep the water from sloppin’ over. And they was kickin’ out between 80,000 and 90,000 [cubic feet per second]. That’s amazing about that—the lake was full—80,000 or 90,000. When they opened those tubes here a month ago, the best they could get was 38,000. The water’s so low, no pressure.
Steiger: They wanted to do 40,000, and they couldn’t even do that.
Sanderson: No, they didn’t make it. He sold the company to Del Webb, of course, at that time. They hired Jerry as a consultant for a year. And since they incorporated three companies—Fort Lee Company—Tony Sparks, he had the one-day boat trips—and Jerry—downriver. In fact, Tony Sparks used to go down to the Little Colorado and choppered the people out. Then they hired me two years to get all these kids together.
Steiger: And get ’em lined out, yeah.
Sanderson: Yeah. So each one of us knew what we were supposed to be doing. So in ’85, I was gone. And I got a breath of wind. I decided I was gonna go to Hawaii. So I moved to Hilo, where my mother lived, on the big island. And boy, I looked for a job, and looked for a job. I wanted to get into civil service. You’d have to go take the civil service test. There’d be fifty of ’em, and they’d only pick the six highest on the test. I went to three or four interviews—there’d be a dozen Hawaiians, and of course each one of ’em had their own brother-in-law or son-in-law…
You want to know anything about the rest of the river outfits?
Steiger: Well, let’s see, I guess just when you look back on it, you saw this country before the dam, before there was Page. Did you go up Glen Canyon? Did you see that before they filled it up?
Sanderson: Yes. I took a bunch of people, two or three groups, clear up to the Crossing of the Fathers. That’s as far, I think about 35 miles, upriver. They took pictures. That’s where the Mormons come down, you know, and crossed the river.
Steiger: So you did that a few times until they started the diversion tunnel or whatever?
Sanderson: Once they put in coffer dams…
Steiger: Then that was over.
Sanderson: Yeah.
Steiger: Did you put the boats in at Lees Ferry then?
Sanderson: Yeah. We lived in Kanab. We used to drive about every day, down to Lees Ferry. There was a survey party—we surveyed, actually, all the way up the river ’til we got within ten miles of the dam above and below. And then we cross-sectioned every ten feet, all the way down the walls, and even the river, so they knew exactly how much dirt it was going to take, and all this.
Steiger: And they lived at Kanab, ’cause that was the nearest town? That was where you were gonna live.
Sanderson: Yeah. The Bureau built us a little trailer park there. We was just livin’ in like 25-foot trailers—a couple guys per trailer.
Steiger: When you look back at your career on the river, what sticks out for you? Was there a time you could point to, like the best day or the best moment that you had down there?
Sanderson: Well, summertime, of course, was nice. I was thinkin’ about goin’ up to the Crossing of the Fathers. I made three or four trips up there with geologists or Euler. You know, there was a lot of Indian ruins all the way up through there, that of course got covered up by the lake. But that was about the most interesting. I never got above Crossing of the Fathers. But those poor Mormons, it took them six months to cross that river.
Steiger: To lower those wagons down.
Sanderson: And chopped…You could even see where they chopped the footprints in the sandstone so the horses could get up. Then they floated. They went across in the dead of winter, so the water was real low, but they still had to float the things across—the wagons. But that was real interesting, seein’ all the Indian ruins and stuff, and the petroglyphs, where those Indians had carved all those little marks and stuff. That was about the…The rest…it was work—it was.
Steiger: Goin’ down the Grand Canyon was work?
Sanderson: Oh, no, no, I’m talkin’ about workin’ for the government. I had probably sixteen guys down there at Lees Ferry, and I could only haul five guys. I only had an eighteen-foot boat, and a 35-horsepower Evinrude. And I’d take five guys, five miles up the river; come back, get another bunch, tag ’em. That’s what I’m saying—it was work. I’d help some of ’em survey during the day. Then I’d turn around. It was the same thing goin’ back, and we’d jump in the Jeeps, head back to Kanab. There was so many of us, it was like a convoy. We’re talkin’ about fourteen Jeeps, station wagons. There was one time we got to, oh, ten miles out of Kanab, and the cops stopped us at a road block, ’cause we was speedin’ and makin’ too much dust. And this head honcho—Norman Kiefer was his name—he come out of about the third Jeep and he says, “This is a government convoy. Clear the road! We’re going through.” (laughter) Norman Kiefer.
Steiger: From Lees Ferry down, when you look back on that whole experience, your experience of runnin’ the river, is there something that sticks out as being your most memorable time down there—rapid-wise, or just experience-wise?
Sanderson: Well…when I was runnin’ the rubber boats, I don’t know where you come out—Diamond Creek? Did you come out at Diamond Creek?
Steiger: We did for a while. At first we did. But we went down to the lake, too. We went to Pearce’s Ferry, we went to South Cove.
Sanderson: At first, you know, we used to go on the lake. We’d hook the boats together. Holy kadoly, you’re talking six hours down to Temple Bar. And then we finally got the Separation Connection, and that’d haul 36 people. He’d buzz up to Separation Canyon. So we didn’t have any passengers, but run the boats on down to Pearce’s Ferry. That was a son-of-a-gun because it was just the crew that had to roll those things. We didn’t have any passengers. So that took a lot longer.
But that Separation Connection worked out really good. The people loved it. It was only two hours down there. There was one time—in fact, I went down to pick up a trip—the boats didn’t come in, the boats didn’t come in there at Temple Bar. And finally I called the office and I said, “The boats haven’t come in. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon.” Bill Diamond told me, “Better call [Earl] Leisberg.” He had that little airplane out of Las Vegas or Henderson. Well, he come over to Temple Bar and picked me up, and we flew upriver. Sure enough, they was up above Separation Canyon about ten, twelve miles. They was out of gas.
What had happened was, when Jerry had those units built, they had the ice chest—the ice chest and the gas tanks was hooked together. And due to the fatigue goin’ through the canyon, one of the gas tanks corrupted, and it run into the ice chest, and it contaminated all the food. And of course they had run out of gas. So Earl Leisberg flew around them, and they had a radio. They could hear us, but we couldn’t hear them. Earl said, “If you’re out of gas, throw a life jacket out in the water.” And we was watchin’, and all of a sudden thirty life jackets…(laughter)
So we flew back to Pearce’s Ferry, we borrowed a bunch of jerry cans, and we flew up there, just below ’em a ways. He called it Leisberg International, just a sandbar. Lucky to have that. It was a Cessna 610 fixed gear.
Steiger: So you guys landed on the sandbar?
Sanderson: Yeah. It was only about 600 feet long, but it was soft enough that it didn’t take that long to slide to a stop. It was scary.
Steiger: Oh, man.
Sanderson:And we unloaded the gas, and both of ’em got down there [unclear]. But we went ahead and took off. Just barely cleared the damned bushes. Scared the hell out of me.
Steiger: Oh, I bet!
Sanderson: He had to turn over into the water.
Steiger: So that was like a wet sandbar?
Sanderson: It was dry.
Steiger: And that was up above Diamond Creek, or down below?
Sanderson: No, no, it was above Separation Canyon, about twelve miles, somethin’ like that, on the right-hand side.
Steiger: Man, oh man.
Sanderson: Leisberg International. That was before we had Separation Connection. By the time the people got down to Temple Bar, it was a hell of a deal. There was a whole bunch of people that was supposed to go to Las Vegas. We sent the message they only had enough gas to go to Pearce’s Ferry. So I had to send the bus around to Pearce’s Ferry clear through halfway to Kingman. And of course all those people missed their overnight stay. It was a terrible ordeal.
Steiger: Yeah, a big wreck. Oh man. That must have been somethin’ landin’ in there and takin’ off out of there. Boy.
Sanderson: Well, the biggest part was, right there at the end of the bushes at this sandbar, there was a big ole’ granite boulder about, oh, six feet high and eight feet around. I didn’t mind it when we touched ground. I used to smoke cigarettes at that time, and boy, the gas fumes was just somethin’ else in that airplane. Earl said, “Whatever you do, don’t light a cigarette!” (laughter) But takin’ off, of course he had to get clear back as far as…And just before we got to that big ole’ rock, he turned that thing to the left, and we almost hit the water. But he had enough power without the [weight of the] gas and everything, and we made it up. But I’ll never forget that pull-off, I’ll tell ya’. I call it a pull-off, takin’ off a trip. That was about the best experience that I ever had.
Steiger: So runnin’ the rapids is pretty routine, you felt like?
Sanderson: Yeah.
Steiger: I guess those boats, you had a lot of power, huh? The hard-hulled boats.
Sanderson: Yeah, the last ones, in the picture there, are two 35s. Well, like I said, they’d clip along at 35 miles an hour. And we’d always go on high water. That’s before the dam was in. He was doin’ sixty to seventy miles an hour. So you could only run two, three hours a day. Otherwise—well, my dad said one time, “Give me one of those power boats, I could run to Temple Bar in one day.” ’Cause you’d be doin’ seventy to eighty miles an hour, and it’s only 320 miles to Temple Bar. It’d be daylight ’til dark, but he said he could do it in one day.
But we always took ten days, so you could only run a couple hours a day, and then sometimes you’d spend the time—oh, like there at Thunder River and Deer Creek, we’d always spend an extra day there. We did a lot of hiking up the canyons, and stuff like that. We’d always spend a whole night there at Phantom Ranch. That was a luxury part about the trip. We’d rent one of their motels and we had a big dinner overnight there at the restaurant. That was always a lot of fun.
Steiger: I guess it was pretty good while the pool was there.
Sanderson: Yeah, we did go swimming. In the summertime it was nice and warm. I wasn’t on the trip, but Dock Marston, my dad, and I think Mrs. Ballard-Atherton…he was president of Hawaii Telephone Company, Ballard-Atherton, and Bud was his brother. But they pulled into Phantom Ranch and they always used to go up there and rent a motel, and they’d have a big banquet. I don’t know exactly how it went, except that my dad introduced Dock Marston to the people, “This is my daddy.” And when it’d get to that, Marston, he stood up, and, “I want to introduce you to Rod Sanderson. He’s my bastard son.” (laughter)
Steiger: When your dad started you guys out, how’d he go about teaching you guys to run? Did he give you a lot of instruction, or how’d that go? Did he just put you in there?
Sanderson: We just all had the knack…Well, of course I boat raced there in Needles. In fact, that’s how I got the job for the Bureau of Reclamation. I was only eighteen years old, August 1956. Larry, Jerry, and myself, we was workin’ for North American Aviation there in Downey, California. I was just out of high school at the time. And Dad said, “Hey, they transferred me up here to Glen Canyon, to Kanab. You guys want to come up? I’ll get you a job.” Jerry got on. Larry got on as a high-scaler. Dad took me into the office and said, “I’ve got a kid here that is a boat pilot.” He said, “Normally I send all these guys in to get a physical, but,” he said, “you look good enough. You’ve got a job.” (laughter) Hell, I was only eighteen years old. But they needed help. We had guys comin’ from Arkansas and Missouri. They worked for the Bureau, but they shipped ’em out here. They needed over a hundred people to get the show on the road.
Steiger: That was a heck of a thing for ’em to do, to build that dam.
Sanderson: Yeah. $421 million was the bid on it. And they finished it, I think, eight months ahead of schedule, which was good. But it was tough goin’ to start with. We was all livin’ in Kanab. The road was just dirt out here. And we could only get to Wahweap. There wasn’t any bridge across the river at that time. If we had to cross the river, they had to call an airplane, Wright’s Flying Service, out of Flagstaff. They’d come out, pick us up at the airport there at Wahweap, fly us across the river to a little airport clear down here by the school. There was one time it’d rained like heck, and the Buckskin Wash was washed out. We couldn’t get across. So they took us back to Kanab, to the airport, and they got a government plane out of Salt Lake. He flew down in a four-place airplane. We was all settin’ there at the airport. They didn’t want us around Kanab, minglin’ around. So they flew us all out here. And I got out here about eleven o’clock. And about one o’clock, he flew back in, took me back to Kanab. We didn’t get much work done that day. (laughs)
Steiger: No, I guess not! Typical. Well, probably not typical, I guess somebody got some work done somewhere along the line if they could come in eight months ahead of schedule.
Sanderson: There was one thing—you’ve been at Lees Ferry, of course—out there just above the Paria, where the Paria comes in. There’s a big ole’ rock sets out there in the middle of the river. Daddy always said if he could see that rock, he knew that the river was less than 25,000 cfs, and he wouldn’t go in those power boats. I mean, you have those low units hangin’ down, all that weight. But if it was runnin’ over the rock, go for it! (chuckles)
Steiger: Tim Whitney said to ask you about Boulder Narrows. He said you had told him a story about that big boulder down there below House Rock, in the middle of the river. He said somethin’ about you had an encounter with the hole there.
Sanderson: Yeah, I just was in one of them boats in 1957. That was when it was runnin’ 129,000. I snuck around the right-hand side, and I looked down behind that boulder, and there was a whirlpool, I swear, thirty foot deep. Of course power boats had two motors, so he had two throttles. And I crammed on those throttles, and I felt that [expletive] suckin’ me. And finally (whistles) he come out. Otherwise, hell, we’d all have got drowned. But boy, that scared the heck out me.
Steiger: At that level, were there other places like that?
Sanderson: There was—especially below Lava Falls. Well, at that time we went clear to the left-hand side, just kind of snuck around it. Your rubber rafts can go down the right side and go down, bump the rock. But like 205 and 227, Dock Marston, I remember him sayin’, “I’ve never seen anything like this! They were just easy and neat before, but boy, they was bad, really bad crap.” So there was rapids there, the water was so high it was hittin’ these rocks that was comin’ in on the canyons, and makin’ big wakes like that…We always loved, in those power boats—Hermit was our most fun ride. Just big, long waves like that—like bein’ in the ocean. (laughs) But we always used to stop there. We’d go into the cave on the right-hand side, and then we’d hike up to Indian ruins on the left. That was one of our favorite stops.
Steiger: At Hermit? There’s a cave in there?
Sanderson: Yeah, it’s an old mine in there—copper mine.
Steiger: Up above it, on the right? Or no?
Sanderson: Yeah, just up above it.
Steiger: I’ll be darned.
Sanderson: Yeah, on the right-hand side. Very few people stop there, because that’s a fun ride in the rubber boats. But we used to stop there. There used to be—heck, the old prospector had left all his shovels and picks and stuff in there. You had to have a flashlight to go in there, sixty to seventy feet straight back. And I guess he didn’t walk out.
Steiger: I wonder, would you mind just describin’ your dad for me—what it was like havin’ him as a dad, and what he was like—what it was like growin’ up with him, and kinda what he was like on the river. Dr. Euler gave me a little description, but he’s a pretty historical figure, and it sounds like he was an amazing guy.
Sanderson: I was only 32, 31, when Daddy died. All my life…When he got back from Saudi Arabia, I was only about five, six years old. From then on, ’til he died, to me he was Jesus Christ. Most beautiful person I’ve ever known. Everybody loved him. After he got back from the Bridge Canyon dam site, we went to Needles for a couple of years. That’s when I was in high school the first couple of years. And then we moved to Yuma, and Daddy was watermaster there. Had about eight zanjeros—we called ’em ditch riders, workin’ under him, deliverin’ water to the farmers.
Steiger: Zanjeros?
Sanderson: That’s the Spanish word for it, zanjero. They had pretty good Dodge pickups. Of course Daddy couldn’t work 24 hours a day, but these ditch riders had to work 24 hours, and worked eight-hour shifts. The guys at night, they’d run these ditches in these pickups, sixty to seventy miles an hour. Hell, they had their work done in three hours, and then they’d run to the bar. Daddy had all these pickups took into the shop and put governors on ’em, so they’d only do 35 miles an hour. So it took ’em seven hours to make the trip. Oh! they hated him! But that only lasted a few weeks. They realized that they’d been screwin’ up all the time.
When we moved here to Kanab, Daddy was kinda seein’…He was superintendent of O & M, operations and maintenance. He took care of—oh, he was buildin’ the houses, plantin’ the lawns, and all that stuff. They had plumbers and electricians. I remember, Hanks was his name—he was an electrician. And then there was a plumber—can’t remember his name right offhand. Hanks told me one time, “Whatever you do, tell your dad to not stop, because he’ll be pullin’ that plumber out of his ass.” (laughter)
But everybody loved the guy. When he was in college, his junior year—I can’t remember now—but he played football, excellent. He played basketball, football. He was such a good football player that they had an exhibition game down in Phoenix someplace, and they talked him into—this was Christmas day—they changed his name and all this, gave him a hundred dollars. Well, he was so good that everybody recognized him. Well, that screwed him up—turned professional then, you see, so he couldn’t play any more college ball.
Steiger: Oh, ’cause he took that hundred bucks?
Sanderson: Yeah. So that really messed his college up, as far as his sports. I don’t know how they work it nowadays—I think they just give ’em a new car or somethin’. But he loved motorcycles and rode those half his life. Loved huntin’ and fishin’. Boy, anytime we had a chance, if he’d go someplace, he wanted to take all of us kids, even when we had to ride in the back of the pickup. (chuckles) But he always enjoyed us goin’ huntin’, deer huntin’ or elk huntin’ with him. Mom would always go too. She’d buy a license, Dad would get his deer, and then he’d take her license and he’d go get her deer! (laughter) And she’d stay in camp and cook.
Steiger: Was that out on the Kaibab? Would they hunt out there?
Sanderson: Kaibab, and we used to go to Mount Trumbull and up in Lake Mary. Used to go up there for elk huntin’. Big ole’ deer there—used to be—in Mount Trumbull. Know where Chet Bundy lived? We hunted on his land.
***
Sanderson: I went down—one year we had three oar boats, and I talked Jerry into lettin’ me take the fourth one. And I got a couple friends to go.
Steiger: Now, those are the snout boats?
Sanderson: Yeah. I got a couple three of my friends to go with me, and we got down to Phantom Ranch and we had a changeover. Kevin, my nephew…
Steiger: Hoss?
Sanderson: Hoss, yeah. So they pulled over there, and I tried, but I didn’t have any passengers to get off or anything, so I wasn’t really worried about it. And from then on, our boat was named “See you later boat.” (laughter) We finally found a rock down below. We named that Coors Rock.
Steiger: Those boats were hard—those snout boats.
Sanderson: There were several times where—well, my buddy, Craig Pack that I took down, he grabbed one oar and I’d grab the other—give a little more leverage. But you go through those rapids, sometimes you’re fightin’ against it, you know.
***
Steiger: I wonder what else I should ask. What would be a smart question to ask? If you were makin’ a tape for your great-great-great grandchildren, to describe what this was like, what would you say to them, that we haven’t said?
Sanderson: They ain’t talkin’ yet.
Steiger: Yeah.
Sanderson: Did you ever know Jet, did you ever meet him?
Steiger: Yeah. Sure. You betcha.
Sanderson: Gene Steinberg was his name. He always amazed me—I went down the river with him a couple times. The first thing we’d do was do about twenty pushups in the morning when we got up.
Steiger: You’d do ’em with him?
Sanderson: Oh yeah. And then we would run down and work on the motors. And then he’d rush up there and start cookin’ breakfast, but he forgot to wash his hands! [laughter] He was goin’ with Karen Byerly at the time. That was a tragic thing to happen there. I was sure glad to see that statue down there in Marble Canyon with her. Of course she was married to Tim Kazan at that time.
Steiger: Yeah. Catfish?
Sanderson: Yeah, that was his nickname.
Steiger: He was an awful good guy too.
Sanderson: Yeah, I loved him. After we sold the river operation, and Jerry rented the shop out there to the Coconino County College, and the county owns the building right there next door. Kazan, he was the juvenile probation officer at that time.
Steiger: That’s what he became, Catfish did?
Sanderson: Yeah. I used to go over there and have breakfast with him all the time—or coffee…He spent most of his time on Jerry’s houseboat out here, while Jerry wasn’t there.
Steiger: Taking care of it for him.
Sanderson: I went out there to work on one of the motors one day, and I had to get a ride out, you know, a taxi. And there was about ten kids out there on this houseboat. All of ’em was nude. (laughter) Well, I hope your secretary gets her ears full!
Steiger: Yeah, she will. Well, that was quite a group, the whole company. There’s been a lot of really colorful characters that worked for Sandersons. I think of all those guys…Giant, and Hoss, and Schmedley, Catfish, Wolf…All those guys really impressed me…Jet.
Sanderson: Woodard.
Steiger: Yeah, that was Stick, right?
Sanderson: Yeah. And Stacey.
Steiger: Yeah. I guess none of those guys, nobody’s still…
Sanderson: Stick’s a doctor there in Flagstaff. Stacey…I don’t know what he’s doin’—teachin’ school someplace. I always liked that Stacey. He did all our boat painting. Never complained, that guy. I really liked him. I bought a car off of him, Oldsmobile. It was one that Jerry had down at the airport in Phoenix, when he used to fly down there. He finally got tired of paying rent for the thing, so he brought it up and he sold it to Stacey, and I bought it off of Stacey. And I had to go over to the bank. The gal that notarized the papers was Stacey Woodard, which was his brother’s wife. You talk about gettin’ confused! (laughter) That mvd [Motor Vehicles Department] just…They couldn’t handle it.
Well, I’m glad you dropped by.
Steiger: Well, thanks so much for havin’ me.
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