SEVEN WONDERS OF THE GRAND CANYON

BY RUTH RUDNER PHOTOGRAPHS: NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY CLINE LIBRARY (except where noted)

BELOW: Blanche and Emery Kolb explore one of the Canyon's many alcoves in the early 1900s.

BELOW, RIGHT: Blanche and Emery are flanked by their daughter, Edith Kolb Lehnert, and Edith's son, Emery (also known as "Sonny"), at the edge of the Canyon, probably around 1930.

ADA BASS 1867-1951

ADA DIEFENDORF BASS, a classically trained pianist born in New York in 1867, didn't choose to be the first Anglo woman to raise a family at the Grand Canyon. But when she was in her mid-20s and unmarried, a visit to her aunt in Prescott seemed appropriate. Single men were abundant in the Arizona Territory. On a tour, she fell in love with her guide. William Wallace Bass - W.W., as he was known - had arrived at the Canyon 10 years earlier, after doctors had prescribed fresh air and physical work to cure a nervous breakdown. A selftaught geologist, W.W. wrote poetry and played the violin. On a tour, she fell in love with her guide. William WalAda went home, packed her things and returned to Arizona on the last day of 1894. "Attended New Year's ball in Prescott," she noted in her diary January 1, 1895. On January 4, she wrote, "Left Prescott for Williams with W.W. ... W.W. went to Flagstaff to get license." On the 6th, "Married at M.E. Parsonage 7:30 p.m. by Rev. McFadden. Were serenaded by band and nearly drove crazy." A shivaree wouldn't have been music to a musician's ears, but it was a reasonable foretaste of things to come. Leaving Williams in W.W.'s fourhorse-drawn stage, the newlyweds carried a month's worth of provisions, a paying guest and a man hired to tend the horses. Ada looked forward to a taste of camping. As a storm flooded a normally dry creek bed, she struggled to save the provisions from seeping water while the men dealt with the stage and horses. Arriving late at a camp W.W. called the Caves, they built a fire, dried bedding, made coffee and went to bed. Stranded for days by the storm, Ada wrote, "Slept in a tent and ate down in the 'Cave,' going back and forth on a rough ladder." Reaching the Canyon in a snowstorm on February 10, she wrote, "Fixed up the camp and tried to keep warm." Might we call this a honeymoon? Moves were constant - from Bass Camp, to the Caves, to Ash Fork or Williams. Ada stayed in town when W.W. was away working his mines. When out of money, she slept in their stage, washed dishes for meals or occa-sionally played piano for a dance. At Bass Camp or the Caves, there were continually tourists for whom Ada cooked, made beds and did laundry. If cisterns ran dry, doing laundry meant a three-day trip to the river - wash, dry, return. Her diary entry for this is a lesson in restraint. "Did laundry," she wrote. By the time Ada was a few months pregnant, life at the Canyon felt old. As her first wedding anniversary approached, she wrote, "Thus endeth this horrible year; can the next be worse?" When W.W. fell ill after searching for horses in a snowstorm, his illness used up their money. "Old Cervis, the only store in town, don't like to trust us for groceries," she wrote in April. "God help us." To pay rent in town as W.W. recovered, Ada sold her good bed linens; she then sold her silverware and music book to buy food. May 1896: "Began packing my trunk to beat it, back to home and mother," Ada wrote. She stayed away for three years, although ultimately, W.W. charmed her back. When the railroad arrived at Grand Canyon Village in 1901, W.W. built a house to provide overnight stops for guests. Later, he built a two-story house nearer the village. Ada, happier, could see friends easily and work less since, by then, most tourists came for day trips. In 1927, after selling their Grand Canyon holdings to the Santa Fe Railway, Ada and W.W. moved to Wickenburg.

BLANCHE KOLB 1883-1960

AN ERSTWHILE Harvey Girl, Blanche was elegant, gracious and after her marriage to Emery, the younger Kolb brother - ready for life on the rim. She moved into the house Emery and brother Ellsworth constructed in 1905 to serve as home and studio. Like Ada's house, it had no electricity or running water, although, if the cisterns were empty, 4.5 miles to Indian Garden, and water, was easier than Ada's 8-mile ride to the river. While the Kolb brothers were occupied with photographing tourists riding mules down Bright Angel Trail, Blanche took care of their retail shop; managed the finances and household; cared for their daughter, Edith; and, for years, hosted social events to smooth over Emery's often-difficult relations with all the entities that wanted him out of business.

POLLY MEAD PATRAW 1904-2001

Polly MEAD was a botany student at the University of Chicago in 1927 when she first saw the Grand Canyon, the last stop on a professor-led summer field trip to several national parks. The group set up camp on the Canyon's rim. When Polly wondered why something as big as the Canyon wasn't visible, her professor suggested a short path to an overlook. And, like everyone on a first look, Polly was overcome by the Canyon's power.She later spent two summers doing a study of plant life on the Kaibab National Forest for her master's thesis - a work that provided a basis for further studies on the North Rim. Because her adviser insisted that her research contain information about the region's geology, Polly hiked from the North Rim to the South Rim to meet a naturalist with a specialty in geology.

Wanting to work at the Canyon after graduation, she applied to the U.S. Forest Service. No jobs for women, she was told. But the National Park Service hired her as a ranger-naturalist, making her the first woman to hold that position in the Grand Canyon and the second to do so in the Park Service. She was sworn in by Assistant Superintendent Preston Patraw, her future husband, in August 1930.

ELZADA CLOVER & LOIS JOTTER 1897-1980 & 1914-2013

In 1938, botanist Elzada Clover and graduate student Lois Jotter became the first two women to run the entire Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. On their 666-mile trip, they made a survey of plant life that remains the only comprehensive study of the riparian ecosystem before Glen Canyon Dam irretrievably altered the Canyon's landscape. Elzada considered reaching the river by mule, but she changed her mind after talking with Norman Nevills, a pioneer of commercial river running. Nevills built three boats for the expedition, which began at Green River, Utah.

"Women have their place in the world, but they do not belong in the Canyon of the Colorado," Buzz Holmstrom, the first person to solo the Colorado through the Grand Canyon, declared to the world hardly an isolated male thought at a time when women were rarely acknowledged for who they were. (Elzada had earned her Ph.D. in 1935 but wouldn't make full professor until 1960.) Lois had her own opinion. "Just because the only other woman who ever attempted this trip was drowned is no reason women have any more to fear than men," she said. She was referring to Bessie Hyde, a newlywed thought to have drowned on her honeymoon with her husband, Glen, who considered life jackets unnecessary.

As the Nevills-Clover Expedition moved downriver, the scientists, being women, were expected to cook. They got time off when, after camping one night on the beach near Bright Angel Trail, they hiked it to the top. Blanche Kolb met them with iced tea and invited them to lunch. The following day, Elzada and Lois were thronged by autograph seekers in Grand Canyon Village. I can imagine their relief, and even a sense of the normal, as they hiked back to the river the next evening.

On July 30, 43 days from the journey's beginning, the group reached Lake Mead, although they were still 80 miles from docking at Boulder Dam. Rising at 4 a.m. the next day, they rowed for four hours, then pulled into a side canyon to eat and nap. At that moment, Holmstrom turned up in a powerboat to tow the three boats to dock. On his own Canyon run, a passing powerboat on the lake had refused him a tow. I guess he changed his mind about who belonged on the river.

BELOW: Paying customers are shown aboard White's inflatable rafts in the mid-1950s.

RIGHT: Katie Lee strikes a pose while making photos in Glen Canyon in the mid-1950s.

FAR RIGHT: Lee is flanked by Tad Nichols (left) and Frank Wright during the trio's 1956 trip through Glen Canyon.