below [Henry's Fork] we entered the mouth of the first
canyon and encamped amid the cottonwood trees surrounded
by bluffs 1200 ft. high and on one side nearly perpendicular.
It is the grandest scenery I have found in the mountains
and I am delighted with it. . . . The river winds like
a serpent through . . . nearly perpendicular cliffs .
. . but instead of rapids it is deep and calm as a lake."
George Bradley, one of John Wesley Powell's 1869 crew,
was not the first, nor would he be the last, to be impressed
with the canyons of the upper Green River. About sixty
river miles below the town of Green River, Wyoming, the
Green entered a series of canyons that were of rare beauty,
and yet were largely unknown except to Indians, outlaws,
and river runners.
was Flaming Gorge, named by Powell for the brilliant,
flaming red of its rocks. Here was supposedly the site
of the legendary "Green River Suck," said by early river
runners to be a cataract that continued for "six or eight
miles, making a sheer descent . . . of upward of two hundred
and fifty feet." It didn't exist, but it made a good story.
After only a couple of miles, Flaming Gorge gave way to
two short canyons in quick succession: Horseshoe Canyon
and Kingfisher Canyon. The former was a long, U-shaped
bend; the canyon walls here were of buff-colored Weber
Sandstone, which contrasted sharply with the predominant
red shades. Kingfisher Canyon was named by Powell for
the many kingfishers "playing about the streams." Sheep
Creek entered the river in the middle of Kingfisher Canyon;
Powell called it, predictably enough, Kingfisher Creek.
After Beehive Point (named for the many swallows who nested
there) and Hideout Flat, the river entered Red Canyon.
Canyon was the longest of the canyons of the upper Green,
and it was also the roughest. In the three short canyons
above there was only occasional fast water; in Red Canyon
there were real rapids. First and most notable was Ashley
Falls, where house-sized boulders had fallen from the
left wall, blocking the river. In 1825, when William Ashley
and his band of trappers were floating the Green, they
portaged their skin boats around the boulders. Ashley
painted "ASHLEY 1825" on the cliff above the rapid, and
it was visible well into the twentieth century. Although
many early river travelers portaged the spot, the rapid
looked worse than it was. There was an easy chute on the
right at almost any water level; the Todd-Page party of
1926 floated it in their cork life jackets. After Ashley
Falls there were many more rapids, including one that
cost William Manly and his men their boat in 1849, forcing
them to make dugout canoes to continue their voyage to
California. When a prospector named Hook drowned in Red
Canyon in 1869 trying to follow John Wesley Powell, the
Green's reputation as a deadly river was secure for another
time, however, as Ellsworth Kolb wrote, "unreasonable
fear of the rapids gave way to a reasonable respect."
Cal Giddings, who kayaked the river in the 1950s, remembered
a much different river than Powell and Manly had seen:
"One characteristic of those canyons--[they] are probably
the most ideal places for beginning river runners to get
going. They were fairly big waves [but] easy and straightforward.
It was very beautiful."
notable feature of the canyons was the wildlife and the
vegetation. Unlike the sagebrush flats upstream and the
deserts downstream, these were mountain canyons, cut right
through the heart of the Uintas. Ponderosa pines and willows
fringed beaches of white sand; in the bigger bottoms stood
stately old cottonwoods. There was no tamarisk. In a number
of places, clear, cold mountain streams entered the main
canyon, full of native trout. Big squawfish and humpback
chub (both now almost extinct) lazed in the eddies. Other
wildlife was plentiful, too. Buzz Holmstrom ran the canyons
solo in 1937, and in 1938 came back with Amos Burg and
ran all the rapids on both the Green and the Colorado
(becoming the first to do so). He wrote: "Flaming Gorge,
Horseshoe, and Kingfisher canyons were short and rapid-free,
filled with sunshine and songs of countless birds, and
with the call of geese and ducks high overhead. Many deer
and beaver could be seen along the tree-lined shores."
There were (besides kingfishers and other birds) deer,
rabbits, marmots, bobcats, black bears, and an occasional
1956 Arch Dam Constructors, a consortium of western construction
companies, began work on a Flaming Gorge Dam, a component
of the Colorado River Storage Project. The dam, about
three miles downstream from Ashley Falls, was completed
in 1963. It is almost 600 feet high; the resulting reservoir
backs up to within five miles of the town of Green River.
The wildlife and the trees are gone. Flaming Gorge Reservoir
is now a "playground for millions," with fishing, boating,
and water-skiing. Below the dam, literally thousands of
people now run the remaining fifteen miles of Red Canyon.
The wait for a launch is sometimes two hours. That pressure,
and the conflict with trout fishermen for the clear, cold
water and splashing rapids below the dam, has caused the
Forest Service to consider implementing a permit system.
Well," as Major Powell said, "we may conjecture many things."
Better to remember the canyons as they were; to remember
that there was once a river beneath those cold, green
waters. Ralf Woolley, a usually reserved engineer, was
moved to write in 1922: "In places the solid rock walls
are almost vertical and rise several hundred feet above
the river. . . . The river winding its way between the
walls form(s) a constantly changing panorama. . . . The
river is like a placid lake, and the beautifully colored
canyon walls with their green trees clinging to the slopes
are perfectly reflected in the river as in a huge mirror."