Author: Candice Cravins

Donor Spotlight: Roy and Becci Webb

Post author By Candice Cravins
Post date 04/16/2025

Donor Spotlight: Roy and Becci Webb

New Custom Cradles for Four of the Museum's Wooden Boats

Roy and Becci Webb have been steadfast supporters of the museum for many years, generously giving their time, energy, and resources to help preserve and share the rich history of river running. Roy has played a vital leadership role, serving as Chair of the museum’s nonprofit board and as a dedicated member of the River Runners Hall of Fame Committee.

In 2024, Roy was honored with induction into the River Runners Hall of Fame, recognizing his lasting impact on the river community. A river running historian and archivist, he’s quick to credit Becci for being by his side every step of the way. “Becci has always been a generous and giving person,” Roy shared. “She’s supported me in everything I’ve done throughout my career on the river—from her first river trip ever, a very high water adventure in Split Mountain, to taking care of the kids and home while I was off in some canyon, to everything I’ve done for the museum.”

The Webb family’s commitment to the museum goes beyond leadership—thanks to their generous gift in 2023, four custom boat cradles were constructed by Songbird Oars. These beautifully crafted cradles provide improved support, movement, and display for the museum’s treasured collection of historic wooden boats.

We’re deeply grateful to Roy and Becci for their unwavering dedication and generosity.

History History Makers

History Makers: Frank Swain

Post author By Candice Cravins
Post date 04/15/2025

History Makers: Frank Swain

By Roy Webb

Welcome to the John Wesley Powell River History Museum’s new monthly feature, History Makers of the Colorado River! Each month we will highlight an individual, group, or event that had a significant impact on the history of the Colorado and Green Rivers, and their tributaries.

This month’s feature is Frank Swain. If you look at any photo, or watch any movie, from the adventures of Bus Hatch on the river in the early days, in the background will be a big tall lanky guy, often wearing a cowboy hat. That would be Frank Swain.

Frank and Bus were double cousins; a sister and a brother married a brother and a sister. Both were the eldest of big families that ran to boys. Enough, in fact, to have their own general contracting business and a baseball team and to run a still in Split Mountain Canyon.

When it came to the exploring the Green River, near their home in Vernal, Utah, Bus, and Frank, also took the lead. In the lean years of the 1930s in Vernal, Frank took a job as deputy sheriff of Uintah County. One of his jobs was guarding prisoners at the jail. Parley Galloway was one such unfortunate, imprisoned for non-support of his wife. Parley was the son of the Ur-boatman, Nathaniel Galloway—a member of the River Runners Hall of Fame, and learned boats and rivers at his daddy’s knee. Learning of this, Frank invited his cousin Bus to come to the jail and talk to Parley about the nearby canyons of the Green and Yampa Rivers.

Sensing an opportunity, Parley wove tales of wonder to be found in the nearby canyons of the Green River, the canyon of Lodore, the Yampa, Desolation Canyon. Frank and Bus were rapt listeners. Having set the hook, Parley reeled them in by promising to help them build a boat and guide them down the river. He only needed a little loan to make his bail…

Frank and Bus paid Parley’s bail, whereupon he promptly disappeared. Who needs him, they must have said, we’re contractors, we can build a boat. They’d already built a small skiff to go fishing out on Pelican Lake, so they built the same kind of little skiff, reinforced with a hardwood bow piece and more ribs, to withstand the rigors of the canyon rapids So they did, a little plywood skiff about 14 feet long.

The trip through Lodore, with Bus, Frank, Bus’s brother in law “Cap” Mowrey, and Alt Hatch, one of Bus’s brothers, was one disaster after another. They capsized, lost most of their gear and food, and had to live on what they could scrounge from the river. The best thing to come from it was teaching them how much they didn’t know, that and a desire to do it again. After that, Bus, along with Frank and a rotating cast of Hatch family and later, others they met along the way, ran one stretch of the Green and Colorado after another: Desolation Canyon, Cataract Canyon, the Grand Canyon (the famous “Dusty Dozen” trip in 1934) and then moved up into Idaho to run the Middle Fork and Main Salmon Rivers the next two years. In between, they were constantly on the river for one reason or another, hunting fishing, or just having a good time.

After the arduous Dusty Dozen trip, and those difficult Idaho journeys, Bus and Frank didn’t run as many rivers together, but they kept working and playing baseball and hunting and fishing together, as families do. Even if they went their separate ways on the river, and Bus became the founder of Hatch River Expeditions, Bus and Frank stayed close for the rest of their lives.

History Permanent Exhibitions River Runners Hall of Fame

Announcing the 2025 River Runners Hall of Fame Inductees

Post author By Candice Cravins
Post date 04/09/2025

Announcing the 2025 River Runners Hall of Fame Inductees

The history of the Colorado and Green Rivers is full of daring exploits and fascinating individuals, and the John Wesley Powell River History Museum is dedicated to commemorating them all. The museum’s mission is to celebrate the significance of river history through the cultures and landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, and the River Runner’s Hall of Fame (RR HOF) is an integral part of that mission. Since 1990, the museum has inducted over 30 individuals and groups for remarkable contributions to the history and protection of the Colorado River system and positive impacts to its river running community.

For 2025, the RR HOF selection committee has chosen individuals known for their work as educators, writers, and historians. This year’s honorees are Loie and Buzz Belknap, guidebook creators and Sportyak pioneers; Gary Nichols, Utah’s “King of Kayaking” and dedicated outdoor educator; and Brad Dimock, historian, storyteller, boat builder, and long-standing river guide. The committee has also chosen to induct Bessie and Glen Hyde, a long-overdue recognition of their historic 1928 attempt to navigate the Grand Canyon in a wooden sweep scow.

“Each of these individuals has, in some way, made river running more accessible,” said Susan Munroe, selection committee member. “They’ve written the guidebooks and the history books, and they’ve physically brought people into the river community through college courses or by putting them at the oars of their very own Sportyak. Even the Hydes, despite their tragic end, showed that you didn’t have to be a scientist or a surveyor to run the Colorado River.”

Loie and Buzz Belknap are best known for developing the “Belknap Guides,” waterproof river maps that have been the standard text for most sections of the Green and Colorado Rivers for over 50 years. Buzz also piloted a jet boat in the historic uprun of the Grand Canyon in 1960. Loie was one of the first female trip leaders for Canyonlands Expeditions and later helped run Fastwater Expeditions, which ran Sportyak-only trips through Desolation Canyon and on the San Juan and Dolores Rivers. The Belknaps’ guidebooks and Sportyaks helped make river running accessible for individuals with a range of skill levels.

Gary Nichols is credited with 16 first descents of sections of Utah rivers. He’s the author of three guidebooks, including the “River Runners’ Guide to Utah and Adjacent Areas.” Gary spent 41 years as an instructor in the University of Utah Outdoor Education department, where he taught and created more than 30 outdoor classes, including kayaking, canoeing, and backpacking. He introduced over 10,000 students to the outdoors, including the Colorado River system. His legacy is the hours spent with those students, elevating their appreciation for Utah’s rivers “so that, through awareness, we can work to preserve them” (quoted in Vamoose Utah, May 30, 2016).

Brad Dimock has been a guide since the 1970s and was a founding member of the Grand Canyon River Guides and the Colorado Plateau River Guides organizations. Through his own publishing company, Fretwater Press, Brad has researched, written, and published biographies of some of the greatest river runners of all time. As a boat builder and instructor, Brad commemorates and evolves the craft of Colorado River wooden boat building, including building (and rowing) replicas of historic crafts. Brad’s work as a builder, teacher, and author entwine to tell the story of river running through both words and boats.

Bessie and Glen Hyde, “the Honeymoon Couple,” were the first husband-and-wife team to run the Green and Colorado Rivers. They began in Green River, Utah, in 1928, with a heavy wooden sweep boat. Glen was familiar with sweeps from time he spent running rivers in Idaho. The couple successfully navigated Cataract Canyon, making Bessie the first woman to make that descent, and ran most of the Grand Canyon (they were last seen at Hermit Rapid) before disappearing. The committee felt that it was fitting to induct the Hydes at the same time as Brad, who not only wrote their biography but also built a replica of their sweep scow and piloted it down the Grand Canyon.

The John Wesley Powell River History Museum will host an induction ceremony for this year’s honorees on Saturday, October 4, 2025. The RR HOF induction ceremony is the museum’s largest fundraising event. In recent years, it has grown into a weekend-long social occasion for the Colorado River river-running community, with events such as a mini-film festival, local beach clean-up event, and an informal boat parade.

“The annual ceremony speaks to the core of the museum’s mission,” museum director Janet Smoak explained. “We come together as a river running community to honor the people whose contributions inspire, teach, and amaze us. It’s also an opportunity for our friends, new and long-standing, to support the museum’s research, events, and exhibits that preserve and share the stories, history, and science associated with the Colorado Plateau’s rivers, landscapes, and cultures.”

The Hall of Fame selections are made by a volunteer committee (committee members who are related to nominees or are nominated themselves do not participate in the vote to choose inductees). The public is also welcome to nominate future inductees; individuals wishing to submit nominations must fill out a nomination form detailing the nominee’s contributions to the Colorado River system. Please contact Janet Smoak at (435) 564-3427 to learn more. Nomination forms may also be submitted online here.