Hell or high water : James White's disputed passage through Grand Canyon, 1867
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 209-217) and index.

"In September, 1867, residents of the tiny Colorado River village of Callville, Nevada, east of Las Vegas, to their surprise discovered a makeshift raft drifting down the river. Tied to the raft was a severely sunburnt, nearly naked, and barely alive man. They brought the "some loco'd" man to shore, and as he regained awareness, they heard his sketchy but amazing story. It would be almost two years before John Wesley Powell's party would undertake its well-known, supposedly first run down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. Before 1867, no non-Native Americans had been in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, which stretches between the head of Marble Canyon, near Lee's Ferry, and Grand Wash, near the Arizona-Nevada border."

"The man told his rescuers that he was James White, a twenty-nine-year-old prospector from Colorado. He and two others had, after prospecting in the San Juan Mountains around Baker's Park - named after the leader of their party, Charles Baker, and now the site of Silverton, Colorado - descended to the San Juan River near present Four Corners with the intention of finding their way north from there through unexplored territory to the Grand River, as the Colorado above its confluence with the Green River was then known. They first prospected down the San Juan, but when it entered a steep canyon, impassable on foot or horseback, they turned northwest toward where they believed they would find the Grand or Colorado Rivers.

Frustrated by the rough country they crossed, they finally descended, to obtain feed and water, a side canyon of a large river. Their progress hindered by canyons and cliffs, they decided to retrace their steps to the San Juan River. As they rode back out of the side canyon the next morning, Indians, probably Utes, ambushed them, immediately killing Baker. White and George Strole, the third man in the party, retreated back into the canyon, abandoned their horses, and made a crude raft from driftwood and ropes. They launched into the river, which seemed calm enough at their point of entry. As they floated downstream, though, it became a turbulent flood entrenched deeply between steep canyon walls. Strole drowned in one of the first rapids.

White, struggling to hang onto life, remembered only a few vague details of the rest of the trip, which he estimated lasted about two weeks." "Now, after decades of research, Adams has written a full account of the James White adventure, not only recounting his astonishing journey but also showing how his story was treated in the public record and telling of her own remarkable journey of discovery in piecing it all together."--Jacket.