Otis R. Marston

Otis "Dock" Marston at 1836 Denis Julien inscription in Cataract Canyon, April, 1964. (Photo: Jorgen Visbak)

Otis R. "Dock" Marston (born February 11, 1894, in Berkeley, California - died August 30, 1979, in San Francisco) was an early Grand Canyon river runner who participated in a large number of river running "Firsts." Marston was the eighty-third person to 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 material for his book, he amassed a vast collection of material on early Grand Canyon river runners, with additional information on early Green and Colorado river runners. His collection is housed in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.[1]

Early Years

Childhood Family

Otis Reed Marston's father, Captain William Harrington Marston, was orphaned in northern Maine at the age of nine. William went to sea out of Boston in his teens where he became a master mariner and eventually owned a large shipping business sailing the Pacific out of San Francisco, California.

The forty-eight-year-old Captain met twenty-one-year-old Idela Alice Reed while sailing one of his ships from Hawaii to California in 1883. The couple was married the next year. Idela gave birth to her first child, Sibyl, in 1885, followed by her first son, Ellery William, in 1886. Tragically, Ellery choked to death while the family was at sea in late 1888 and he was buried there. Idela gave birth to four more children, Elsa, Merle, Vera and another son, Otis Reed.[2]

University studies and early career

Young Otis was a strong swimmer, and he swam across the Golden Gate from San Francisco to Marin County in 1915. He received his bachelors in electrical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1916, then went on to receive his masters in industrial engineering at Cornell University in 1917.[3]

Wartime army service

USS H-4 underway 1922

Otis joined the United States Naval Academy where he graduated as an ensign in 1918. While on leave on Christmas Eve, 1918, Otis rode a mule to Hermit Camp in the Grand Canyon, and saw Hermit Rapid on Christmas Day. By the close of 1919, he had completed his qualifications as a submarine commander with the United States Navy on the H-4 submarine.[4]

Marriage and children

Otis met Margaret “Mag” Lowell Garthwaite and the two were married on January 4, 1925. They had three children, a son named Otis Garthwaite “Garth” and twin girls, Loel and Maradel. In later years, Mag became a prime mover in the University of California Alumni Association and Berkeley's Young People's Symphony Orchestra program. Mag is also credited with initiating the use of policewomen on the Berkeley force.[5]

E. F. Hutton

Otis began working as a financial planner for E. F. Hutton around 1930, and he soon realized he was better at his job if he understood the psychological make-up of his clients. To this end, Otis read a number of books on psychology. The work with Hutton was terminated in 1947.[6][7]

River Cruises

Otis Marston made a total of twenty two river trips through the Grand Canyon.[8] The following is a recounting of some of those river trips Otis Marston participated in. This list is not a complete list.

1942 Grand Canyon River Trip

A friend of Marston's, Neill C. Wilson, participated in a San Juan River trip with Norman Nevills and thought it would be great to go with Norm on a Grand Canyon Cruise. Otis joined Wilson and the two men, accompanied by their sons, cruised the Grand Canyon with Norm in 1942.[9][10] At the end of that trip, Otis had grown a bushy beard making him look like an "old time pill-roller" or "Doc." The name stuck, and a few years later Otis changed it to Dock, as in the dock at the end of the trip.[11]

1944 Glen Canyon River Trip

In 1944, Dock and his two daughters joined Norm for a run from Mexican Hat, Utah, through Glen Canyon to Lee's Ferry. Dock rowed a punt some on that trip, including through Syncline Rapid.[12]

1945 Cataract Canyon, Salmon and Hell's Canyon of the Snake River

In 1945, Dock rowed a boat on the Colorado River from Moab to Lee’s Ferry, through Cataract and Glen canyons with Norm, and in 1946 Marston and Nevills rowed Idaho’s Salmon River and Hells Canyon.[13]

1947 Lodore and Grand Canyon

Dock rowed a boat for Norm through Lodore and Grand canyons in 1947. On that trip, Dock and Garth were the first father-son team to each row a boat on the same trip through the Grand Canyon. Dock swam Dubendorff Rapid without a life jacket or air mattress. It was the first record of anyone intentionally swimming a Grand Canyon rapid free of any flotation device.[14]

1948 Grand Canyon and Dolores River Trips

In 1948, Dock rowed the Grand Canyon on his last river trip with Norm Nevills before Norm's untimely death in 1949. He also ran the Dolores River with his wife Mag, making the first complete transit of the Dolores River with Robert Preston Walker of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.[15]

1949, First Motor Boat Run of Grand Canyon

1949 and 1950 ESMERALDA II

Dock’s next first was his run of the Grand Canyon in the first motorized boat, the ESMERALDA II, with Egbert "Ed" Hudson in 1949. Hudson had built the boat to design specifications provided by Canadian Naval Architect William Garden. Hudson did the driving while Dock did the navigating. Other members in the ESMERALDA II included Hudson's son Edward, Wilson "Willie" Taylor, and Bestor Robinson.[16][17]

1950, First Stock Motorboat Run of Grand Canyon

Dock was back to run the Grand Canyon again with two motorboats in 1950, with Ed Hudson piloting the ESMERALDA II and Dock piloting a stock Chris Craft Speedster. The ESMERALDA II broke down and was abandoned by Hudson. In the first helicopter rescue of river runners in Grand Canyon, Hudson and his son Edward were helicoptered out of the Grand Canyon while Dock completed the cruise in the Chris Craft. The next river trip in Grand Canyon, almost a month later, discovered the ESMERALDA II, fixed her, and were able to motor her through the rest of the Canyon. Hudson donated the ESMERALDA II to the National Park Service where his boat is preserved to this day. Just after completing the 1950 cruise, Dock and Mag joined Moulton Fulmer for a dory run of the Yampa River.[18]

1951, First Outboard Motorboat Run of Grand Canyon

First outboard downrun of Grand Canyon, at Lee's Ferry, AZ, 1951

Dock next turned to the question of outboard motors. In 1951, he orchestrated the first successful down-run of outboard motor boats through the entire Grand Canyon. The 1951 "Marston Motorcade" consisted of two outboard motorboats, and three stock Chris Craft Speedsters. The 18 foot aluminum hull outboard motorboat JUNE BUG was piloted by Jimmy Jordan and the second boat of the same design, the TWIN, was piloted by Rod Sanderson. The two outboards were powered by twin 25 horsepower Evinrude outboard motors. While the JUNE BUG completed the cruise, not far below Separation Canyon, the gearshift on the motor of the TWIN gave trouble,and the boat was taken in tow, much to the disgust of its crew.[19][20]

1953 and 1954 All Outboard Trips

In June 1953, Dock and his wife Mag did a Grand Canyon river trip doing some reconnaissance for a possible Walt Disney film. They used three single engine outboard boats, including the TWIN, one of the original outboards used in 1951. Dock put together another all outboard three boat trip in 1954. The low water caused numerous rock vs. boat encounters.[21]

1957 Highest Water Grand Canyon run and 1959 Disney Film

Dock kept running rivers, and in 1957 ran the Grand Canyon on 126,000 cubic feet per second, the highest Colorado River flow ever navigated.[22] Hired by Walt Disney Studios in 1959 as a technical adviser, Dock lead a film crew through the Grand Canyon to film river running and background scenes for a perfectly horrible movie about Powell’s first transit called Ten Who Dared. The film critics wished the men hadn’t.[23]

1960 First and only Jet Boat Uprun Of Grand Canyon

Using his vast river knowledge and ability to get a river running permit, in 1960 Dock teamed up with Jon Hamilton, son of Bill Hamilton and others for the first and only successful up-run of the Colorado River in Grand Canyon using jet boats.[24][25]

1963 First Sportyak II Grand Canyon downrun

1963 Sportyak II low water cruise

In January 1963, the newly completed Glen Canyon Dam began impounding water behind the dam. That August, with the dam releasing about 1,000 cubic feet of water per second, Dock and others cruised the entire Colorado River in Marble Canyon and the Grand Canyon, just downstream of Glen Canyon Dam. It was monsoon season, and the side tributaries, especially the Paria River, were adding liquid mud into the almost empty river channel. The river runners used small Sportyak II watercaft, and walked around a number of rapids they had never experienced at higher water flows. This river journey was the first river trip through Grand Canyon after the closing of the bypass tubes around Glen Canyon Dam.

1964 Denis Julien Inscription

While researching material for the manuscript (see below) about the 1889-90 Robert Brewster Stanton railroad survey, Dock realized an inscription made by fur trapper Denis Julien in 1836 had not been seen by river runners since the late 1800s. The Stanton Party found the inscription in lower Cataract Canyon in June 1889. It was seen again in the summer of 1891 by the Best Expedition, then went unnoticed. In late March 1964, as the reservoir was filling behind Glen Canyon Dam, Dock and three friends, Jorgen Visbak, Bill Belknap and Bill's son Buzz, used Sportyak's to slowly cruise through Cataract Canyon from the Confluence to Hite, Utah. Along the way, they located the 1836 inscription made by Denis Julien.[26] Not long after Dock and his friends located the inscription, the rising reservoir waters being impounded behind Glen Canyon Dam covered the inscription.

The Manuscript

The 1947 Idea

Dock began to write a simple book on Grand Canyon river running history in 1947. He assumed it would take six months to a year, at which time he would return to financial planning. The more he worked on the book, the more he realized what had been written was woefully inaccurate.[27]

By 1949, Dock was interviewing river runners and searching out original letters, logs, photographs and journals. Marston would eventually amass an unparalleled collection of anything and everything to do with the history of the people who boated along the entire Colorado River watershed. This extensive collection was eventually contained in 492 boxes, 60 albums, 163 reels of film, and 38 video cassettes and was the basis for his manuscript on the first 100 river runners through Grand Canyon.

1953 Help With The Manuscript

By 1953, Dock had already spent five years trying to sort out river-running history fact from fiction, and he was well underway in writing his definitive account of Grand Canyon river running. Dock had some help in his writing at this time from an elderly neighbor who had recently moved to Berkeley. The neighbor was Thaddeus Ames, a psychoanalyst at the top of his field, who had studied under Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. The two men became great friends and spent hours on hours trying to understand the actions of the river people Dock was writing about.[28] They also analyzed the biographers who had written accounts about people like John Wesley Powell, Glen and Bessie Hyde, Buzz Holmstrom, Bert Loper, and Norm Nevills, accounts that were often full of the good things done but left out all the bad things. Early on, Dock decided his work would not be one-sided. Besides chronicling river history, by this time Dock had completed a list of what he called the first 200 river runners to complete a fast-water transit of the Colorado River from Lee’s Ferry to the Grand Wash Cliffs.[29]

Later life

Besides his river work, Dock participated in many civic works, including Rotary International. He was also a member of the Bohemian Club. The death of his mother Idela in 1956, an amazing woman in her own right, the completion of Glen Canyon Dam in 1963, and the loss of his wife of forty four years to cancer in 1968 were difficult blows. In 1973, Dock moved into an apartment at the Bohemian Club, and rented an adjacent apartment to house his huge collection of Colorado River material.[30] Dock continued to work on his book before he died August 30, 1979. Dock's manuscript finally went to press in 2014, published as From Powell to Power: A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, p. 530 ISBN 978-0990527022.[31]

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf438n99sg/
  2. ↑ http://connectedbloodlines.com/getperson.php?personID=I3880&tree=lowell
  3. ↑ Martin, Thomas C., (2012). "Big Water Little Boats: Moulty Fulmer and the First Grand Canyon Dory on the Last of the Wild Colorado River". Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, pg. 43, ISBN 978-0-9795055-6-0
  4. ↑ Martin, Thomas C., (2012). "Big Water Little Boats: Moulty Fulmer and the First Grand Canyon Dory on the Last of the Wild Colorado River". Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, pg. 43, ISBN 978-0-9795055-6-0
  5. ↑ Oakland Tribune, Sunday, September 22, 1968
  6. ↑ Martin, Thomas C., (2012). "Big Water Little Boats: Moulty Fulmer and the First Grand Canyon Dory on the Last of the Wild Colorado River". Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, pg. 43, ISBN 978-0-9795055-6-0
  7. ↑ Martin, Thomas C., (2014) personal communication Jeff Marston
  8. ↑ Quartaroli, Richard D., (2013). A Rendezvous of Grand Canyon Historians: Ideas, Arguments and First Person Accounts. Flagstaff, Arizona, Grand Canyon Historical Society, pg. 18, ISBN 978-1-934656-49-5
  9. ↑ Webb, Roy, (2005). "High, Wide and Handsome: The River Journals of Norman D. Nevills". Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, p. 119, ISBN 0-87421-603-6
  10. ↑ Marston, Otis R., (2014). "From Powell To Power; A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, p. 427 ISBN 978-0990527022
  11. ↑ Quartaroli, Richard D., (2013). A Rendezvous of Grand Canyon Historians: Ideas, Arguments and First Person Accounts. Flagstaff, Arizona, Grand Canyon Historical Society, pg. 17, ISBN 978-1-934656-49-5
  12. ↑ Reilly, Plez Talmadge, Oral Interview With Otis Marston, P. T. Reilly papers, 1947-1986, Utah State Historical Society, http://utsl.sirsi.net/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=eOXXGvA09E/ARCHIVES/148850016/9
  13. ↑ Webb, Roy, (2005). "High, Wide and Handsome: The River Journals of Norman D. Nevills". Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, p. 147, ISBN 0-87421-603-6
  14. ↑ Webb, Roy, (2005). "High, Wide and Handsome: The River Journals of Norman D. Nevills". Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, p. 188, ISBN 0-87421-603-6
  15. ↑ Webb, Roy, (2005). "High, Wide and Handsome: The River Journals of Norman D. Nevills". Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, p. 216, ISBN 0-87421-603-6
  16. ↑ Martin, Thomas C., (2012). "Big Water Little Boats: Moulty Fulmer and the First Grand Canyon Dory on the Last of the Wild Colorado River". Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, pg. 55, ISBN 978-0-9795055-6-0
  17. ↑ Marston, Otis R., (2014). "From Powell To Power; A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, pp. 472-79 ISBN 978-0990527022
  18. ↑ Martin, Thomas C., (2012). "Big Water Little Boats: Moulty Fulmer and the First Grand Canyon Dory on the Last of the Wild Colorado River". Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, pg. 62, ISBN 978-0-9795055-6-0
  19. ↑ Martin, Thomas C., (2012). "Big Water Little Boats: Moulty Fulmer and the First Grand Canyon Dory on the Last of the Wild Colorado River". Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, pg. 67, ISBN 978-0-9795055-6-0
  20. ↑ Marston, Otis R., (2014). "From Powell To Power; A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, pp. 492-95 ISBN 978-0990527022
  21. ↑ Oral interview Jorgen Visbak December 2010
  22. ↑ Martin, Thomas C., (2012). "Big Water Little Boats: Moulty Fulmer and the First Grand Canyon Dory on the Last of the Wild Colorado River". Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, pg. 46, ISBN 978-0-9795055-6-0
  23. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054372/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ql_1
  24. ↑ Quartaroli, Richard D., (2013). A Rendezvous of Grand Canyon Historians: Ideas, Arguments and First Person Accounts. Flagstaff, Arizona, Grand Canyon Historical Society, pg. 44, ISBN 978-1-934656-49-5
  25. ↑ Reilly, Plez Talmadge, Oral Interview With Otis Marston, P. T. Reilly papers, 1947-1986, Utah State Historical Society, http://utsl.sirsi.net/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=eOXXGvA09E/ARCHIVES/148850016/9
  26. ↑ http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/USHS_Class/id/21866/rec/32
  27. ↑ Reilly, Plez Talmadge, Oral Interview With Otis Marston, P. T. Reilly papers, 1947-1986, Utah State Historical Society, http://utsl.sirsi.net/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=eOXXGvA09E/ARCHIVES/148850016/9
  28. ↑ Reilly, Plez Talmadge, Oral Interview With Otis Marston, P. T. Reilly papers, 1947-1986, Utah State Historical Society, http://utsl.sirsi.net/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=eOXXGvA09E/ARCHIVES/148850016/9
  29. ↑ Marston, Otis R., (2014). "From Powell To Power; A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, p. 530 ISBN 978-0990527022
  30. ↑ Gale, Phil, (2011). "The Marstons in Berkeley Part Two: The Children. Exactly opposite: The Newsletter of the Berkeley Historical Society, Vol 29, No. 1
  31. ↑ Marston, Otis R., (2014). "From Powell To Power; A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, p. 530 ISBN 978-0990527022

External links

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