Martin Litton was a homegrown environmental warrior from the time he was eighteen until his death some eighty years later. A photographer and writer, he was fighting dams on the Colorado long before the public had an inkling, His stories in the Los Angeles Times attracted the attention of Sierra Club’s David Brower. Together Brower and Litton led a successful charge against dams on the Green and Yampa Rivers in Dinosaur National Monument in the late 1950s.

Litton began rowing hard-hulled boats in the Grand Canyon in 1956. In 1962, as he began ramping up a battle against dams in the Grand Canyon, he imported the first Oregon drift boats – or dories – to the Colorado. He took writers and photographers through the Canyon and produced books. His efforts are credited with moving the Sierra Club to successfully fight the dams.

Martin Litton continued running dory trips through the Grand Canyon and in 1970 formed Grand Canyon Dories. For two decades he ran lengthy, affordable trips through the Grand Canyon, Desolation and Cataract Canyons, and Idaho rivers. The goal was never simple tourism – equally, it was to create advocacy for rivers and the natural world. His beautifully painted boats were named in memory of natural wonders desecrated by man.