John Wesley Powell River History Museum

Announcing the 2026 River Runners Hall of Fame Inductees

The modern history of the Colorado River Basin is riddled with extremes. This year is no different, and the River Runner’s Hall of Fame is celebrating historical high water runs during an alarmingly low water year. We also welcome an inductee noteworthy for her youth, and a trio of European kayakers who helped shape the sport out west. The John Wesley Powell River History 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 individuals and groups for remarkable contributions to the history and protection of the Colorado River system and positive impacts on its river running community.

For 2026, the RR HOF selection committee has chosen individuals who are courageous and curious in spirit. As the management of this river system enters a new era, we need such traits more than ever, and we hope that this year’s inductees will inspire future generations of river runners to think big, go big, and live big. This year’s honorees are Mildred Davis, Walter Kirschbaum, Roger Paris, Ulrich Martins, Linda Wittkopf, and Kenton Grua. The celebration of their contributions to river running history will take place in Green River, UT, on October 2nd and 3rd.

“Each of these individuals came face-to-face with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and had the courage to seize the day,” said Matt Williams, selection committee member. “They embody what boating on the Colorado River Basin is all about, and their ethos not only shaped but continues to inspire the culture of river running across the Plateau. While water levels enter a new era of uncertainty and high-water firsts become less likely, we believe that their brave spirits and love of this River system stand to teach us a lot about what makes boating on the Colorado River Basin so special. What other firsts can and should the next generation of river runners be striving for?”

Mildred Davis – Millie’s first time on the rivers of the Colorado Plateau was in 1950, as a 14-year-old on a trip with her dad Bill down the San Juan into Glen Canyon. From there, they hiked from the North Rim and joined a Mexican Hat Expeditions trip departing from the base of the Kaibab Trail. At 15-years-old, Millie was the first woman to go down Westwater Canyon, immediately before flying to Craig, CO, so that her and her dad could descend the Yampa and the Green, finishing in Green River, UT, and catching the train back to Chicago. The following year, they returned to row from Flaming Gorge through the Gates of Lodore, and Millie became the first woman to row Disaster Falls and Triplet Falls.

Roger Paris, Ulrich Martins, and Walter Kirschbaum – “Coming from war-torn Europe following World War II, Roger Paris, Ulrich (Uli) Martins, and Walter Kirschbaum came across the pond to compete in the Fibark Race in Salida, Colorado,” explained selection committee member Mike Milligan. “Thereafter, they switched to adventure kayaking, making numerous first descents on the Colorado and Green Rivers and influencing the next generation of kayakers in the west.”

In addition to their combined commitment to teaching and mentoring the next generation, each kayaker stands out for their individual contributions to pushing the sport forward on the Colorado Plateau and across the country. Walter Kirschbaum won the 1953 world championship in kayak slalom before being the first kayaker to run Cataract Canyon without portaging (1959) and the Grand Canyon without portaging (1960). Ulrich holds the record for the lowest water run in the Grand Canyon in 1963, and in 1972, Roger was selected as a coach for the USA at the Olympics in Munich, Germany.

Linda Wittkopf – Across her epic career, Linda (known amongst her friends as “Big Linda”) rowed for many Moab outfitters and was one of the most well-loved river rats in the community. In 1983, when the National Park Service closed Cataract Canyon at about 105,000 cfs, Linda and Edward Brian Coombs launched in separate boats, rowing from sun-up to sun-down to set the speed and high-water records, which would stand for a year. Then, in 1984, Linda returned to break her own record, rowing Cataract Canyon at 115,000 cfs on a Sidewinder Expeditions commercial trip with four other guides. To this day, Linda’s 1983 speed records and 1984 high water records stand, and across the rest of her storied career, she mentored and inspired countless female guides on the Colorado Plateau.

Kenton Grua – Kenton’s contributions to boating in the Grand Canyon are impossible to quantify. In 1977, after spending years scouting routes from the River, he hiked the length of the Canyon from Lee’s Ferry to the Grand Wash cliffs. Then, in 1983, Grua, Rudi Petschek, and Steve Reynolds set a speed record (breaking the 1980 record set by Grua, Petschek, and Wally Rist) that will likely never be contested by a rower, riding Glen Canyon Dam’s emergency releases on a high-water run of utterly epic proportions. In addition to rowing dories down the Canyon for 30 years, in 1988 Grua founded and was the first president of Grand Canyon River Guides. Above all else, “Kenton was kind and patient, doing everything he could to make sure that everyone on a trip could experience it to the fullest,” 2025 HOF inductee Loie Belknap Evans recalled. “For example, he would take extra time and care to ensure that everyone could participate fully on hikes. Even when it would have been easy to discourage them from coming, he helped them overcome limitations and feel success.”

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The RR HOF induction ceremony is the museum’s largest fundraising event. In recent years, it has grown into an unmissable fall gathering for the Colorado River Basin boating community. As selection committee member Levi Jamison reflected, “I believe that, in the past, this thing we call ‘river-running’ was a means to an end, but in modern times it has grown into a spirit, a culture, and perhaps could even become a movement. The shared heritage we have with those who ran the river in the past is worthy of celebration and discovery, because it gives us perspective on where we are culturally, environmentally, even spiritually. I hope this event continues to help our community remember our connections to the past, ground ourselves in the present, and become better stewards to the rivers and canyons we are all connected through.”

The RR HOF selections are made by consensus via 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 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. The form can be found at https://johnwesleypowell.com/river-runners-hall-of-fame-nomination-form/. The museum’s website also features an archive of all RR HOF inductees, along with information about current and upcoming exhibits, events, and activities. Those interested in supporting the museum and learning more about the 2026 RR HOF induction ceremony are encouraged to visit the website at https://johnwesleypowell.com/, follow the museum on Instagram @jwpmuseum or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/jwpmuseum, or call Janet Smoak at (435) 564-3427. We hope to see you in October!

-Matt Williams, Annie Payne, Bobby Hollahan, Eva Hatch, Jack Schmidt, Janet Smoak, Latimer Smith, Linda Jalbert, Levi Jamison, Mike Milligan, Roy Webb, Susan Munroe

History Makers: Ashley Falls

By Roy Webb

[T]he navigation became difficult and dangerous, the river being remarkably crooked, with more or less rapids every mile, caused by rocks which had fallen from the sides of the mountain, many of which rise above the surface of the water and required our greatest exertions to avoid them. At 20 miles from our last camp the roaring and agitated state of the water a short distance before us indicated a fall or some other obstruction of considerable magnitude…It proved to be a perpendicular fall of ten or twelve feet produce by large fragments of rocks which had fallen from the [mountain] and settled in the river extending entirely across its channel and forming an impregnable barrier to the passage of loaded watercraft. We were therefore obliged to unload our boats of their cargoes and pass them empty over the falls by means of long cords which we had provided for such purposes.”

William Ashley, May 3, 1825

We’ve all heard the old saying, “you can’t get there from here.” In the case of Ashley Falls, the biggest and most notable rapid on the Green River for its entire length, you can’t get there from anywhere. Ashley Falls lies about four miles upstream from Cart Creek, one of the many small tributaries of the Green that splash down steep, narrow canyons in the Uinta Mountains into the main stream. Cart Creek was the location chosen by the Bureau of Reclamation in the early 1950s for the location of the Flaming Gorge Dam. Ashley Falls is still there, for the boulders that caused it are massive, but it’s under about 400 feet of cold water.

Ashley Falls was not the only rapid in Red Canyon, the first time travelers on the upper Green River ran into fast water and rocks. There was Skull Creek, for instance, site of at least one fatality, and depending on the water level, a rapid at the mouth of those charming little side canyons. But none of those came close to the reputation of Ashley Falls. Not even Red Creek, or the big rapids in the Canyon of Lodore, like Disaster Falls and Hells Half Mile, nor any other rapid along the Green, many of which are much more difficult to navigate, had the same impact as it did. Legends had grown up around it; trappers spun a tale of William Ashley in 1825 losting all of his boats, and those who weren’t drowned were left starving and finally had to resort to cannibalism. It was just a trappers yarn but Powell repeated it in his published report in 1875, and the story lasted into the 20th century. In many stories, it somehow became conflated with the legend of the dreaded Green River Suck. In the early days of travel on the Green, no other rapid was written about as much, anticipated with such anxiety, or dreaded as much as Ashley Falls. William Ashley was the first known person to pass it, in 1825; William Manly, and no doubt some others, in 1849; both wrote that it was nothing to worry about, just carry your boats around and go on. But their accounts weren’t published until years later. Somehow, in the ensuing years, a series of legends grew up around Ashley Falls that made it seem like a modern Scylla and Charybydis, like there was a portal inscribed “abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Dellenbaugh, writing about Ashley, and relying on the unreliable Jim Beckwourth, spins a horrifying tale of disaster, death, and even cannibalism:

They took along few provisions, expecting to find beaver plentiful to the end of the canyon, but after a few miles the beaver were absent, and, having preserved none of the meat, the party began to suffer for food. They were six days without eating, and, the high precipitous walls, running ever on and on, the became dishearthened, or, in the Western phrase, “demoralized,” and proposed to cast lots to find which should make food for the others, a proposition which horrified Ashley, and he begged them to hold out longer, assuring them that the walls must soon break and enable them to escape.

No wonder, then, that so many early river travelers fretted about Ashley Falls long before they reached it. Russell Frazier, a passenger with Bus Hatch on a 1937 trip, wrote: “We were shortly to enter Red Canyon, and the treacherous Ashley Falls. Here it was, we learned with misgiving, that in 1825, out of Col. Ashley’s party of nine, seven were drowned. The prospects looked ominous. The river was becoming narrower and faster as it flowed through canyons 1500 to 2000 feet deep. Then the roar of distant rapids announced with no uncertainty that we were in for Ashley Falls.” The Kolb brothers considered it such a significant milestone that they waited until they were below it to name their boats.

And Ashley Falls certainly looked impressive. The towering thousand-foot canyon walls had given way to much lower ones, and above that were rolling hills. At some point in the distant past huge boulders had fallen off the walls and choked the channel, forming Ashley Falls. The one in the middle was literally the size of a house; the ones on the sides the size of cars. The rocks blocking the channel made getting past Ashley Falls difficult, no matter by lining or portaging or in a boat. Lining–holding onto the boats by ropes and letting them down along the side of the river after they had been unloaded and equipment and supplies carried around the rapid–was impossible on the right side, because of the cliff; and grueling on the left side because of the size of the boulders. Frederick Dellenbaugh described the arduous labor required to do so in 1871:

In the morning soon after leaving this camp a dull roar ahead told of our approach to Ashley Falls, for which we were on the lookout. The left bank was immediately hugged as closely as possible and we dropped cautiously down to the head of the descent. An immense rock stuck up in the middle of the river and the water divided on this and shot down on each side in a sharp fall of about eight feet. Each was a clear chute and not dangerous to look at, but the effect of so sudden a plunge on one of our loaded boats was too much of a problem for trial. A portage was decided on. The left bank where we were was a mass of enormous broken rocks where it seemed next to impossible to haul a boat. A foot trail was first built which led up some fifty feet above the river, and over, under and around huge boulders to a place down below where it was proposed to carry the boats on skids. The cargoes were first taken over on our backs and when this was done we were about tired out. Our united strength was required to work the [Emma] Dean down to the selected haven without injury. This was such extremely hard work that the Major and Prof. concluded to shoot the Cañonita through, light, with no men in her, but controlled by one of our hundred-foot hawsers attached to each end. She was started down and went through well enough, but filling with water and knocking on hidden rocks. Prudence condemned this method and we resorted to sliding and carrying the Nell over the rocks as we had done with the Dean, certain that sleep and food would wipe out our weariness, but not injury to the boats which must be avoided by all means in our power. By the time we had placed the Nell beside the other boats at the bottom it was sunset and too late to do anything but make a camp.

The name of the first person to run Ashley Falls, rather than portage or line it, has been lost to history, but it was probably Nathaniel Galloway, the famous riverman from Vernal, Utah, who had been taking his small skiffs down the Green since the late 1880s. George Flavell, who ran the entire river in his little punt PANTHON in 1896, left what is probably the first record of a run of Ashley Falls. He noted that “One place the river was completely dammed up with boulders which caused a falls of four feet, the widest passage being ten feet. That was enough for the PANTHON, so we passed on.” Galloway himself wrote about the rapid in the journal he kept during the Galloway-Stone expedition of 1909. Reaching the rapid in September’s low water, Galloway and Julius Stone scouted it and then ran it with no real problems. This description of Ashley Falls comes from the journal he kept on the 1909 trip:

After examination I decide to run all the boats thru the center channel running directly towards the large cubelar [sic] rock in the center. This channel is so narrow at the entrance that one must fold the oars back by the side of the boat as soon as the first rocks are passed. One has but about 15 ft. to direct the boat to prevent dashing into the large rock. I decide to run all the boats because the other men have had but little experience in rapids. But after running two of the boats Mr. Stone decides to run his own boat, following me with the 3rd boat. But on starting in to the rapid Mr. Stone lost one of his oar locks and came thru with but one oar without a mishap.

Virtually every river runner, from Ashley until the rapid was flooded when the gates on Flaming Gorge Dam closed in 1963, left an account of Ashley Falls. Here are a few more:

Ellsworth Kolb, 1911

At 2:30PM we reached Ashley Falls, a rapid we had been expedition to see for some time. It was a place of singular beauty. A dozen immense rocks had fallen from the cliff on the left, almost completely blocking the channelBor so it seemed from one point of view. But there was a crooked channel, not more than twelve feet wide in places, through which the water shot like a stream from a nozzle. … Almost before I knew it I was in the narrow channel, so close to the right rock that I had to ship that oar, and pull altogether on the left one. As soon as I was through I made a few quick strokes, but the current was too strong for me; and a corner of the stern struck with a bang when I was almost clear. She paused as a wave rolled over the decks, then rose quickly; a side current caught the boat, whirling it around, and the bow struck. I was still pulling with all my might, but everything happened so quickly, with the boat whirling first this way, then that, that my efforts were almost useless. But after that second strike I did get in a few strokes, and pulled into the quiet pool below the line of boulders.

Haldane “Buzz” Holmstrom, 1938

4:50 Have arrived Ashley Falls & looked over- Amos is going to take MP [motion pictures] from Hi on L bank of me going & then I’ll take his- more fall here than before- but can go down right channel- instead of in middle as before- quite rough looking tho especially rock at foot on R- know more about that soon- will wear life pres anyway- saw Stone Cogs[well] & Galloway names on L- sky very dark- no good for color- not much color here anyway 5:30 All fine at the Falls- good side current pulls boat toward center big rock from R & sends it thru just rite- I didn’t even get deck wet & Amos went thru just fine- Very strong current tho & if boat got out of position it would be very bad.

Norman D. Nevills, 1940

MILE 292. ASHLEY FALLS. After some study I decided to run thru on the left, with passengers. Its a bit tricky, tho not dangerous. With the landing of the WEN, look across river and see names of various parties on wall. Decide to cross over and put our names up too. Signal the MEXICAN HAT thru, then the JOAN. Doris and Larabee rode with me thru this rapid. Was quite a job to get the names up on a huge rock on the left bank. Had to work from a sling. Saw a good many names, including those of the Stone party. Our names, written under NEVILLS EXPEDITION 1940, are about 75′ above the river, in white paint.

Norman D. Nevills 1947:

MILE 292. ASHLEY FALLS. At first glance this looks to be a roughy for everything including lining. We see where the USGS party lined and portaged on the LEFT, also, DON HARRIS tried to run on the left and UPSET. He didn’t hold onto his boat, but let it go, and they didn’t recover it until an eddy clear down at Mile 2723–OLD BRIDGEPORT. He lost all three oars and had to go back to Rock Springs with a rancher to get oars. Kent and I go across the river in the WEN to look it over. Left side is no good. I have trouble getting around as am rather weak and not sure footed. Easy lining job, and Kent and I slip right down, then boom right across to left side below. Then Kent, Garth, Doc and I return with the MEXICAN HAT 2 and the JOAN. Garth and Kent line more or less alright, but after taking off Kent gets sucked into a hole that gives he and Garth quite an experience. I feel too miserable to line, doesn’t look too tough to run, so with the Doctor on deck, I run the JOAN right on through ASHLEY FALLS! Nothing to it.

There are many more, as Ashley Falls was one place on every river runners’ mind. However, in his descriptions, Norm Nevills brings up two interesting things about Ashley Falls. One, it was the site of a long-standing river register, where many earlier travelers had painted or chiseled their names. Starting with William Ashley in 1825, who left his name and the date on a boulder on the left above the rapid, numbers of later travelers followed his example. William Manly in 1849, the Galloway-Stone Expedition in 1909, the Langley expedition with Bus Hatch in 1936, Amos Burg and Buzz Holmstrom in 1938, Norm Nevills in 1940, and many more followed Ashley’s lead. A few photos of some of the inscriptions on the river register exist, and glimpses of some of them can be seen in films taken of runs through the rapid. Dellenbaugh was barely able to make out Ashley’s inscription in 1871, and the last time anyone noted the Ashley inscription was in 1950, when peripatetic river runner Harry Alesen recorded that he had been able to find it.

The second important point about Ashley Falls that Nevills brings up is that despite the legends, despite the dark stories of starvation and disaster, it was actually a pretty easy run. Frederick Dellenbaugh, even as he labored to line Powell’s heavy wooden boats past the rapid in 1871, was less than impressed, having been “brought up on Niagra.” By the time Norm Nevills got there there in 1940, boats and techniques had advanced enough that most river parties would run Ashley Falls, albeit usually only after careful study. It was a tricky run at any water level; at low water, when most early expeditions went down the river, it was usually run on the right side of the rapid, because a boatman could navigate a difficult course through the rocks, usually knocking the boat against the rocks in a few places; there was no clear channel. The left side of the house-sized boulder in the middle was completely blocked. At higher water levels, the right-side channel became difficult because of lateral waves that came at odd angles, almost ensuring a capsize if not hit just right. The left run, the preferred one at high water, was a huge standing wave that would inevitably fill a boat with water.

But for all the waves and holes and the huge, “cubeular,” rocks, the rapid could be run, and even if the boat filled with water or someone fell out, just below it was an enormous calm pool, without another rapid for over a mile. In fact, just below there was a shallow ford, with a trail crossing the river, where cattlemen often moved their herds from one side of the canyon to the other. Even as early as the 1920s, Ashley Falls was beginning to lose its fearsome reputation, for in 1926 the Todd-Page party ran the rapid, walked back upstream, and swam through in their life jackets! Even when it was becoming familiar, though, it could still be dangerous, as Bill Purdy, the principal at the school in Manila who had been through Red Canyon “dozens of times,” probably more than anyone else ever did, found out one time in 1955:

“Once in my foldboat I was alone and I looked at that rapid and I couldn’t see why—the river was really high—and I couldn’t see why I couldn’t go right down the middle, right into the middle of the big rock and make a right hand turn because as you watched the water that’s what the water did and I thought it would just take me right around. And so I tried it but it was a very bad mistake because I slammed right into the rock and it pinned me up against it and for a minute it was pretty exciting, but I managed to get out of it.”

One of the few to actually capsize a boat in Ashley Falls was Don Harris, by 1940 a seasoned boatman and veteran of Cataract and Grand Canyons. For some reason Harris, who was an excellent boater, always had trouble in Ashley Falls. In a 1990 interview, Harris was asked if he had ever capsized a boat:

First time is when were on a USGS trip in high water in Ashley Falls and we capsized there. Pilot error, let’s see had I known just exactly how the rapid was I should have pulled ashore. We ran down the left side of that big rock. If I could have had one of the fellows stand on shore and keep tossing some pebbles over where I was supposed to hit the break off then I’d have been in position. I was just about a boat width too far one way or the other, too far left I believe. If I would have been another boat width over I would have run it without capsizing.

He also wrote about the experience in a report to the Water Resources Branch of the US Geological Survey:

During this high-water trip [June, 1947], one of the boats was capsized in running Ashley Falls rapid on the Green River, but was recaptured several hours later, 19 miles downstream. Three boat oars were the principal loss in this accident, in addition to one day’s time while extra oars were being rushed from Salt Lake City via Rock Springs, Wyoming, to the Browns Park area.

So all of the worry about Ashley Falls by early river runners was actually for nothing. Cal Giddings, a pioneer Utah kayaker, ran Ashley Falls in the late 1950s and summed it up thus: “I remember we worried a lot about that because we’d heard about it, but it was pretty simple when we got there. So I think that was a little bit over-exaggerated in difficulty.”

Indeed, one of the ironies of this stretch of river is that all early river parties commented on how worried they were about Ashley Falls, until they got there and discovered that it wasn’t that bad. Then, relieved and incautious, they would go downriver about twenty miles and wreck their boats in Red Creek Rapid, just above the flat water of Browns Park. Red Creek was, and still is, a very difficult rapid that has been the scene of a number of wrecks and at least one death. It’s to that rapid, and the rest of Red Canyon, that our story must now return.

Announcing the 2026 River Runners Hall of Fame Inductees

History Makers: Ashley Falls

By Roy Webb

2025 River Runners Hall of Fame Wrap-Up