Carnegie-Cal Tech Collection

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240 black-and-white photographs 169 black-and-white negatives

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Photographs taken during the 1937 Carnegie Institute of Washington-California Institute of Technology river trip through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, which document geologic features of the Canyon, as well as the trip's geologists and boatmen, and Colorado river and rapids--several images also show Buzz Holmstrom, who caught up with the trip in the lower portion of the Canyon

Biographic Note:

The seeds for the 1937 Carnegie-Cal Tech trip were initially planted by vertebrate paleontologist John Campbell Merriam, Director of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, who recognized a need for a systematic study of the geology of the Grand Canyon. He had selected several different geologists to examine different aspects of the Canyon: Edwin McKee, the Park Naturalist of Grand Canyon, studied Paleozoic rocks; Norman Ethan Allen Hinds, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley (where Merriam was once a faculty member), was assigned inspection of older pre-Paleozoic; and to Ian Campbell and John Maxson of the California Institute of Technology went the responsibility of examining the igneous and metamorphic rocks that compose the inner gorges of the Grand Canyon.

To this end, Ian Campbell organized the river trip, this being the best manner in which to study the rocks of the inner gorge. In addition to Maxson, he added Robert P. Sharp, who was working on his Ph.D thesis at Harvard University; John T. ¨Jack¨ Stark of Northwestern University, and Edwin McKee, who joined the trip at the Bass Trail. The three boatmen were Frank B. Dodge, rowing the Fairchild, Owen R. Clark in the Collier, and Merril Spencer at the oars of the Eliel.

The trip launched on October 11, 1937 at Lees Ferry, taking out at Pierces Ferry on November 25, covering a distance of some 280 river miles. Sharp recorded his findings in detail in both written and photographic format. The photographs in the three albums are referenced in his three field notebooks, which are housed in the Carnegie-Cal Tech Manuscript collection.

The Carnegie-Cal Tech trip is perhaps best known as the trip which was passed by Haldane ¨Buzz¨ Holmstrom on his remarkable solo voyage through the Grand Canyon. Also of note is that the Carnegie-Cal Tech group was the last to see two of the largest and most intimidating rapids on the Colorado: Separation and Lava Cliff. By the next year, both had been submerged by the rising waters of Lake Mead.

For related materials, see the Carnegie-Cal Tech Manuscript Collection, the oral history interview with Robert P. Sharp, Sharp´s article ¨Earth Science Field Work: Role and Status,¨ Ann. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci., 1988, 16:1-19; and the Edwin and Barbara McKee photograph collection.

Cline Library
Special Collections and Archives Department
Northern Arizona University