Mary Ogden Abbott | |
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 Abbott visits the Department of Interior, 1974 | |
| Born | October 12, 1894 |
| Died | May 11, 1981 (aged 86) |
| Alma mater | School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts |
| Relatives | Charles Francis Adams Jr. (grandfather) Josiah Gardner Abbott (grandfather) Thomas B. Adams (cousin) |
Mary Ogden Abbott (October 12, 1894 – May 11, 1981) was an American wood carving and line drawing artist, world traveler, equestrian and an early Grand Canyon River runner.
Mary Ogden Abbott was born in Concord, Massachusetts on October 12, 1894. She was the daughter of Grafton St. Loe Abbott and Mary Ogden (née Adams) Abbott.
On her mother's side, she was a granddaughter of Charles Francis Adams Jr. and was a descendant of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams. On her father's side, she was a granddaughter of U.S. Representative Josiah Gardner Abbott and was a descendant of George Abbott, one of the early settlers in Andover, Massachusetts. [1]
Mary attended the Westover School in Connecticut and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts in Boston, Mass. [2]
In 1920, Mary and her mother, Mary Adams Abbott, drove across the United States. That winter, the two women lived on the Arizona Strip at Ryan, Arizona. In the spring of 1921, Mary rode packstock across the Grand Canyon, crossing the Colorado River on a temporary suspension bridge near where the Black Suspension Bridge exists today. That same year the two women rode packstock from the Arizona Strip to the Bitterroot Valley of Montana. [3] [4]
From 1922 to 1927, the two women traveled to Java, Singapore, Hong Kong, Baghdad, Jerusalem, rode across Peloponnese on horseback, and made their way by automobile through Europe. These travels were recorded in journals and letters. [5] Mary Ogden Abbott wrote her recollections of these adventures in the book Shikar in Baltistan, [6] describing their hunting expedition in Baltistan in 1923, and "Improbable Interlude." [7]
In 1948, Abbott made her first boat journey down the San Juan River to Lee's Ferry, Arizona, through Glen Canyon on the Colorado River. In 1949 she floated the Colorado River in Grand Canyon with Norman Nevills from Phantom Ranch to Lake Mead. In 1950, she ran the Colorado River in Grand Canyon from Lee's Ferry, Arizona, to Phantom Ranch, becoming the 114 person to make a complete transit of the Grand Canyon by boat. After the Nevills untimely death in 1949, Abbott designed a plaque to commemorate the lives of Norm and Doris Nevills. The plaque was placed at Navajo Bridge in 1952. Her plaque at Navajo Bridge was moved to its present location east of the visitor center after the new bridge was completed and the visitor area redesigned in 1995. Abbott joined river runner Otis R. Marston, Frank E. Masland, and National Park Service Chief of Interpretation John E. Doerr on a slickrock journey north of Navajo Mountain in September of 1957. In 1958, Abbott ran the Grand Canyon again by boat with Marston. [1] [8]
Abbott was an accomplished artist in various media, especially woodcarving. She made the Reredos and altar for the Grace Episcopal Church (Lawrence, Massachusetts), and an altar depicting Saint George in cowboy attire in St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Nogales, Arizona. Mary carved what she called the "Indian Gates," also known as the "western gates," two side by side teak doors, which were hung in the U.S. Department of the Interior building, Washington, D.C. These doors are always displayed in the open position.
Abbott's drawings appeared in the Appalachian Mountain Club journal Appalachia and books on travel. She was also a founding member of the Concord Art Association and served as its president from 1942 to 1971. [2] [9] Abbott also provided the illustrations for George Cory Franklin's Wild Animals of the Five Rivers Country, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1947. [10] In its review, The New York Times wrote "Mary Abbott's spirited illustrations capture the lithe grace of these wild creatures in many of their tensest moments." [10] Frank E. Masland commissioned Mary to paint a scene from river running in the Colorado river in Grand Canyon. After the painting was completed, Masland donated the painting to Grand Canyon National Park.
As a skilled equestrian, Abbott participated in hunts on the Alexander Higginson estate and with the Middlesex Hunt Club in South Lincoln, Mass. Abbott lived most of her life in Concord, Massachusetts. [1]
The Mary Ogden Abbott Papers are preserved at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, Massachusetts. [1]
Cameron is a census-designated place (CDP) in Coconino County, Arizona, United States, on the Navajo Nation. The population was 885 at the 2010 census. Most of the town's economy is tourist food and craft stalls, restaurants, and other services for north–south traffic from Flagstaff and Page. There is a ranger station supplying information and hiking permits for the Navajo Nation. There is also a large craft store run by the Nation itself. It is named after Ralph H. Cameron, Arizona's first senator.
Lees Ferry is a site on the Colorado River in Coconino County, Arizona in the United States, about 7.5 miles (12.1 km) southwest of Page and 9 miles (14 km) south of the Utah–Arizona state line.
U.S. Route 89 is a north–south United States Numbered Highway with two sections, and one former section. The southern section runs for 848 miles (1,365 km) from Flagstaff, Arizona, to the southern entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The northern section runs for 404 miles (650 km) from the northern entrance of Yellowstone National Park in Montana, ending at the Canadian border. Unnumbered roads through Yellowstone connect the two sections. Before 1992, US 89 was a Canada–Mexico, border-to-border highway that ended at Nogales, Arizona, on its southern end.
Navajo Bridge is the name of twin steel spandrel arch bridges that cross the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon National Park in northern Coconino County, Arizona, United States. The newer of the two spans carries vehicular traffic on U.S. Route 89A (US 89A) over Marble Canyon between Bitter Springs and Jacob Lake, allowing travel into a remote Arizona Strip region north of the Colorado River including the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park.
Marble Canyon is the section of the Colorado River canyon in northern Arizona from Lee's Ferry to the confluence with the Little Colorado River, which marks the beginning of the Grand Canyon.
Glen and Bessie Hyde were newlyweds who disappeared while attempting to run the rapids of the Colorado River through Grand Canyon, Arizona in 1928. Had the couple succeeded, Bessie Hyde would have been the first woman known to accomplish this feat.
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.
Horseshoe Bend is a horseshoe-shaped incised meander of the Colorado River located near the town of Page, Arizona, United States. It is also referred to as the "east rim of the Grand Canyon."
The Arizona Strip is the part of Arizona lying north of the Colorado River. Despite being larger in area than several U.S. states, the entire region has a population of fewer than 10,000 people. Consisting of northeastern Mohave County and northwestern Coconino County, the largest settlements in the Strip are Colorado City, Fredonia, and Beaver Dam, with smaller communities of Scenic, Littlefield and Desert Springs. The Kaibab Indian Reservation lies within the region. Lying along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon creates physical barriers to the rest of Arizona. Only three major roads traverse the region: I-15 crosses the northwestern corner, while Arizona State Route 389 and U.S. Route 89A cross the northeastern part of the strip, and US 89A crosses the Colorado River via the Navajo Bridge, providing the only direct road connection between the strip and the rest of the state. The nearest metropolitan area is the St. George, Utah metro area, to which the region is more connected than to the rest of Arizona.
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.
The Grand Canyon National Park is a U.S. National Park located in the state of Arizona. The Park encompasses the Grand Canyon and the surrounding rim areas. The Park maintains an intricate trail system both above and below the rims of the canyon. To properly maintain and supervise the many trails and campgrounds in the backcountry of the Grand Canyon, Park implemented a system of zoning the different areas of the canyon and the surrounding rim area into backcountry "use areas," designated by a two-letter, one-number code system.
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.
The Rainbow Trail, also known as The Desert Crucible, is Western author Zane Grey's sequel to Riders of the Purple Sage. Originally published under the title The Rainbow Trail in 1915, it was re-edited and re-released in recent years as The Desert Crucible with the original manuscript that Grey submitted to publishers.
Marble Canyon is an unincorporated community along the Colorado River in Coconino County, Arizona, United States. It is partially located within the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and the Grand Canyon National Park.
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 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.
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.
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