John Wesley Powell was an American geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He is famous for his 1869 geographic expedition, a three-month river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers, including the first official U.S. government-sponsored passage through the Grand Canyon.
Sir Charles William Feilden Hamilton was a New Zealand engineer who developed the modern jetboat, and founded the water jet manufacturing company, CWF Hamilton Ltd.
Clyde Martin Litton was a Grand Canyon river runner and a longtime conservationist, best known as a staunch opponent of the construction of Glen Canyon Dam and other dams on the Colorado River.
Glen Canyon is a natural canyon carved by a 169.6-mile (272.9 km) length of the Colorado River, mostly in southeastern and south-central Utah, in the United States. Glen Canyon starts where Narrow Canyon ends, at the confluence of the Colorado River and the Dirty Devil River. A small part of the lower end of Glen Canyon extends into northern Arizona and terminates at Lee's Ferry, near the Vermilion Cliffs. Like the Grand Canyon farther downstream, Glen Canyon is part of the immense system of canyons carved by the Colorado River and its tributaries.
Lewis Ransome Freeman was an American explorer, journalist and war correspondent who wrote over twenty books chronicling his many travels, as well as numerous articles.
Haldane "Buzz" Holmstrom (1909–1946) was a pioneer of running the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. He was the first person to float all the way from Green River, Wyoming to Boulder Dam solo. He built his own rowboats, often of his own design, to run whitewater rivers.
Norman D. Nevills was a pioneer of commercial river-running in the American Southwest, particularly the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. He led trips including Dr. Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, the first two women to successfully float the Grand Canyon, and Barry Goldwater.
Georgie White Clark (1911–1992) was a river-running guide in the Grand Canyon. She was the first woman to run the Grand Canyon as a commercial enterprise, and she introduced several innovations and adjustments to the way that guides ran the Colorado River. In particular, she used large army-surplus rafts, often lashing together multiple rafts, to maintain stability in the large rapids. In 2001, the United States Board on Geographic Names renamed Mile 24 Rapid in her honor.
Albert A. "Bert" Loper was a pioneer of the sport of whitewater river-running in the American Southwest, particularly the Colorado River and its tributaries. He, along with many of the noted boatmen of his era, including Charles Russell, Julius Stone, Ellsworth Kolb, and others, were among the first people to navigate the Colorado River before the construction of Glen Canyon Dam and Navajo Dam.
Facing Your Danger is a 1946 American short film. The cameraman was amateur filmmaker Edwin E. Olsen. Using a Cine-Kodak and 16mm Kodachrome film, Olsen shot the film in 1942 on a Grand Canyon river trip conducted by Norman Nevills. Another amateur cameraman on the trip was Otis R. Marston. When Olsen ran out of film, Marston, who had brought 6,000 feet of Kodachrome magazines, provided Olsen with what he needed. Olsen edited the film and sold it to Warner Brothers in 1946. Lee Anthony and Gordon Hollingshead collaborated to re-edit and shorten the film to a one reel for theater release.
The Kolb Studio is a historic structure situated on the edge of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in Grand Canyon Village within Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. It was operated from 1904 until 1976 as the photographic studio of brothers Ellsworth and Emery Kolb.
Robert Brewster Stanton was a United States civil and mining engineer. He was chief engineer of an expedition investigating the Grand Canyon for a possible railroad line in 1889-90, and investigated many mining properties.
Mary Ogden Abbott was an American wood carving and line drawing artist, world traveler, equestrian and an early Grand Canyon River runner.
Otis Reed "Dock" Marston was an American writer, historian and Grand Canyon river runner who participated in a large number of river-running firsts. Marston was the eighty-third person to successfully complete the water transit of the Grand Canyon. He spent the last thirty years of his life writing his magnum opus on the history of the first 100 Grand Canyon river runners. In researching his book, he amassed a vast collection of material on early river runners in the American Southwest, especially runners of the Green and Colorado Rivers. His collection is housed in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.
Elzada Clover (1897–1980) was an American botanist who was the first to catalog plant life in the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River. She and Lois Jotter became the first two women to raft the entire length of the Grand Canyon.
Mary Lois Jotter Cutter (1914–2013) was an American botanist. She and Elzada Clover were the first women to raft the entire length of the Grand Canyon in 1938, making scientific collections of plants along the way.
Hugh Carson Cutler was a plant taxonomist, economic botanist, plant collector, and pioneer of paleoethnobotany.
Frank Elmer Masland Jr was an American industrialist, conservationist, explorer, early river runner in the Grand Canyon, and philanthropist.
Gene Field Foster was an American carpenter, artist, anthropologist, ornitholigist, and early Glen Canyon river runner.
