By Nancy Kirkpatrick Wright
In 1998, the Sharlot Hall Museum's San Juan River float trip enjoyed the adventures and the stunning scenery of Southeastern Utah. Several adventuresome travelers gathered at Bluff and journeyed down to Mexican Hat. Some continued on through the stratified wonders of the Goosenecks to Clay Hills. It was an easy-going trip on that User Friendly River. No heart-stopping cataracts, no boat-dunking rapids. Rich colorful high desert scenery and gentle river meanders led them, with just enough white water here and there to add a bit of excitement.
Everyone slept on hard, unyielding rock at least one night, but they were treated to a "gourmet breakfast" in the morning, something fancy like fruit, eggs, toast and jam.
The Museum provided days of exploring Anasazi ruins and many rare and puzzling displays of rock art. Some may have seen a desert critter or two crossing their paths. In the evening, around the campfire, someone probably pointed out the stars of the big and little dippers, the sickle of Leo's head, and the brilliant Venus and Mars. The crystals that wily Coyote stole from Black God and scattered across the sky seemed near enough to touch. Guides told stories of pioneer river rats who traveled this way years ago.
The San Juan wasn't always user friendly...
W. E. Mendenhall, one of those early San Juan sojourners, passed this way in the 1890's, and told about it 45 years later in a KYCA radio broadcast. Mendenhall, his brother, and five other men spent weeks rowing, pulling, and polling three boats up the Colorado River prospecting. Their tales include raging floods, rattle snake invasions, and mule-breaking rock slides. To vary their diet, they caught fish with their hands and once talked a Navajo woman out of a hind quarter of mutton for twenty-five cents. With characteristic old-timer modesty Mendenhall told the "most thrilling" story of their trip down the San Juan:
"In the Fall of 1894, after the placer diggings on the San Juan river in Utah...had been pretty well worked out, it was decided by a group of men who had been working in these placers to undertake a boating exploration and prospecting trip down the San Juan river. It can be stated that this navigation of the San Juan was the first boating journey ever made down that river from Bluff to the river's junction with the Colorado, despite the claims to that distinction by a National Geographic Magazine party making the trip many years later."
No warm sleeping bags, no gourmet breakfasts for these intrepid pioneers. Read on.
"One night the boats were tied up to bank shrubs...The high wind caused the boats to bump and thump against each other, a sound plainly noticeable to us after getting into our beds. About ten o'clock a seeming second-sense awakened me, with reality that the thumping of the boats had ceased, though the wind was still blowing hard. This made me uneasy and going out in my stocking feet it was disclosed that the big boat, the one with all their food, had come lose and was gone."
In the light of the rising moon Mendenhall began searching but finally decided nothing could be done at night. The next morning he started out on foot, investigating a trail along the way which finally led to a small square cabin.
"Something caused me to glance to the right, and there, with one end attached to an oak tree and the other end resting on the ground, was a platform apparently loaded with something and covered with a heavy canvas sheet...lifting the canvas up, behold there were seven 50-lb. sacks of flour stacked on the platform. Here was salvation for us."
The rest of the crew arrived amid great rejoicing. There would be bread for breakfast!
They continued prospecting down the river and eventually found the missing boat stalled on a sand bar, dry and undamaged. Still wondering about the stashed flour, they made their way down the river:
"Though inquiry was made at Lee's Ferry and up in Utah, no clue was ever found as to the cache of flour, except a report that a bunch of horse thieves were reported to have wintered their stolen stock along this section of the river a few years before."
Stories are told of cowboys with long ropes who carried on a lucrative business, stealing horses in Utah, driving them down across the Colorado River, and selling them in Arizona. Later, they would steal some Arizona horses and reverse the process, turning a reasonable profit.
Our Sharlot Hall Museum expedition did not see horse rustlers on the trip, but they probably saw the remains of cabins and mining gear left there these hundred years. And they especially appreciated those "gourmet " breakfasts.
Nancy Kirkpatrick Wright, retired librarian from Yavapai College, is active in Prescott Art Docents and Sharlot Hall Museum. She enjoys investigating the historic confluences of the arts and sciences.