Sanderson and Sparks:Where it all Started
black and the white marble. They said, “If we come up with one white
marble, we’ll take him out.” They were all turned black, and they all voted to
leave him there, and so that’s where Willy Taylor is today. I think that was back in
’56, if I’m not mistaken. It’s been a while.
I didn’t even get involved until I was . . . . I came up to Page, we had
a little boy about two years old—that was old Hoss. He had a problem breathing over
in Southern Cal. So the doc says, “Get that kid over in Page and get him some dry
country.” So we brought him up here and in about three days it just all cleared up.
The doc said, “Hey, get out of here, go to Page, and raise the kid.” So we did.
I come up here and I eventually got in a thing called the Bureau Ranger in those days. Dog
catcher and all that stuff. That goes back a while. That’s when we first began
building the dam.
But Dad was involved with the Bureau of Reclamation many years before. He had
a crew that went down into the Marble Canyon dam site area. I got a lot of old 35mm slides
that show the whole operation, where they run that cable down into the Canyon and how they
brought those big old rafts, tied them together in a barge, put a diamond drilling rig on
the top and went in on a big flood stage. Naturally, in those days before the dam, you get
down… Well, up to 128,000 second feet, which they had in 1957. They had a little bit
more water in 1958. It broke the barge loose, and naturally it went to the side and was
buried. But as you all know, it’s been taken out of the Canyon.
All of you have seen the old Bill Belknap river book, the guide book? Well,
there’s a picture in there that shows the old boat, Bert Loper’s boat, where he
drowned. My dad had a camp about 200 yards downstream—that’s when they was
working on that Marble Canyon dam site area. He had a crew in there, and they’d go in
for ten days, then they’d come out of the Canyon for four. And they worked a
“ten and four” type thing for a year-and-a-half. And it was during that time
when Bert drowned. They never found him, but his boat washed up there, and Dad and his
crew drug that boat up under that mesquite tree and tied it up. That was quite a complete
boat back in the old days. As is most anything down in the Canyon, you know, as more
people get touching it and whatnot, things go. But that was just a little bit of history
down there.
I was fortunate, I was down there where I saw the whole thing–I
can’t remember what color it was. I think it was a light green or something in those
days. It had been there a number of years before I saw it. But it was quite compact–I
mean, everything was there.
Whitney: Tell about bringing the Chinaman in from Flagstaff.
Jerry: My daddy went to Flagstaff, he was trying to find a
cook that would come down in the Canyon and cook for him. He got this one guy that was a
cook, but he also had a drinking problem. But he figured, “Well, we get him in the
Canyon, he isn’t going to be drinking.” And the guy says, “How do we get
down there?” Dad says, “Well, we have this cableway.” He said,
“You’ve got what?” “It’s a big bucket on it. We’ll put you
in the bucket and we’ll just let you down.” And Dad bought him a bottle of
whiskey, got him feeling pretty good, and told him what a great guy he was. He said,
“I’ll take it.” (audience chuckles) In those days that cableway from the
top of the Outer Rim, it goes down and it went down to the Lower Gorge. And then
that’s when you got off and then they had another cableway that went from the Outer
Gorge right down to the river. That was a steep one. And it went across the river. And
they had this barrel on the thing, and this guy had this big compressor and a pulley and
all this, and he just let him down. He could also freewheel it—just kick the brake
off and let it go, and it’d get pretty exciting. (audience chuckles) The guy got down
there and he looked over down that Lower Gorge and “Nah,” he said, “I
quit.” (audience laughs) So Dad broke out another jug of booze, they sat down and had
a party. “Yeah, I’ll try her.”
Well, we had this young kid there running this compressor. He got him in this
barrel, and he was hanging on, and he said, “Cut her loose and let me down.” He
started down, and he just kicked the brake off. That thing come wheeling down there, and
just the smoke was a-going. Although he knew just when to put the brake on, so it
didn’t hit the wall. (audience laughs) This cook was sober when he hit the bottom!
(audience laughs) He said, “You ain’t taking me out of here! I’m gonna walk
out!” (audience laughs)
But you can see remnants of it, the cable is still hanging
down—there’s one strand of it. The strand that you see is the cable that you
could pull up and down. You didn’t see the main cable—that was taken out. At
that time, it was one of the longest single-strand cables ever erected in the world. It
started from the Outer Rim and went down. That was the long one. It took them quite a
while to put that in.
Whitney: How did Rod get in the business?
Jerry: Okay, when Dad was down in the Canyon working on that
dam site project, Joan Staveley—is she here?
voice in the crowd: No, she’s not.
June Sanderson: Did she leave?
voice in the crowd: Yeah, she snuck in, she snuck out.
Jerry: Well, you’ve heard of the old cataract boats.
Norm Nevills come down, and he stopped in and he’d spend a day or two with Dad at his
campsite. In those days it was quite flexible. He had one of the boats he just had a
boatman in. He said, “Rod, why don’t you take some annual leave, jump in the
boat and make a trip with me?” So my dad did. That’s where it all started. He
said, “Man, this is crazy! I gotta do this more!”
…The old days of river running were a lot different than today. In those
days we didn’t have many regulations.
June: None.
Jerry: If we wanted to build a fire on the beach, we’d
just go out and tear out some wood (chuckles) and just build a big fire and have fun.
Well, it wasn’t too long before we realized that the Grand Canyon has a real fragile
environment. And we found out we’d better start taking care of it. Thank you very
much (aside about beer)…
June: Wait a minute, I have to interject here, okay?
Jerry: Jump in!
June: You guys think that. . . . (to Jerry) And don’t
go away, because you’ve got to tell the rest of the story. And by the way, I’m
June Sanderson, I’m Jerry Sanderson’s ex. He sold me to Del Webb, and they sold
me to ARA. I’m up for grabs! (audience laughs) Okay? If the price is right, call me.
Okay, when we first started. . . .
Jerry: How much of that have you been drinking?
June: Enough to say “I’m up for grabs!” When
we first started running rivers, there were absolutely no Park Service regulations, no
franchise fees, no anything. We went to Salt Lake to a meeting, we invited one Park
Service person to meet with us over there. And then we told him what we were going to do.
This is how it happened in those days. You didn’t have to have a million dollars in
those days to buy out another outfitter: You simply said, “Okay, I think I’m
going to run the river.” The Bureau of Reclamation wanted to send down some
congressmen from California to view Marble Canyon dam site, which meant they wanted to go
on a free vacation. So they came to Jerry and his brother and said, “Okay, if we get
you some pontoons and some wetbags and some ammo cans, will you take these guys down the
river?” “Okay, we’ll do it.” So when we got back off this trip, we had
pontoons, and we had some wetbags and all this kind of stuff, in our back yard. We lived
here in Page on Date Street, and we said, “Well, what do you think? Should we run the
river?” “I don’t know, I’ve never been down there.” So we had
this little office in the storeroom of my house. He wouldn’t let me have any heat out
there at all, so I put my name in with the National Park Service, and said, “Okay,
we’re going to run rivers.” Our first river trip we ran ten-day, twelve-day
river trips. Ninety-nine dollars. (uproarious audience laughter)
Jerry: You’d go broke!
June: We did everything: We went to the South Rim and picked
them up, brought them back to Page, put their wetbags in the room, had food in the room,
did all this kind of stuff. But in three years, we went from a completely un. . . .
Jerry: It was $225.
June: No it was not! (audience laughs) It was ninety-nine
dollars. That was the second year. This man is older than I am, he’s
senile! (audience laughs)
Jerry: Older, alright.
June: Anyway, what I’m saying is, that in those days,
there were no Park Service regulations, there was no franchise fee. There was nothing!
You just simply put your name in with the Park Service at the South Rim and said, “I
want to run a river.” Seven outfitters in the Grand Canyon.
Jerry: Shut her down for a minute.
June: I’m shutting it down for a minute. Go!
Jerry: In 1966, it cost us seventy-five dollars. We went
through three areas: Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, the National Park—Grand
Canyon—and Lake Mead National Recreation Area. It cost us twenty-five dollars a year
for each one of those areas that we went through. So basically, our permit cost us
seventy-five dollars a year.
June: Right.
Jerry: You could run as many trips as you wanted. It was
fun. voice in the crowd: Tell the (shuttle?) story.
Jerry: No, we don’t have enough time. (uproarious
audience laughter) There’s some boatmen out here used to work for me. They could tell
you some hell stories!
June: Right.
Jerry: But it would take up most of the evening. (several
talking at once) Get McCallum. Get Dick out here. That guy’s got some great
stories.
June: Okay, one thing—and I have some stories
too—he’s going to talk, but I’ve got some stories about Tony too.
One thing I would like to say, I’ve been in this thirty-some odd years,
dealing with outfitters, National Park, all this kind of stuff. It’s the greatest
bunch of people in the whole wide world. I look out here tonight, looked out here the last
two or three days or whatever, and these guys and gals out here, I mean, there’s a
lot of them that are younger than my kids that have run rivers. And what I have heard from
all of you, from people, about all of you, I should say, you are the future
of the Grand Canyon, and I’m very proud to look out here and see what has happened
for the last thirty, forty years, since I started out when there was nothing at all
happening in the Grand Canyon. When we first started, we didn’t really say, “Oh,
we’re going to save the Grand Canyon.” We were going to run the
Grand Canyon. Okay? But you guys have come along, and you’re not only going to run
the Grand Canyon and take people through the Grand Canyon, but you are also going to save
the Grand Canyon for the future generations, way down the line. And I’m
very proud of each and every one of you. Really and truly. (applause)
Jerry: I am too.
June: And now, Tony Sparks.
Tony Sparks: Don’t go away, because there’s
another story that you have to tell.
Whitney: Get Tony to talk about when it came down. . . . The
governor of New Mexico? Is that how you found out about it? Who took you to Lee’s
Ferry first?
Jerry: You tell yours, and I’ll tell mine.
Tony: Then you’re going to straighten it out?
Jerry: No, I’ll just smile.
Whitney: Who brought you to the Ferry first?
Tony: In 1966, my uncle, who had been governor of New
Mexico, had the concession down at Lee’s Ferry, and wanted to sell it to us. At that
time we were living in Long Beach, California, and we owned a parts house, which I had
grown up in. I’d been doing it all my life, since I was twelve years old, working in
the parts house. So he said, “Go out and look at it.” We said, “We
don’t want to move to Arizona. What the hell are we going to do in Arizona?!” He
talked us into moving out here. We came out and looked at it, and decided to take over the
concession. In 1967 is when we bought it, and moved to Arizona the beginning of 1968.
Ended up starting in—we were going to run strictly a motel/store/service station/boat
rentals, this kind of stuff, that we had down at the Ferry years ago, and
that’s all we were going to do. We weren’t going to run river trips. We were
going to sell to all the outfitters. Well once I got down there and realized that
Ted Hatch would drive his trucks all the way to Vernal, Utah, to buy groceries, instead of
buying them from me (audience laughs), I said, “This isn’t going to
work!” (audience laughs) So we ended up deciding to get in the river business. Now,
June’s got a story about this—I’ll straighten her out every now and
then—and Jerry, how we got started in the river business.
We’d run one trip. I built a frame. When I got there, there was one
33-foot boat left in what we bought from the concession. It was an old cotton boat. We
turned around, rigged it out, Ron Smith came by, watching me, while I was welding up the
frame, putting it together, and he says, “Boy, that looks like it’s going to
work great!” Well, unbeknownst to me (chuckles), the guy that ran it the very
first trip we went down, stood in water about ten inches deep, because when we loaded the
boat, I didn’t realize at that time all the weight, everything else, ten inches of
water. John Cooley—I don’t know whether any of you guys even know Cool Cat.
June: Cool Cat Cooley.
Tony: But he ran the boat downriver, liked to froze to death.
It was September, the first trip we ever ran. The farthest we were going at that time was
the Little Colorado. We didn’t go any further—that was my trip. Three days to
the Little Colorado. We were going to helicopter all the boats out, all the equipment got
helicoptered out at that point. That’s all the further I was going to run—let
these other guys take the long trips—I could sell these for $295, is what I sold a
three-day trip for.
June: Big money!
Tony: These guys were selling eight-day trips for
$295 in those days. I said, “I can make more money at $295 on a three-day trip,
helicoptering everybody out, and get rich on this thing!” (audience laughs) Well,
believe me, that isn’t the way it worked out! (more laughter)
June: Sure it could! It was free!
Tony: After the first trip, I came back. . . . (to June) Go
ahead, pick it up.
June: Okay, he comes down to the office, we’re down on
Vista Avenue, down where. . . .
Tony: Where the church is now.
June: Well, he walks in and says, “I’ve got this
river trip coming up. I’ve got this deal with. . . .
Tony: Look Magazine.
June: Look Magazine. “Got these guys coming in.
. . .”
Tony: They came into Lee’s Ferry, and they said,
“When could you run another trip?” We didn’t know the guy was the publisher
for Look. And he also had the photographer with him. He said, “When could you
run another trip?” I told him, “NO problem.”
June: “Any time!”
Tony: NOoo problem. We’d just come off the other one,
two days before. It was a disaster. “No problem, we’ll run anytime you
want to go.” So he turns around and says, “How about”—he called us
back and said—”next week.” That’s when I came up with these guys.
June: He said, “Fine, I’ll take you.” He
walks in the office down there he says, “June, I’ll tell you what: I’m
going to go into the river business. All I need. . . . I need a couple of things from you,
just a few things. All I need... I need a boat” (audience groans) “I need a unit
[Sanderson frame], I need an ice chest, the whole bit, you know, two boats. I need your
menu, I need your packout list, I need a pilot, I need two crew. Outside that, I’m
all set.”
Tony: What I had was passengers! (laughter)
June: I said, “No sweat, Honey! We’ll get it for
you.”
Tony: That’s exactly what they told me. I walked
in that office and they both looked at me, and they said, “Hey, instead of
trying to revamp your old frame, let me give you my equipment.”
June: Our boats.
Tony: We painted out Sanderson’s name on the side of
it, we put “Fort Lee Company” on it. And if it had not been for these
two—without a hesitation, never charged me a dime, “Free. Come get it.
You’ve got it.” June went with us on that trip, and Gene Kerner.
June: Gene Kerner and Cool Cat Cooley.
Tony: They sent Cool Cat down, and we ran that very first. .
. . It never came out in Look—Look went bankrupt about six months later! (uproarious
audience laughter)
June: And so did Sandersons! I mean, you know. . . . But
anyway, he goes, “Okay, get all this stuff together. Okay, come on down to the
Ferry.” I go down there, I’m going, “Oh, holy shit!” I mean,
nothing’s together. I look over and I said, “Well, your passengers, did you give
them a clothing list? Did you give them this [and that]?” “No sweat, June.
Don’t sweat it.” So I’m standing down there, Gene and I are standing down
there, we’re looking at this rig that is like, “Oh my God, it’s not put
together right!” I look over, and here comes these dudes headed toward the boat. Now
we’re talking about boots, these suede boots—suede! Suede jackets with
fringe hanging off the back of them, Levis. . . . I mean, we’re in October.
Now, as each and every one of you know, the least amount of clothes you have on in the
Grand Canyon, the warmer you’re going to be, right? Okay. So I say. . . . (laughs)
“Am I going to take care of you!” Right? Okay, where’s my scissors? Two
days out, or a day out, I’ve got all their $200 pants cut off up to here, I’ve
got their suede jackets in the hatch, you know, and the whole bit, and we’re all
playing spoons. “Da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da.” We’re jumping around the
beds, because it’s October, and we’re freezing our ass off, and thank God, in
those days, we could build bonfires and sleep by them, or it would have been a disaster.
And then we get... I had never gone out the Little Colorado.
Tony: Well, nobody had…
June: … in a helicopter. I mean, I’d never taken
units out. We get to Little C, you’re de-rigging the boats, okay. Okay, we’re
going to take these out. I’m going like, “Holy shit!” I mean, these units
are swwwiiiinnnngggging, you know. What about the downdraft? Oh my God! But I was young, I
didn’t care. Now, a downdraft, I will not fly, much less run the helicopter! But this
was an awesome thing in October, an awesome thing for him.
But in those days, all you had to do, to start a river company, was go to
another river company and say, “I’ve decided I want to run the river.”
Okay? Now, you look around and you say, “I wish I had bought a river company in 1960,
because there’s no way I could afford one now.”
Jerry: One thing I want to bring out: They keep bringing up
this John Cooley, or they call him “Three C,” Cool Cat Cooley. I took him down
as a swamper the first time he’d ever been through the Canyon. To show you what kind
of a guy he was, his next trip, he had his own boat! (audience laughs)
June: In those days, everybody had their own boat.
Jerry: We had this two-boat run, and we got down to Bedrock,
I said, “John, you take her first.” (huge audience laughter) He made it right,
but he got caught in that great big eddy. He was in this thirty-three-foot boat, and the
motor is humming, it’s cavitating, he’s just going round and round. And he told
everybody, “If you guys want to get a picture of the next boat coming through,
you’d better get it now,” he says— “I can’t hold this thing in
here much longer!” (uproarious audience laughter) Totally out of control!
June: And cameras came out, and “click, click,
click, click, click.” And they didn’t get anything!
Tony: This all, all of a sudden, starts flashing back. But
it reminds me of the first trip we ran downriver. After we did that trip with June,
the next year we decided we’re going to be in business. So now we put out brochures,
we do all that stuff, build up some frames, and now I’m looking for a boatman. And
Clair Quist comes into the Ferry. (audience groans) And he says, “I don’t know
anybody for sure, but maybe I can get my brother.” I don’t know how many of you
guys know Bob Quist. (uproarious audience response) He says, “I think I can get my
brother Bob to come down and run a trip.” I said, “Has he ever been in the
Grand?” He says, “No, but he knows how to run a boat.” We put Bob on a
boat, he takes off, and we tell him, “Stop at the Little Colorado. Don’t go past
the Little Colorado. That’s as far as our trips are going. Bob, the biggest canyon
coming in on your left-hand side is the Little Colorado. Stop there.” Bob gets down
there, finally, pulls in, and he stops. Later on, I can remember Bob coming back to me,
when Western boatmen started coming in, some of the guys that Jack Curry was running, that
hadn’t had but, I don’t know, six trips, eight trips down the Canyon. He said,
“These damn guys don’t know what they’re doing!” I said, “Bob, do
you remember the first trip you took? with no trips in the Grand Canyon at all?”
And Bob, the very first one he ever ran was a commercial trip, in the Grand Canyon. And
that’s how technical it was with the Park Service in those days.
June: Right. (audience laughs) It was not technical.
Whitney: How many trips did you run down to Little Colorado?
Tony: We ran them down there for about three years, and
hauled them out. And then I started running a three-day and a six-day. I’d trade
people. Everybody would go out at the Little Colorado, and the new ones would come in. And
we had a couple of really close calls with the helicopters, and I finally said,
“Hey, guys, we’re going to kill somebody down here. You know, the
boatmen, the people, or whatever...” I said, “Let’s quit this.” And
that’s when I ended up just running eight-day trips, canceled out that Little
Colorado. The guys that came in those days were all Vietnam pilots, and these guys thought
they could fly anywhere until they got in the Grand Canyon. And believe me, every one of
these hotshot pilots, when they got in the Grand Canyon where the confluence comes
together there, with the wind swirling around—I can remember the guys saying,
“Where’s the pad?” And I’d say, “It’s right down over
there.” And he’d say, “You’ve got to be shitting me!” (audience
laughs) Every one of them said the same thing! They’d come in around this way,
they’d circle around that way. The wind would be blowing one way. By the time they
came around the other way, the wind was blowing the other direction. I mean, it scared
them to death!
Whitney: You built that pad?
Tony: Yeah, I built the pad. We spent three days down there.
June: It’s like all those times with Tony––we
were based in Page, and all the other outfitters coming through: Ted Hatch, Ron
Smith—you know, like everybody...it was like one great big thing, because we were
down on Vista, everybody came in, “I forgot a motor, I forgot a motor handle, I
forgot bungee, I forgot this, I forgot that, Can you do this for me?” And in those
days, it was just all one great big conglomeration. It took every single
outfitter—seven or twelve or whatever we happened to be at the time—to get trips
off the Grand Canyon. And we just all simply worked together. This is the same thing that
we do today. And I want each and every one of you here tonight to know that as Wilderness
River Adventures, formerly Sanderson/Fort Lee, whatever it takes, if you ever come to
Page, Arizona, you need anything at all to get your trips on the river, no matter what it
is, don’t hesitate one second to call me and ask for anything, because I am a river
runner.
Jerry: You got a whole boat and a rig? (audience laughs,
whistles, and applauds)
(continued below… but you might want to read the Bob Quist story first)
...I don’t want to take up much more of your time, folks. I want you to all
have a good time.
June: Thank you. (audience applauds and whistles, dog barks
his approval too)
Whitney: Tony’s got a couple more stories. . . .
Tony: I do?!
Whitney: At least! But one that came to mind was, you all
know the Brandy Joe, the boat in the Lower Canyon that picks up trips—tell
‘em that Brandy Joe story.
Tony: The Brandy Joe, when Ron Smith first built
that boat, Dean Waterman has since added about eight foot, ten foot, to it—whatever
he put in the middle of it. But Ron Smith built that boat. He brought it down to
Lee’s Ferry one day. It was November, I think is when it was. He brought the boat
down there, and he had two brand-new, 115-horse Mercs on the back of it. And he said,
“Come go. . . .” There was nobody at the Ferry.
During the summertime—this is another story—during the summertime,
everybody would come in there, and they’d be hauling cases of beer and cases of pop.
People used to come up to me and they’d say, “You’ve got to be making a fortune
here!” But they didn’t realize it only lasted for about an hour-and-a-half. The
boats were gone downriver, and the rest of the day there wouldn’t be a soul
come into the place.
So this is October or November—I think it was November. Ron comes in
with the boat, we get a six-pack of beer, and he says, “Come go with me. We’re
going to run it upriver. We’re going to break these engines in.” Brand new
engines. So we run upriver, we drink the six-pack, we come back to the Ferry, and he says
“Why don’t we get some more beer?” (audience laughs) So I don’t know
whether we got a couple of six-packs, a case, whatever it was. We ran back up. He says,
“Let’s go downriver a little ways.” Now that’s—totally illegal.
We could not go past the Paria with a power boat, or motorized regular hard-hull. We
started off downriver, we run down through the Paria, run through Cathedral. We get down
to the head of Badger (audience laughs) and we’re sitting there. Ron turns the boat
around, and we’re just idling, and he says, “You know, I’ll bet
ya... we can get that thing through and back up.” (uproarious audience laughter)
I’m talking two six-packs, maybe three now, and I said, “I KNOW we
can!” (redoubled audience laughter) We turn around, we start down through the rapid,
which is no problem. Ran down through it, turned around and made a couple of loops below,
Ron starts back up, and to this day I know he did it wrong—I could have done a
better job. (audience laughs) He turns around, starts back upriver, and he gets that big
black rock in the middle of Badger that you all know. Sheers off both the lower units: one
completely is gone, the other one is busted. But it did work—it worked long enough
that we could get the boat to shore. Tore a hole in the bottom of the Brandy Joe,
it’s leaking, floorboards are starting to get wet. We power over to the shore, we
turn around, and we said, “Now what the hell are we going to do?” (audience
chuckles) Two of us are down there, we hike out Jackass, turn around, go up, call the
shop, get Joe Baker, he turns around, brings some more lower units, we hike back in, they
bring a boat back down, stop at the head of Badger, repair the units, get them back
together again, Ron takes them out to test them, by himself. He’s going to run
the boat around, just to see if it runs. He decides he’s going to make an upriver run
now. He sheers both of them off this time! (audience laughs) We had patched the
hole—we had to tear all the floorboards out to patch that hole. He tears both
lower units off, now he’s got to paddle ashore. He does make it over to shore,
we turned around and we hiked back out again. (audience chuckles) Now this
isn’t a day, this is a period of probably a week. (audience laughs) I can
remember Sheila saying at the time. . . She says “Ronnn...”
voice from crowd: How many six packs? (audience laughs)
Tony: And it snowed on us! (audience laughs)
That’s why I remember it was November, it was snowing on us when we were down there
working on it. Ron turns around and puts two jet units—buys those jet adapters
for the outboards. We had to raise the transom up—that’s why it took a week to
do all this—raised the transom up, put the jet units on, he gets Bob Smith out of
North Fork, flies him down to put him in the boat to run it back upriver. (audience
laughs) Ron had all the fun he could stand! And Sheila said, “You know, Ron. . .
.” In those days, they were really close together.
June: Yeah.
Tony: But after that. . . . Like I said, it took eight to
ten days. We didn’t even want the Park Service to know we were down there. We
weren’t allowed. Both of us got concessions, and we don’t want the Park Service
to know that we’re down there, because we’re going to be in trouble. But anyway.
. It did come out. (audience applauds)
Whitney: Jerry, would you come back out here for a minute?
We haven’t even scratched the surface with you.
June: Come here.
Whitney: I mean, there’s got to be a few landmarks.
Tell us about your first trip.
June: Tell about the first trip you made with Tunney, with
the wives and the whole bit, when we first started. You gotta tell that story.
Jerry: Years ago (chuckles), as time went, the Bureau of
Reclamation thought these power dams in Grand Canyon were going to be a big thing, you
know. You’ve heard about the old Marble Canyon dam site, and Bridge Canyon dam site
and all. After EISenhower had already authorized Glen Canyon, soon after that they was
doing some research on putting a big high dam at Bridge Canyon. Boy I’m glad that
baby didn’t go in! That would have backed water up a lot of miles within the
Park.
But anyway, there was a lot of congressmen in Washington on the Interior
Committee. They wanted to get down in the Canyon and see for themselves. And so I took
Gene—that wasn’t Gene, that was his dad (chuckles), he was that boxer—but
it was his son who was a congressman out of California. He’s a nice guy. We run him
down the Canyon, and had quite some experiences down there. Those were the days that I was
still learning. (slight chuckles from audience) I was going to camp at the head of Hance,
but when I was half-way through the rapid I realized I’d really screwed up. (audience
laughs uproariously) I said, “Folks, we’re going to be in Phantom a day
early!” (audience laughs) That was just one of my problems. That was a fun
trip, but I was a real rookie in those days.
Prior to that, I’d go down the Canyon with my dad. Well, he was leading
the trip down and I was just one of his boatmen. I didn’t know what rapid was around
the bend, I just did what my dad told me to do. Well, when he passed away, all of a sudden
I said, “Well, the river running is over.” It was kind of like this was my
dad’s canyon. I said, “I’m not going to run any river trips.” But that
phone just kept ringing, and it just kept ringing. “Jerry, we gotta do one
more.” The next thing I had them old power boats [16 foot aluminum] backed up in my
garage up there, a little carport, and I was working all winter on them—those days
when I was a cop, getting paid. I said, “I think we can get another run out of
them.” Anyway, that’s how it started out: with family, and then friends, and
friends of friends. Pretty soon we got to the point and I said, “You know, I think a
guy could make a buck down here.” But you couldn’t do it in them power boats,
because I’d take three people per boat and I had three boats. We had to have gas
packed in to Phantom Ranch by mule. We had to have gas packed in at Whitmore. Bundys were
great at that. Even in those days I was paying about $1.20 a gallon. (audience
chuckles) I felt, “Gosh, if I can break even, we had a heck of a time.”
Whitney: Was that old Chet Bundy?
June: Yeah, Chet Bundy.
Jerry: Yeah. It was in—1965 was the last year that we
run the power boats. They got to the point, and I said, “Well it’s 1966, we got
to go to the baloneys and we can take more people.” But the most important thing is,
we can take everything with us through that Canyon. I didn’t have to have any
outside help coming in. It got to the point where we decided the only thing we’re
going to leave down there is just footprints in the sand. And I think that’s about
what it is today, and that’s how it should be.
June: I don’t know how many of you remember, or how
many of you ran the Grand Canyon when. . . . back in the days when Phantom Ranch—they
did not have mule restrictions. Your people went out, it cost you twenty-five dollars per
mule to get your people out of the Canyon. And you could actually negotiate with the seven
or twelve other outfitters down there. You bought, you’d say, a lot of twenty-five
mules, or whatever, and if you didn’t use them, you could sell them to another
outfitter. But you’d pull into Phantom Ranch, and you could actually camp on the
beach right there. And then we had it set up to where we had dinner at the ranch for all
of our people, which gave our guys a night off. And the crew would all go up and help do
dinner at the ranch. Everybody stayed there. I mean, all the people stayed there, but we
all were able to camp out on the beach, because there just were not that many people in
the Canyon back in those days. You could actually do that. Our people camped on the
beach, we didn’t have to have cabins, we didn’t have to have anything, so we
could go in there, spend the night, have dinner, our people got to eat, our crew got to
eat, our people either got to hike out early in the morning, or take the mules out early
in the morning...
...One thing I did want to say: There’s another outfitter who is
not here tonight, but he has some representatives over here, Bill Diamond. Bill Diamond
worked for us at Sanderson River Expeditions way back when, and as everybody knows, they
have their own river company now, which is fantastic, like every river company in the
Grand Canyon, as far as I’m concerned is fantastic down there. But way back when we
first started and Bill was running for us as a pilot still, he convinced Pat, his wife, to
go down. Now, we had a trip going out that was all congressmen: there was Morris Udall,
there was Roger C.B. Morton, there was a whole bunch of them that said, “Holy Mother
of God!” when you went over Lava and all this kind of stuff—made up all these
stories as far as the river goes and decided they were not going to dam up the
Grand Canyon. But we were down there on this trip with the congressmen—this was the
first trip that Pat Diamond had ever gone down with us. And we get down to the beach one
night—and of course in those days Sandersons did every single thing for their
people: we took all the plates, we set up everybody’s camp, we cooked their dinner,
we washed their dishes, we did everything, everything. The only thing we
didn’t do was go back East and bring them out here. We went to the South Rim
and got them, brought them here, took them back to the South Rim, every single thing in
the whole wide world. But we were down there, and it was a fast trip: it was a six-day
trip to Whitmore, helicopters coming in. It was a bad trip. Helicopters came in with
newspapers for these congressmen, with messages, and all this kind of stuff—ice, and
the whole bit. In those days you could actually go into the Canyon with helicopters at any
time—especially if it was a congressional trip. And Pat who had never been down the
river—and like I said, it was a six-day trip to Whitmore, it was a fast trip still.
And we get down there, we’re on the beach one night, and we’re trying to get
dinner, it’s late, we got the generator running, we got the lights set up on the
poles and the whole bit, and Patty is looking at Bill and she says, (laughs) “You
sorry son-of-a-bitch! You knew what it was like and you brought me anyway!” (audience
laughs uproariously)
I’m through talking, I’m going to have a beer. Thank you very much.
(audience applauds)
Jerry: I’ll tell you just a quick little story about
Cool Cat Cooley.
June: He’s got to get the last word in.
Jerry: Years ago, the South Rim, they were having water
problems, running out of water. And so they were trying to run a big water main down from
the North Rim, going to the Grand Canyon. I’m sure most of you all know about it,
where it goes up the wall and everything. Halverson Construction out of Washington got the
contract. They had a lot of these chopper pilots coming in. And Cool Cat, we got down to
Phantom, we had to lay over a night because we had a changeover, and he got to know one of
these chopper pilots. And he said (chuckles), “When you come back down, could you
bring me a jug of Jack Daniels?” He said, “Sure!” So he paid him and a few
hours later, here come the chopper and Cool Cat got his jug of Jack Daniels in a brown
paper bag. And back in the old days, they had a swimming pool there at Phantom.
June: Nice.
Jerry: It was all rocked up and used to be kind of nice, but
the Health Department said, “That’s not healthy. Fill it in.” Well before
that, they had a little water fountain out there, and old Cool Cat, he stuck that jug
under his arm, and it was pretty hot. He just leaned over and he was getting a drink. As
he did, J.D. just slid out of that paper bag, right on the concrete, and just exploded.
(audience groans) One of them mule skinners walked by and he took his hat off and asked,
“Was it full?” (audience laughs uproariously) Cool Cat played like he
didn’t even hear him. Picked it up, and he just walked off.
Lew Steiger
