Julius F. Stone Collection

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342 black-and-white photographs

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These photographs were taken during the 1909 Julius Stone expedition down the Green and Colorado rivers beginning in Green River City, Wyoming and ending in Needles, California. They document the course of the river, river rapids, canyon characteristics, as well as the geology of the area. The collection also includes pictures of the five boatmen that took the trip, along with the specially made Galloway boats in which they travelled.

Biographic Note:

Julius F. Stone, the president of an Ohio manufacturing company, had been contracted to do some drilling work in Glen Canyon and while supervising the drilling he fell in love with the beauty of the area and the mystery of the river that ran through it. With this enthusiasm he contacted Nathaniel Galloway and asked to set up a river trip for the enjoyment of riding the river. Stone became the financier of what became known as the first Colorado River expedition for sport. Taking along three other boatmen and one photographer, Stone set out to traverse the rivers while documenting geologic aspects he noticed as well as the beautiful characteristic qualities of the canyons in which he passed.

Accompanying Stone on the trip were three other boatmen, one of which had made the trip previously. Nathaniel "Than" Galloway traversed the river in 1897, and because of his experience with boating and the makeup of the rivers, Stone asked him to lead the expedition. Seymour S. Dubendorff, a handyman and friend of Galloway, and C. C. Sharp were the other two boatmen asked to join the party. Finally, Stone asked Raymond Cogswell, a man believed now to be Stone's brother-in-law, to take photographs documenting the trip.

The boats in which they travelled were created especially for the trip by Nathaniel Galloway. The flat bottomed boats were 16 1/2 ft long made of white oak and Michigan pine and weighing in at 243 pounds. The boats were new in their design in that they were decked over except for a cockpit in which the oarsman sat; they also had a detachable skag or keel that was at the request of Stone himself.

The expedition took off on September 12, 1909 from Green River City, Wyoming following the same course as the first river trip taken by Major John Wesley Powell in 1869. Passing through 19 canyons along the Green and Colorado Rivers arriving in Needles, California on January 18, 1912. The Stone Party remains now as the seventh complete river trip and the first river trip taken only for sport.

Of the 342 photographs, 114 of them can be found in Stone's book titled Canyon Country along with a re-creation of the journal he kept throughout the trip.

Related Material:

Canyon Country : The Romance of a Drop of Water and a Grain of Sand by Julius F. Stone; foreword by Henry Fairfield Osborn

Cline Library
Special Collections and Archives Department
Northern Arizona University