22 minute read
"Until Dissolved by Consent...": The Western River Guides Association
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 60, 1992, No. 3
Until Dissolved by Consent...": The Western River Guides Association
BY ROY WEBB
IN THE YEARS FOLLOWING WORLD WAR II RIVER RUNNING on the Green and Colorado rivers underwent fundamental changes. Before the war river running had been the province of rugged men in engineer boots and wooden boats who went down the rivers on scientific expeditions or business ventures. There were exceptions to this—Norman Nevills's tourist excursions on the San Juan, Bus Hatch's guided fishing and hunting trips on the Green—but for the most part running a wild river was not something done by the average person on a lark.
After the war this began to change. First and foremost of the changes was technological, the appearance of inflatable boats in the form of surplus military rafts. No longer did a river runner have to be a carpenter as well as a boatman. Rubber boats were cheaper, sturdier, and could hold more passengers and gear than the standard wooden boat of the time. A person could buy an inflatable 7- or 10-man raft for as little as $25, equip it with a wooden frame and oars or, even easier, get paddles or an outboard motor, and have a river craft that could and did handle any sort of situation from the calm waters of Glen Canyon to the turbulent rapids of the Grand Canyon.
The next major change reflected changes in American society as a whole. Freed from wartime restrictions on travel, tourists from all over America spilled into the scenic lands of Utah and Arizona in increasing numbers. Whole families packed up their newly bought cars and headed west. A surprisingly large number of them, intrigued by prewar stories of daring rivermen that appeared in national publications such as Life and Atlantic Monthly, wanted to try river running. There were a few outfitters in place who could handle this nascent boom in river travel. Some had been there before the war, such as Norm Nevills of Mexican Hat, Utah, before his untimely death in 1949, and Bus Hatch of Vernal, who had begun running the Green as early as the late 1920s and the Colorado not much later. Others were just starting out, like Don Harris, a USGS engineer who took his first trip with Nevills, Harry Aleson, an eccentric who started on the lower Colorado, and even a woman, Georgie White, who with a couple of surplus 10-man boats started her "share-the-expenses" trips in the Grand Canyon. Still others offered trips of one sort or another—Al Quist, Roy DeSpain, and John Cross. Although trips were somewhat primitive, with monotonous canned food, bulky equipment, and uncertain access to the rivers, they met an ever increasing demand.
In this transitional postwar period a large percentage of the river runners on the Green and the Colorado lived in or near Salt Lake City. It was centrally located between the Colorado River and Idaho rivers like the Snake and Salmon, and it was the only big city where someone could be assured of finding a job to support a river habit. It was only logical, therefore, that in Salt Lake the Western River Guides Association would get its start. In the winter of 1953-54, during the off-season when river runners can only dream about their favorite canyons, camps, and cataracts, a group of men got together in the old Red Feather building in Salt Lake City to talk about their favorite pastime. They were a disparate group, their only common bond in those days being their love of river running. Don Hatch was a school teacher, Don Harris and Les Jones engineers. Al Quist had worked for the Boy Scouts Council and the United Fund, while his friend Malcolm Ellingson, or Moki-Mac as he was soon to become known, worked for many years at Hill Air Force Base. Others were attorneys, postmen, and mechanics, ranging from those who had gone down a river once to those who were even then second-generation river rats.
Out of those meetings grew the Western River Guides Association. Its first bylaws were drawn up by Howard H. Smith, the first executive secretary, and Bob Ryberg, an attorney member of the group. They were dated February 24, 1954, and provided for the usual election of officers, schedules of meetings—the last Sunday of February and the last Sunday of October—resignation of officers, and termination of membership. Foreshadowing its turbulent future, the bylaws also provided a means whereby the association could self-destruct: Article II stated, "The association shall exist until dissolved by consent of a majority of the registered members." Its reasons for existence were given as discussing "vital questions pertinent to the group in regards to the guiding of trips on the rivers, and to take proper action as is deemed necessary by the group"; and safety, "proper camping methods (sanitation-garbage, etc.)," exchange of ideas, information, and so on. In many of its goals, the WRGA was ahead of its time. Such issues as river safety and equipment standards were not recognized by government river managers until decades later.
Far from these high-sounding principles and declarations, however, early WRGA meetings were usually social events rather than planning sessions. Meetings were soon moved to the garage of Anchor Marine on Redwood Road in Salt Lake or held at the home of a member, such as Jack Curry, Dee Holladay, or Don Harris. The boatmen would gather mainly to swap stories of the past season's river runs, talk about future trips, and discuss ideas about equipment and techniques. River running was still very much in transition from the days of wooden boats and cork life jackets; the advent of the inflatable raft, as well as other equipment like surplus life vests and waterproof rubber bags, had turned the small river community upside down. Some members of the group were ardent wooden boat supporters and declared that rubber boats were a passing fad and unmanly besides. Advocates of the inflatable craft would dismiss the wooden boat holdouts as old fogies unwilling to face up to the wave of the future. River runners tend to be an individualistic, opinionated lot anyway; fueled by copious quantities of beer and deeply held convictions, they often debated loudly and long.
Soon an issue arose that all members of the WRGA could rally around. It was the beginning of a long series of issues that found members putting aside differences and facing a common foe—the Bureau of Reclamation. When construction of Glen Canyon Dam began in the late 1950s, the cofferdams, blasting, and tunnels blocked the river at the dam site, about 15 miles above the traditional takeout, Lees Ferry. That left over 150 miles of Glen Canyon that could be run, but since there was no other practical exit the whole canyon was effectively closed to river runners. Glen Canyon was just reaching the height of its popularity as a scenic and easy stretch of the Colorado, and the WRGA was soon clamoring for the Bureau of Reclamation to open a road into the canyon above the dam site so that groups could still float the river. After some debate about the best place Kane Creek was finally decided upon, and the bureau agreed to build a road into that remote spot. WRGA members continued running trips down Glen Canyon right up until the gates on the dam were closed and even for a while afterward. The association had won its first battle. During the next decades, however, not all such debates were to be so easily resolved.
The 1960s saw a boom in river running, with thousands of passengers taken down the Green, the Colorado, the San Juan, and the rivers of Idaho and California. There was a corresponding growth in the membership of the WRGA in both the guide and outfitter categories. Government agencies also began to pay increasing attention to river running from both the recreational and the natural resource management standpoints. In a sense, by actively promoting river running as a sport, the WRGA helped create the problem of increasing government regulation of the rivers. The more people on the river, the greater the certainty that someone in government would want to regulate the sport.
In the 1950s river running had been free and easy. Regulations were loosely enforced at best and often nonexistent. When Hatch River Expeditions wanted to run the Grand Canyon, for instance, they would notify Lynn Coffin, the ranger at Lees Ferry, a few days in advance. Coffin would meet them at the ferry, write out a permit, and send them on their way. Other stretches of river, such as Desolation Canyon on the Green or the San Juan River in southeastern Utah, lacked even that formality; there were no rangers, no permits, no obstructions at all save the rapids themselves.
Utah was the first state to establish regulations concerning river running. In the late 1950s and early 1960s the legislature and the Public Service Commission created rules concerning river safety, sanitation, permits, fees, and quotas. The National Park Service followed suit, requiring river outfitters in Dinosaur National Monument and Grand Canyon National Park to obtain concessions, pay fees, and have insurance.
Relations between the WRGA and the various regulatory agencies were generally good at first with the association serving as an advisor to the government agencies setting up standards for boats, life jackets, campfires, garbage disposal, and sanitation. The membership of the WRGA provided a natural reservoir of knowledge about the river. Don Harris and Jack Brennan, officers of the WRGA and owners of Harris-Brennan River Expeditions, and that perennial river critic, Otis Marston, worked with the National Park Service on a system of rating rapids using a 1-10 scale. Les Jones, a civil engineer and WRGA officer in charge of "maps and reconnaissance," created scroll maps of western rivers that the association made available to members, park rangers, and the public.
Growth in membership brought new problems to the WRGA— the foremost an increasing split between those in two of the categories of membership, guides and outfitters. Guides were employees but not owners, while outfitters, who were often guides as well, owned the concessions and companies. According to the bylaws only those holding guide memberships could vote; if an outfitter wanted a say he had to also register as a guide and pay two sets of dues. The dues were minimal, but the principle was what counted. On the other hand, the outfitters exerted greater influence on WRGA policies and rules and dominated the leadership of the association. A third category, general membership, consisted mostly of private river runners or regular passengers on commercial trips, individuals who were neither outfitters nor guides but simply people who loved river running. For the most part they divided their loyalties between one of the two factions.
Guides tended to be younger and showed more interest in running the river than in managing a business. One older member noted in 1969 that the "younger generation of'boatmen' are rather 'hippie' inclined, use pot, etc." A significant number were Vietnam veterans escaping from the war to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Outfitters, on the other hand, often were older, had become more conservative, and had a much greater stake in the business of river running—not just rapids and runs but profits and losses, bottom lines as well as eddy lines. Many guides felt that they were being forced out of the association by the outfitters, and some quit. Virtually all outfitters were active river guides as well, and the lines should not be too clearly drawn. Still, tension between the two factions boiled over on occasion, and it caused a great deal of soul-searching in more than one individual.
Most WRGA members set aside their differences, however, during the annual meetings in Salt Lake City. When the group grew too large to meet in someone's house, the WRGA booked space in various hotels such as Little America or the Rodeway Inn. During the day members attended business meetings and sessions dealing with some river-related topic such as river safety and rescue, insurance, and government relations. The association almost always invited officials from the National Park Service, Forest Service, and other management agencies to attend the annual meetings. There were featured speakers, honored guests, and a gala banquet. One of the favorite traditions occurred on the first night of the meeting when old and new river films were shown and old and new stories exchanged and embellished. The association provided free beer, and the resulting parties could continue well into the morning. Members often dressed in their river clothes, greeted each other like long-lost friends, slapped each other's backs, and worked deals in the corners. Boats, names, launches, and user-days were traded back and forth in a generally convivial atmosphere of smoke, loud voices, and beer fumes. In fact, some members began to worry about their rowdy image in conservative Utah, but such fears rarely stopped the gaiety. It did cost them one charter member, however; Les Jones, a faithful Latter-day Saint, quit the association because of what he called "extreme drunkenness."
In 1973 WRGA members chose Boise, Idaho, as the site of their first meeting to be outside of Salt Lake City. There are many historical connections between pioneer river runners in Utah and those in Idaho; simply put, virtually everyone who ran the Green or the Colorado from the 1930s on also ran the Middle Fork of the Salmon, the Main Salmon, and the Snake. Idaho also had its own native river runners, such as Don Smith, Prince Helfrich, and Kyle McGrady, and its own guides association, the Idaho Outfitters and Guides. It was mainly composed of horse packers and fishing guides until the 1970s when Idaho river outfitters began to dominate the organization. The success of the Boise meeting established the precedent that the spring meeting would usually be held in Salt Lake City and the fall meeting elsewhere.
The greatest test of the solidarity of the WRGA also came in 1973 when the National Park Service unveiled its management plans for the Green and the Colorado. Basically the same, the plans for Dinosaur National Monument and Grand Canyon National Park differed in details. The Grand Canyon Management Plan was more strict and caused greater controversy in the WRGA. It placed a moratorium on new river outfitters, with the number frozen at 21. Someone wanting to start a river business now had to buy out an existing concession. The plan established new rules for disposal of wastes, camping places and practices, types of required equipment—first-aid kits, life jackets, oars—the length of time a party could stay on the river, and the size of parties. Much thought and a great deal of paperwork by the river outfitters and members of WRGA as well as the NPS went into the provisions of the management plan. For instance, several folders of correspondence, plans, and other documents in the WRGA papers describe the types of toilets to be used along the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, where they would be placed, and who would take care of them. Finally, the Colorado River was proposed for wilderness designation, and environmental studies were launched.
There were other provisions; for the most part the WRGA cooperated fully with the NPS and had even anticipated the government requirements by many years. Many members viewed a moratorium on any new concessions in a positive light, for it simply meant less competition for what they saw as an increasingly tighter market. The manner in which the rules were put in place angered some. When existing outfitters were told to file for a permit or lose their privileges, some did and some did not. Those who refused or neglected to file lost their permits. Many members of WRGA were outraged by these NPS actions, but a widely held attitude among river runners—derived from the awesome, individual responsibility felt in guiding a boat through big rapids—is expressed in the saying, "You snooze, you lose." In other words, a person is responsible for his own actions, whether in the middle of a big rapid or in a park ranger's office. As for the provisions about improved camping, sanitation, and safety practices, all outfitters were of course interested in keeping the river and the canyons clean and in making sure that their trips were as safe as possible.
Other provisions of the management plan, however, created so much intense debate that the very existence of the WRGA was threatened. The offending provisions dealt with the different views of the sport held by the commercial river outfitters who took passengers for hire and the private river runners who wanted to do it on their own without a guide. When the management plans were implemented a ceiling was set on the number of people who could go down the river in a given year as well as on the number of launches from any one place on any one day. The "boater-user-days" (one person on the river for one day) and the launches were divided among the outfitters and the private river runners (usually known simply as "privates"). Until the early 1970s over 90 percent of river traffic in the Grand Canyon was commercial, so the outfitters naturally got the lion's share of both user-days and launches. Many outfitters prospered in this new, less competitive climate.
Few private individuals had the expertise, not to mention the equipment, to run a difficult and remote stretch of river like the Grand Canyon until the late 1960s and early 1970s. First, there simply were not that many people on the river; not until almost 1950 did the number of people through the Grand Canyon exceed a hundred. Nor were boats and equipment easy to obtain. The supply of surplus inflatable boats and other equipment was exhausted early on, and most other needed items had to be either scrounged or fabricated by the river runners themselves. By 1973 this had changed. Some domestic manufacturers, such as UDISCO, Campways, and Rubber Fabricators, began making boats specially for river running; and an emerging cottage industry allowed private individuals to buy rowing frames, oars, life jackets, waterproof bags, special coolers, and so on. As more and more people went on river trips, more and more of them wanted to experience it themselves. This was a sign of the times; the late 1960s and early 1970s were the peak of the back-to-the-earth, do-it-yourself, self-sufficient movement in America. As an earlier private river runner, Ellsworth Kolb, had put it, they "did not wish to be piloted down the Colorado by a guide. We wanted to make our own trip in our own way. If we succeeded, we would have all the satisfaction that comes from original, personal, exploration."
As the number of people with the equipment and experience needed to run a river on their own grew, mutterings arose in WRGA meetings about the percentage of river time given to each side. Outfitters felt that their livelihood was being threatened by talk of a greater share of river time for privates, while the privates felt that they were being unfairly frozen out—grandfathered out of the river, since most of the commercial outfitters were there first. Debate at the annual meetings often grew heated. Harsh words were sometimes exchanged, and members were "shouted down" at meetings. In the Grand Canyon Management Plan the Park Service came down on the side of the privates and called for a greater share of the user-days and launches for individuals. This outraged many outfitters, who felt betrayed by the agencies they had worked so closely with in the past. The NPS was roundly condemned by many outfitters but supported by the privates.
Naturally enough this debate split the Western River Guides Association right down the middle. At the February 1974 meeting a Private Permit Action Committee was formed from members on both sides of the debate. The following November, at the meeting in Reno, Nevada, the committee presented its findings in the form of majority and minority reports—an indication of how divided the members were. The majority report called for an increase in the percentage of time allotted to the commercial operators to 98 percent of all launches and user-days; the minority report called for a redistribution of user-days to a 65 percent commercial-35 percent private ratio, favoring the private river runners. The WRGA leadership voted unanimously in favor of the majority report, and the president of the association referred to the views of the minority committee members—the "Joe Munroe forces," named after their leader—as "the incessant wailing of a few extremists." In turn, general members of the association were dismayed by the "polarization" within the WRGA and the leadership's "strident letters . . . which seemed a veritable battle-cry against non-commercial runners."
Despite a lawsuit by the Wilderness Public Rights Fund and the Sierra Club against the outfitters in the WRGA and the National Park Service, the matter dragged on into the 1980s without any real decision. The NPS finally decided to leave the allocations of user-days and launches in the Grand Canyon essentially unchanged. The hot feelings engendered on both sides of the issue in the WRGA, however, took a long time to cool.
As soon as the debate over user-days began to fade another provision of the plan, the proposal to ban the use of outboard motors on boats in the Grand Canyon, stirred up even more dissension within the ranks of the WRGA. Motors over a certain horsepower were already banned —which did not bother the WRGA, since outfitters usually used smaller motors—but this proposal would ban all motors. The outfitters wanted motors because they added an element of safety by making larger boats more maneuverable in the dangerous rapids of the canyon. They also made it possible to carry a larger number of paying passengers down the river at a much faster speed than a rowed boat. This allowed a larger number of trips per season, giving a greater profit margin, cutting down on overhead, and allowing a river business to survive.
Wilderness advocates, the Sierra Club, the private river runners, and some small outfitters (who stood to gain from a planned redistribution of available user-days), all supported the plan. Those who favored boats equipped with rowing frames and oars found the motorized rigs noisy, smelly, and obtrusive and claimed they were ruining their wilderness experience. To reach the conclusion that motors should be banned the Park Service took a select group of people down the Grand Canyon, some on oar boats, some on motor rigs. The groups switched boats in mid-canyon and at the end of the trip were interviewed by park rangers. Most of them found the motor rig experience unpleasant and not in keeping with wilderness values that the Park Service was trying to promote. The management plan goal was to
The plan also contained a provision for some 11,500 user-days to be allocated for "administrative and research trips" and called for an increase in patrols from 3 per year to 39. But to the outfitters the ban on motors hurt the most. Outraged by the methods the Park Service had used to reach its conclusions, the WRGA outfitters claimed that if they had been running the research trip the passengers would have had a good time! Not only was the Park Service telling the outfitters that they had to share the river with privates, now it was telling them how to run the river.
The WRGA reacted swiftly; the proposed action struck at the river runners' pocketbooks, psyches, and even egos—a not-inconsiderable factor. The leadership quickly voted to oppose the ban, again unanimously. Again harsh words echoed in WRGA meeting halls, and some members left the association because of it. One WRGA member, Gaylord Staveley, who was also a member of a splinter group called the Professional River Outfitters, wrote a 16-page comment on the Environmental Impact Statement accompanying the NPS proposals that amounted to a ringing manifesto of freedom from Park Service plans and planners. Staveley's document, copied and distributed to members by the WRGA leadership at association expense, further alienated members who supported the ban.
Finally, Sen. Jake Garn brought congressional pressure to bear on the Park Service on behalf of the outfitters and the leadership of the WRGA. Some provisions of the plan were finally implemented, but for the most part it became a dead issue after 1980. Again the WRGA had won a fight with the Park Service, but this time it had cost a great deal of goodwill inside the organization. Debate over both issues within the association—allocation of user-days and motors vs. oars—reflected a deeper division in the WRGA: who controlled the association, the guides or the outfitters. In the end neither issue was entirely resolved, although motors were not banned from the canyon. And divisions within the Western River Guides Association remained for the rest of its existence.
The debate over the Grand Canyon Management Plan typified what was happening within the association, but it was not the only source of conflict. As the association matured it began to show signs of strain brought on by too many people competing for the same resource, namely the rivers themselves. Besides the Grand Canyon, other stretches of the Colorado and the Green came under scrutiny from the Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and various Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming agencies all of which were preparing management plans. Much to the disgust of the WRGA even the U.S. Coast Guard tried to get into the act, declaring that since river runners used boats they fell under Coast Guard jurisdiction. Additionally, on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho the so-called Sam Warren edict stated that it would be the policy of the U.S. Forest Service to favor private river runners over established professional outfitters. Fueled by fears of monopoly on the river, other topics of animated discussion included whether outfitters could buy or sell other river concessions.
Even while all this discussion was going on the WRGA continued to grow. Membership reached over a thousand by the mid-1970s despite the defection of disaffected members or the attrition brought about by increased competition among outfitters. Meetings were now held in many other places besides Salt Lake City, such as Durango, Colorado; Flagstaff, Arizona; Jackson, Wyoming; and Sun Valley, Idaho. This reflected the growth of state chapters of the WRGA as well as the advent of many local organizations loosely tied to the WRGA, including the Idaho Outfitters and Guides, Professional River Guides, Colorado River Outfitters, and the Utah Guides and Outfitters. Far from being a Utah/Grand Canyon club, as it had been in the early days, WRGA members now came from all over the West: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, California, New Mexico. Additionally, the association sent feelers out to other organizations, such as the British Columbia Guides Association and outfitters groups in the eastern United States.
Annual meetings were still major social events, but the differences among the membership revealed by the debate over the Grand Canyon Management Plan also manifested themselves in the social arena. Increasingly, some members disapproved of the rowdy drinking sessions that characterized the meetings. They felt that the organization needed to become more professional and sober in order to deal with the government on its own terms. Bill Belknap, a long-time river runner, publisher, and outfitter, tried during his tenure as WRGA president in the early 1970s to clean up the association's act.
He limited the practice of supplying free beer to the first night of the convention, introduced a resolution banning rock and roll music from the meetings, tried to get everyone to pay attention to the rules and attend business meetings, and generally to shape up. In this he was largely unsuccessful and finally gave up in disgust. The truth was that a sizeable portion of the membership quite simply did not want to give up the social aspect of the association. To them the proper function of the WRGA was to provide excuses for just such occasions when they could bring some of the river they loved into their off-season lives.
Just about everyone agreed that the association had gotten too big to be run solely by volunteers. The executive secretary for many years, Art Woodworth, took it upon himself to keep the association going. Unpaid except for an occasional free trip down the river, Woodworth (who was neither an outfitter nor a guide, simply a man who loved river running) kept the books, wrote checks, put out the newsletter, and kept track of memberships. Working out of a room in his Salt Lake City home, Woodworth answered inquiries from all over the country about river running and kept up a constant correspondence with the succession of presidents and officers of the WRGA about finances, plans for conventions, and disputes between members. One officer referred to Art as the peacemaker of the organization, and it was true that most members referred questions about rules and bylaws to him. Since retired, Woodworth was the unsung hero of the WRGA; without him the organization would most likely have fallen to pieces long before it did.
Some members realized that they could not depend on volunteers like Art forever. Patrick Conley and Don Hatch, presidents of the WRGA in the early 1980s, felt that the association needed to change with the times in order to meet the challenges of the new decade. At the February 1979 meeting substantial changes in the bylaws were approved by the membership. These included a clarification of the outfitter status, an effort to increase the membership by enlisting passengers, and hiring an executive director and a paid staff. This last item was the most important, for the leaders of the WRGA felt that an executive director could improve the newsletter, head the expanded membership drive, serve as a lobbyist with government agencies, act as a public relations agent for the WRGA and river running in general, and chair the convention committees.
The first executive director, hired the next year, was a former Western River Expeditions boatman, Carl Norbeck. Trained in public administration, he quickly shook many of the kinks out of the way things were run by the WRGA. But Norbeck left after a year to accept a position at Yale University, and WRGA leaders next hired Jerry Mallet, another former boatman and an experienced fund-raiser and organizer as well. Under his leadership the WHR.GA became more professional, gaining a greater voice with government management agencies and becoming more involved with larger environmental issues. More significant in the long run, Mallett and some WRGA officers also established contacts with the association's counterpart in the eastern U.S., the Eastern Professional River Outfitters Association (EPROA), with the aim of combining forces.
Some members of the WRGA did not like the new direction taken by the leaders of the association. It seemed to be becoming less a river runners' organization than an environmentalist group, and they resented this shift in emphasis to larger issues outside the river. Others objected to the proposed expansion and amalgamation with other outfitter groups. During this period the WRGA lost many older members who either quit in protest or simply stopped paying dues and attending meetings. Because these disaffected members were by nature not the type to assert leadership in an organization they felt increasingly distant from, the contacts with other groups and the shift toward an environmentalist slant continued.
After several years of informal meetings, with all the diplomacy of warring sovereign nations maneuvering around a peace table, the WRGA and the EPROA met at what was billed as Confluence '89 in New Orleans. During this lengthy meeting several thousand river runners from all over the United States met for discussions, equipment displays, and parties. Despite the obvious temptations and distractions enough business was transacted to allow a plan to be drawn up whereby the two organizations would unite under a larger umbrella encompassing all outdoor-oriented associations in the U.S., called America Outdoors. The respective memberships were given one year to mull it over, with the final approval coming at the next meeting, a joint conference held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in December 1990. After the plan was approved by the members, the organizations surrendered their identities. The turbulent life of the Western River Guides Association was ended.
Throughout its forty-year history the Western River Guides Association found itself caught in the grip of two different forces; if the WRGA were an individual it could almost be called schizophrenic. The common bond shared by those who loved rivers, rapids, and canyons and liked to associate with fellow travelers drew the membership together. At the same time, deep (and in the end, irreconcilable) differences of philosophy among the membership split the association apart. On the issue of who should have a greater voice in decisions affecting river runners, the guides or the outfitters, the members could never agree. The user-day debate, motors vs. oars, even something as simple as whether there should be free beer at the social events, were all symptoms of this larger division. Moreover, although the outfitters might unite against the private river runners and government managers, they also were businessmen, competitors for a fixed natural resource. Their professional and personal jealousies often negated any solidarity they might have gained in dealing with common enemies.
The Western River Guides Association did accomplish many things, however, and too much emphasis should not be placed on the divisions within the organization. The association was instrumental in setting standards for river safety, equipment, and procedures. In this and in many other matters the leadership of the WRGA anticipated government regulations by many years; and when the various river management agencies needed advice on things ranging from what type of boat could safely run the Grand Canyon to how deep the hole for a pit toilet should be, they turned to the WRGA. Despite differences in philosophy the members, guides and outfitters alike, united against threats to rivers such as the proposed dams in the Grand Canyon, the McPhee Dam on the Dolores River, the New Melones Dam on the Stanislaus River in California, and many others. Dismayed by the peak-power proposals of the Bureau of Reclamation for the Glen Canyon Dam, the WRGA helped lay the groundwork for the the Glen Canyon Environmental Studies that are being conducted today and promise to change the entire philosophy of management of dammed rivers by the Bureau of Reclamation. Members of the WRGA introduced thousands of Americans to the joys of river running, the thrill of a rapid well-run, and the peace of a riverside camp. And they left fond memories of many enjoyable meetings over the years, times that are still talked about wherever river runners gather. For these accomplishments, more than any debates, however heated, the Western River Guides Association should be remembered.
For full citations and images please view this article on a desktop.
