No, Its Byron Who is Stuck -- Up On the Facts

 The fun of working over this old history stuff (and yes! it does matter) is it is like beachcombing, walking back and forth, picking up and turning over what looks like nothing much, and finding: Oh! wow, what about this?

My main charge against Byron Pearson’s history (2 books, 1 cranky anti-environmentalist hypothesis) is that even with the additional 20 years between his first and the re-tread, he still never did the major research he needed to do: No Colorado archives, none from California, none from Washington, and so on.  Does that matter? Try this:

Stuck With Byron

I suppose I am stuck with Byron Pearson. 

Well, rather, the literature about the Grand Canyon, and specifically attempts to authorize dam-building in it, is stuck with Byron Pearson. I admit I am culpable; I should have written the necessary rebuttal when he published Still the Wild River Runs in 2002, four years after he had been awarded his Ph.D. upon completing the dissertation that led to the book. 

A CLASS ON THE RIVER

A while ago, I wrote a book tracing the great effort the Park Service made in the 1970’s to sculpt a Grand Canyon National Park river traffic management plan that would solve the various crises besetting the Colorado and its riverine environment.* 

As the sixties ended, river traffic was out of control, numbers  increasing hugely; the river with its beaches and shores, being soiled, trashed and re-trashed;  the experience of a wild river trip, a wilderness river trip, battered and shattered by more and more motorized push-em-thru shortie thrill rides; the Park Service bewildered by this ravenous new profit-making invasion.