Savage Scenery

   Does this place look familiar? I’m trying to identify the location in this photograph, which is actually taken from a stereograph, in order to verify if it was actually taken, as claimed, by Charles Roscoe Savage, Utah’s premier photographer. Here’s the story: I was at a lecture about Savage when the lecturer showed the above stereograph and claimed it was taken in Grand Canyon by Savage in the 1880s. But archivist and river runner that I am, I noticed that in the bottom of the photo, barely visible, is a boat. A boat with a steering oar, if you look close. Now it struck me that a little skiff used by Hance or Bass or someone to go back and forth across the river to gather tourists/ firewood/supplies wouldn’t have a steering oar. In fact, this thing looks suspiciously like one of Powell’s boats.

   Now Savage, who worked in Salt Lake City and all around Utah from 1862 until his death in 1909, is supposed to have been around the Grand Canyon. Sometime. Somewhere. But no biography of Savage exists (coming out next year, though) so I can’t verify this vital fact. So here’s my thought: if we can place the location in this photo, and if it turns out to be somewhere in the Canyon that you can only get to by boat i.e. not the bottom of Bass trail, Bright Angel, so on) then I’ll assume that it was in fact not taken by Savage but is from a negative he bought (a common enough practice at the time) from someone else. If it turns out that this isn’t a Savage, I can go back to the folks at the LDS church history department and say “nyah nyah nyah na na.” Very professionally, you understand.

   Thanks very much for any assistance you, the most knowledgable folks about the Canyon, can give me.

Roy Webb
(write c/o GCRG, ATTN: Roy Webb)