Harry Aleson and the Place No One Knew BY GARY T O P P I N G
1 HE W E S T AS A SCENIC LURE for tourists is a well known fact, a fact that accounts for the existence of entire libraries of guide books, travelers' accounts, novels, and downright propaganda. Although the veracity of that literature varies widely, nearly all of it makes good reading, and it shows that the scenic West is and always has been, in various ways, big business. Among the western states Utah ranks high in scenic resources; perhaps only Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon National Parks possess scenic beauty and tourist appeal equal to or greater than the canyonlands parks in southern Utah. This is not to say that Utah has ever tried to realize fully its tourist potential; and one of its most magnificent resources, Glen Canyon of the Colorado River, has come to be known, through Eliot Porter's photographic essay of 1963, as "the place no one knew." 1 Whether Glen Canyon was generally unknown is a debatable point to which this essay will offer relevant data but does not pretend Dr. Topping is curator of manuscripts for the Utah State Historical Society Library. Eliot Porter, The Place No One Knew (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1963).
1
Harry Aleson's boat near the mouth of Lost Eden Canyon, right, in Glen Canyon of the Colorado River, October 1955. Wk Courtesy of Dick Sprang.
