All right. Thanks. You guys for being here today.
First. I don't think Matt Toro, like everyone else, is doing at the every
conference. Earlier, this, uh, last summer ran in the mat in the hallway
and he said, Mark, we're doing this great mapping Grand Canyon Conference
, you know, telling me about it. I'm thinking the first thing come to us.
Well, who's going to talk about the birds expedition? You know what I'm
thinking? That's the most important thing. That's where I come at it from.
And he's like nobody. I said, Can I? Yeah, sure, Go on and let's let's do
it so immediately. I'm like, Awesome! And I started thinking and I'm a
geographer. Uh, I'm lucky enough that I got a degree in geography. In
nineteen ninety two,
I came to geography from Wayfaring around many other degrees. I'm not
being too good of a student not being that interested in school, being
really interested in hiking and camping. And then I took a course right
before I was about to graduate, called remote sensing, and fell in love
with it and fell in love with mapping. And it was kind of one of those
things where there's update myself without how Harry met Sally quote If
you remember that movie and at the end of the movie, when he said, I came
here tonight because when you know who you wanna spend the rest of your
life with, you want the rest of your life to start right now. That's how I
felt about mapping and remote sensing India, and I've used that talks
before, and every time after the talk, someone comes up to me that that's
what happened to me. So hopefully there's somebody in the audience that
are kind of the same way, and I immediately just got completely wrapped up
into mapping and wanting to do whatever I could work with in cartography.
Graduated in nineteen ninety two and said, OK, now it's good. Gotta go
find a job. So I did what most people do looking for a job when they
graduate. I jumped on the Grateful Dead West Coast tour for about a month
and did nothing and landed back in Flagstaff and said, OK, now I really
got to go find a job, and I do what most people in flags after. I wasn't
sad at Macy's Coffee house for a half a day, trying to find a job where I
ran into someone who said you should go talk of those folks over at the,
um, Glen Canyon Environmental studies. And I don't know if many of you
guys know who the Glen Canyon environmental studies was, but it was kind
of the original study along to look at the effects of the dam through
Grand Canyon on environment. And so I walked over there and met some
people and got hired to go work in Grand Canyon, and I was able to That
was in August in November, I went on my first Grand Canyon River trip and
I was going to be a survey assistant, and I just was beside myself like,
Oh, you gotta be kidding me. You know, here it is I my career, you know, I
got a geographer, I'm a mapper. I'm working in Grand Canyon and I was so
excited, and I'm even more excited because the person who took me on the
trip that the surveyors right here today, but I haven't seen for a long
time. And this was in nineteen ninety two in November, and I was so
excited to just do research and be on the river that I remember the first
day we camped that night. Well, excited. Next day we go lunch at Hotan on
a beach about sixteen miles below Lease Varian. We're finishing lunch and
Mark Gonzalez over here says, Okay, Mark, we're going to need to go. I was
a rod man, and it's like, Okay, Mark, you're going to need. We're going to
go get a point on this rock out in the river after lunch because we're
doing some control work. And being I was twenty three years old doing
anything I could get involved, you know, in the field of mapping and being
in the field, Mark still eating a sandwich and stuff, and I take my hicks
and rod and start swimming out to the Rock. I don't know if you remember
that, and I'm on there and I looked back and there just everyone's
laughing at me. They're like we got to go across the Bow River. We gotta
set up for us every instrument. Wait a second. But at that point I was
willing to do anything to get on there, and I fell in love with Grand
Canyon, fell in love with my job, which was which continued on and the
whole time was very brought to with reading everything I could and trying
to learn as much as I could about the can was really drawn to this
nineteen twenty three Birdseye serve expedition because it was so similar.
It seemed like it related so close to what we were doing. And that's what
I want to talk about today. And a little bit of a background on the twenty
three birds expedition was it was a U S G s expedition that was primarily
, um, run to look at locations, potential locations to build dams through
grand can. Okay, so at that time, nineteen, twenty one, nineteen, twenty
two There are some earlier surveys up on the San Juan looking at some
wider areas to potentially put dams that they can put in. The reclamation
a few years earlier had already spread off, and he was looking at more of
a two damn system a ce faras controlling the river. It fries, controlling
the water. But USGS was looking and kept actively looking at flow data and
mapping geology to tryto find mohr locations. A cz I'll talk about it a
little bit Club the rue the day, uh, the hydrologist on the trip was
looking, is trying to locate several locations to put many Dam's going
through. Also, along with their trip, they were going to continue a level
line that they had to Lee's ferry and that the topography on the trip had
, uh, point two hundred fifty one miles below that they were going to ty.
And essentially, this was going to close the elevation survey the level
between there and really finally link that great unknown. So before where
you had Powell and you had Stanton and you had other trips that came
through.
We like to I like to view these is more of your explorers and they were
doing mapping, but they were Mohr exploring through the area. Where is
this nineteen twenty three Birdseye expedition trip was the first true
mapping endeavor because to fight, they weren't mapping specific locations
of dams that where that were pre determined, they were looking at the
entire area potential locations for dam. So there was, so they nearly
needed to map the entire area or get some topography, and there to locate
those area potential area so primarily it was looking for damn locations
and bringing this level line down through the neat thing to that draws me
to the expedition. Was the people in the process and doing it? It's the
first time reading and looking in the history of her that you really saw a
well thought out well put together, um, river trip through Grand Canyon
that you may have kind of, in my opinion, that you might I kind of want to
be part of. And this was the trip. This was the men right here that went
down the trip. I'll talk about each of them a little bit. Individually, Uh
, we'LL go over a little bit of what they encountered in there. And then
look at some of the products that came out of the birdseye survey that
stand that really stand the test of time and I still being used today.
There are ten men that went down river in this picture, you see, nine. Um
, the story is is that one of the men that is not pictured? Frank Dodge
was sleeping off a drunk and didn't make it into the picture. So for early
on there was early on, there was thinking that there might have only been
nine that went downstream, but there was actually ten. And that might give
you a little bit of insight that certain things may not have changed too
much as faras river trips going through the canyon. Oh!
Our survey exactly.
So here's the, uh here is the extent of the trip where they did, where
they ran the level line from Lise very down to Diamond Creek when they
when us just was putting this expedition together, they selected Claude
Bird's eye as the cheap, tougher topographic engineer and organized and
lead the survey. He was forty five years old. He was regarded as a
brilliant topographic engineer. He was very capable. He was a natural
leader. He would seem to be. Of all the folks that came on the trip with
one shoe in, that was absolutely I'm going to be, um the his position and
ship was solidified as he was going to be the leader here. Next thing,
when he put his trip together, he needed to find a head boatmen to take
him down. He chose Emery. Kolb has had boatman on the trip. Um, it was a
little bit of a there was some concern is for picking Emery Kolb, Or maybe
not some concern, but it was. It was thought that perhaps Burt Loper might
have been a better lead boatman since he had led some of the survey
expeditions up in San Juan and the reason that I've read that is expressed
that he that they chose cold wass. He had more experience in the canyon.
He was younger, Burt was much older, and Bird had already had some bad
blood with some of the other one of the other members that was going to be
on the trip going downstream.
The trip, like other survey trips or river trips or expeditions, were not
devoid of conflict or issues in that. Even before the chip started, Emery
, Kolb and Birds I had some disagreements over who would have every cold
wanted exclusive filming rights and photographic rights. As you know, the
Colt studios on the South rim of the Canyon. They made their living by
showing the movies and using that type of media to make money. However
birds I was not accepting to say that they would. He would have exclusive
rights that LaRue, that high hydrologist, would also have the right to
make motion pictures, as with some other a movie crew that would be
visiting them through the trip at some other point, so called even before
the trip was a little bit myth. There they were, may be at odds, and even
once during the trip, it happened, and it was probably not his finest
hours. I'LL talk a little bit later about some of the boating and some of
the mishaps that may have happened during the trip. Um, after choosing his
head boatman, we needed needed to choose the other boatman that would go
along with him and for those three other boatman that he chose. He chose
Elwin Blake on the left. Leland, the guy in the middle with the, uh, with
the guns and Louis Freeman. Okay. And most of what I'm what I'm showing
you so much of this is directly from Diane Boyer and Bob Webs two thousand
seven publication Damning Grand Canyon, which is which is an excellent
book that really covers the entire Birdseye expedition. But these guys, it
was interesting choice of boatman again. Burton Loper could have come. But
you have here the two young studs, so to speak, on the left, who were very
capable, very energetic, very willing to work. And then a peculiar choice
in Louis Freeman, who at what one time may have been on an athletic person
, may have been fit. Good to go down the river. But he kind of let himself
go. It didn't seem like in everything. I already worked that hard. The
reason that birds I brought him with he was really good with publicity's
and getting the story out. I don't know if anyone's a cz. Anyone ever seen
this? Nineteen twenty for National Geographic on the Bird's expedition.
This is written by Louis Freeman as well as I think the Scientific
American article was written by him as well. So he's really good at
promoting the trip and getting the information out later in the ship. He
would be resented some by the younger guys who seemed to have to do all
the work and do all the portage ing when the younger guys really wanted to
do just run all the rapids and not worry about it. But these were the
boatman that were chosen.
Um, chief geologist position was Raymond Mohr out of the University of
Kansas. Um, he wasn't the first choice. Sydney Sydney Page was the first
choice to join the expedition, but he refused to go with another person
that was going to be on the trip. So they had to go to their second
choices. Faras geologists Raymond Moore. He, uh, did a lot of he did some
great mapping. Elsa did a lot of sketching of the side canyons and and
provided a lot of other sketches of the participants. A cz well.
Good. And then Clyde LaRue, this is Ah, hydrologists. And this is the
person I've referred to it a few times as people that, uh that a person
that folks have not gotten along with and prior trips, he was the chief
hydrologist of the trip. He's gonna measure tributary and stream flow
examining photograph possible, does it damn sites and designate the sites
that were going to be used for detailed survey. So it was LaRue who really
came up with an idea of wanting to put a lot of dams along the system and
fill it essentially saving every bit of water through a couple of high
dams and then some lower dams took to control the water going through
Grand Canyon. Um, here's along on the trip. He was heady. He was
cantankerous. He had gotten, um, he had had a hard time with some of the
folks throughout the trip as well as before and after it is job at his job.
But he was, um, a member nonetheless. So the chief, the topography of the
trip was Roland Burchard. Um and he was, and he was probably the most
really the most Ah, very accomplished to Potter for very, um, very capable.
He was Bird's eyes, right hand man, and he would be the co author of the
maps that would come out the plan and profile maps that would come out at
the end of this project. Um, last person, besides the chefs was Frank
Dodge, and Frank Dodge is was the Rod man. He was the one who went out and
held the rod to measure the level down, and he was extremely capable.
Human being is a fantastic swimmer. He grew up in Hawaii. He was what they
call the true hero of the trip, where Saving Emery Kolb's light are
potentially saving Emery Kolb's life. When he capsized and upset Rapid and
dove in and swam and got him and brought him out, he was like a lot of
people. Well, some people, we may all know he was self destructive. He was
a wander and lost his life too soon, but he was an alcohol problem, but he
was, by all accounts, he was extremely capable and liked by everyone on
the trip. And then the last folks on the trip where the cooks on the left
was frank word he was on the trip until Havasu Creek, where he hiked out
and Felix Kaminski hiked in to be the chef for the rest of the trip. In
his duty is a very jovial that not much is known about Frank Word. But
Kaminsky. It was viewed as a very jovial Polish guy with the strong Polish
accent who really brought a lot of laughter and light heartedness to the
trip. So what did they bring down and how did it go? They brought a bunch
of equipment down, and this is one of those things going backto my
experience and knowing a lot of bringing equipment down and survey
equipment through the canyon, keeping it dry, keeping it safe and getting
it through is not an easy task. But they brought and did their mapping on
plain tables and an allied AIDS, and they did a lot of mapping along, uh,
threw in the mouse and everywhere they could, where they needed to look
for potential dams. They brought their stadio rods. They had a radio so
they could actually listen in, and they actually did get quite a bit of
news throughout the trip. Um, photographic equipment there are three
people that had cameras and documented the trip. Um, barometers, tripods,
compass is levels, tapes, glasses and field books. And so you can see they
were mostly primarily mapping, as you can see in the pictures on the lower
left, but also collecting stream data and stuff like that. They needed
boats to get down. So that what boats? What did they use for boats they
need? They needed four boats for the trip. Three of them were being stored
up at least fairy that were used on previous survey expeditions. But they
had one more, especially built so that they brought four boats down to do
their survey work. The one on the upper left is there a Grand Canyon? It's
the Edith, I believe. Prior to going on the lower left hand corner, you
see them sinking the boats and waterproofing them by filling them with
water so that they would float and you could see again with all the
supplies on the lower right, with them getting ready to go, getting ready
to leave in a day, it's looking like somewhat of a typical river chips. So
what did it look like when they went Well, real quick. I had an embedded
video that's not playing, so I'm going to switch over and show
the first ever video made by the U. S. G. S was a motion picture camera
that larue pad on this trip. And this is the actual nineteen twenty three
birdseye trip. I don't have it exactly, uh, put up hopes that night. Sure.
Well, maybe you could just go back to my show.
Well that.
Time. No video. Go to YouTube. Pull up the nineteen twenty three Birdseye
expedition. Watch it. It's really awesome. It was. It was going to be a
super cool part to look at, but we will move on. So what showing in the
video is that black white video the boats going through and what the
surveyors looked like laying on the deck of the boat, bringing the for the
Rodman over to the other side to get his level line, Tio, get him to the
next point so that you can see it in action. But they did not. They were
met with with their challenges. I said earlier, They Who is it? It was a
very well organized trip. It was very capable. You saw a lot of first in
this trip where you had, where they were getting resupplied, everyplace
they could throughout the river. You had re supplies come in at hands
canyon at Bright Angel Creek in Havasu. They had their friends come in.
They're had girls coming even cold came down to hang out with her, uh,
her potential Boli Lynda and then actually jumped in the boat. Ran Hance
rapid with him, which what with what? From what I read, write, read is the
first ever woman woman running a rapid, a major Rapid and Grand Canyon was
the first time that happened on this trip, but they also saw so saw some
problems that they had to deal with. Some of the boats were rotted buttons
, bottoms from the previous trips, and they had soggy bottom boats that
they had to deal with a lot. In this case, they had brought a canvas boat
, a fold up kayaked kind of a thing that there's going to be used for the
Rodman and as a reportage ing around. This is a picture of that boat
getting trashed and unusable and ended up just getting pushed downstream.
In this instance, this is one of the boats that Emery called Hit a Rock,
and at Badger Rapid at eight mile relatively early in the trip that they
had to come and pull it up and repair that boat, em Rico. But also flip in
, um, upset Rapid and had a couple of pretty extreme runs there, which
would lead to some of the boatmen. Some of the other boatman perhaps
presenting a little bit, maybe not resenting but questioning his river
leader, his guiding leadership through the trip.
As they went down and progress through the river. This is, uh, some
pictures of around Laval Falls where some flooding happened and backed him
up for I believe it was. Nine days ended up getting to Diamond Creek later
than expected, which spurred a lot of the media to think that that were
perhaps wrecked, that they were lost, that something had happened. So news
got out that they may not that they may have had had problems on the trip.
What actually happened was they had the whole up wait for the floodwaters
to subside and then move along.
The trip eventually ended in Needles, California. They did. They had a
successful run of their level line down to tie in with a point that
Burchard had above at mile two. Fifty one. And they got down to needles
and they pull out the interesting. Well, I'll skip that, but, um, they
pulled out at needles and they were done. So what were the products that
essentially came out of a trip? Here you have, ah, graph that shows
LaRue's potential dam site surveying, you know, dam site survey through
their several dams that could potentially be put in. None of them ended up
getting built. Um, none of the dam's he proposed through this trip ended
up getting built at the locations they did, but nonetheless they were
surveyed. And by running that topography and that elevation profile down,
these maps were produced in the end. So in the end, what they have
what they produced, where these plan and profile maps. It was twenty one
sheets with fourteen plan maps and seven profiles, and you can see here
for those of you guys who maybe are looking at this map for the first time
, it looks very similar to any of these river guides that you might if you
ever gone down Grand Canyon. That you might see. So there's good,
excellent detail topography with fifty foot contours at the mouths of most
streams. There's accurate elevation
Line's coming down, and they were. There are maps that we're going to
prove to be very useful. They were very useful to be a CZ base, maps to be
mapping geology along the river and what we found and looking at looking
at Richard Quarterly, who you saw talk yesterday, wrote a paper in two
thousand twelve, I think went part of this old Timers historical society
up there at Grand Canyon, looking at the evolution of the grand printed
Grand Canyon, the printed Colorado River Guide and Grand Canyon, and how
and and what's used in by who and I kind of Kabul, these all together to
look ATT chips going through the Canyon. Um, James White. No prior
geographic knowledge. Powell has his government mapas you saw yesterday
with that big void. Stanton had Powell's maps, which were not much.
Flavell gots Stanton's report. Uh, Julia still reported that he had Powell
, and then Dellenbaugh is a canyon voyage. So if you've read, Del involves
a canyon voyages, some really good accounts on the location of things,
some maps in there, but no riel, continuous maps through the canyon. And
then in nineteen twenty three, you could see Birdseye Expedition and
almost immediately nineteen twenty for these plan maps became available,
and you start seeing evidence of them being used, as Richard showed in his
paper. The Clyde, Clyde, Eddie and partly Galloway referred to the
Birdseye maps as they were going through the Carnegie Caltech trip, led by
Frank Dodge, the Rodman that we talked about earlier map geology on those
along with starting Teo Use photo Graham A tree Neat thing about this trip
in the maps that they made is it was really at the end of this plane table
and validate mapping technique early in the thirties photograph that you
started coming in. There's a different way to generate topography. So this
is one of the last great endeavors of this type of surveying going through
a place like this. As you proceed on to with the maps, you start to see
that, um, Norm Nevels started creating, taking these maps and cutting them
up and creating a scroll map. So these long you have this long, thin
section of river, so you could make more like a scroll map that somebody
can follow through the canyon. Les Jones. Great. Exhibit up it. Nou. If
Les Jones with the bucket head, gold pro and as aluminum cock made a
scroll map that he would sell two river guides, which is what you see on
the left there that lead to the next generation of River Guide, which is
the Belknap guide and then the Larry Stevens guide. And as you can see,
even today,
ninety five years later, that the base map for a lot of these river guides
air Still, the birdseye plan and profile maps that they brought that they
brought up Okay, uh, enclosing the trip ended. Um, great stuff came out of
it. These young men who were boatmen went on to continue to be topography
, furs and work on more expeditions. Survey trips. We don't know what
happened of Felix, Calms Kaminski. I think he became timeless and turned
himself into Matt Kaplinsky, who you're going to be hearing next? I don't
know. We'LL see another Polish guy, but maybe without the accent. And
lastly last they just want to show picture that this was a photo taken on
when I was working down there for fifteen years. This photo is taking
about twenty five years ago with all of us who are absolutely enamored and
taken aback by birds Eye and his expedition kind of going to an old school
old world photo with the newer generation of surveyors. And as I look at
it, I realized that was twenty five years ago. I'm going to be fifty this
year. That was half my life ago. I'm feeling really old and I need to get
back down there in the canyon. So thanks a lot youguys