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December 2022
♦ Bibliography & Annotated Checklist of Living Organisms First Named from the Grand Canyon and Vicinity (Northwestern Arizona) (Compiled and edited by Earle E. Spamer)
November 2022
♦ Explorer: Andrew J. Carroll on the Colorado River, 1857–1858. (By Earle E. Spamer)
♦ The Leipzig Imprints of Balduin Möllhausen’s Reisen in die Felsengebirge Nord-Amerikas bis zum Hoch-Plateau von Neu-Mexico (1860, 1861): Bibliographical Notes. (By Earle E. Spamer)
October 2022
♦ Balduin Möllhausen's Grand Canyon: An English Translation from Chapters 21–25 of Travels into the Rocky Mountains of North America to the High Plateau of New Mexico [Reisen in die Felsengebirge Nord-Amerikas bis zum Hoch-Plateau von Neu-Mexico] (Leipzig, 1861): with a transcription of coinciding parts from Chapters 6–8 of the “General Report” of Lt. Joseph C. Ives’ Report Upon the Colorado River of the West (1861). (Edited by Earle E. Spamer)
♦ "My God, there it is!" The World Encounters the Grand Canyon, 1540–1926. (Compiled and edited by Earle E. Spamer)
♦ The Grand Canyon! A Worldwide,Year-By-Year Anthology and Annotated Bibliography of Personal Encounters With the World's Greatest Draw 1540–2022. (Compiled and edited by Earle E. Spamer)
September 2022
♦ "Grand Canyon." By Sven Hedin. An English translation of the original 1925 edition. (Edited by Earle E. Spamer)
December 2022.
Bibliography & Annotated Checklist of Living Organisms First Named from the Grand Canyon and Vicinity (Northwestern Arizona). Compiled and edited by Earle E. Spamer
This publication is a resource manager’s and historian’s reference work documenting species-level taxa of living organisms that were first scientifically named based wholly or in part on collections made at, in, or near the Grand Canyon. This historical resource is not a work of systematics nor of taxonomic revision.
The bibliography/checklist includes 322 species-level taxa named on type specimens collected in the greater Grand Canyon region of northwestern Arizona; 215 of those taxa are based at least in part on specimens from within, or are with good probability from within, the current boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park. Five taxonomic kingdoms are represented among them—animals, plants, fungi, photosynthetic eukaryotes, and protists.
This document provides federal and Native American resource managers and historians of the Grand Canyon region of northwestern Arizona with a census of living (neontological) organisms that had been scientifically named based on collections made wholly on, or in part from, the lands that these managers oversee. Federal administrative units to which this accounting may be of particular interest are: Grand Canyon National Park, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (in that area near where it shares a boundary with the Grand Canyon park at Lees Ferry), Bureau of Land Management, Arizona Strip District; Grand Canyon–Parashant National Monument; U.S. Forest Service, Kaibab National Forest. Jurisdictions of Native American peoples addressed pertain to: Havasupai Tribe, Hualapai Indian Tribe, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, Navajo Nation.
November 2022.
Explorer : Andrew J. Carroll on the Colorado River, 1857–1858. By Earle E. Spamer
including Transcriptions from the “General Report” of Lt. Joseph C. Ives’ Report Upon the Colorado River of the West (1861); and Translations from Balduin Möllhausen’s Reisen in die Felsengebirge Nord-Amerikas bis zum Hoch-Plateau von Neu-Mexico (1861)
FROM THE PREFACE
The story of Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives’ expedition up the Colorado River in 1857–1858 with the steamboat Explorer is well known, well told, and, well, old news. What this book brings to light, however, is Andrew Carroll. He was the engineer who ran the boat’s engine; he also put its parts together in an improvised dry dock dug into the clay of the Colorado River delta, and he may well have helped build the thing in Philadelphia. Ives had occasional things to say about Carroll in his “General Report,” the first part of the 1861 government publication about the expedition. So did fellow voyager Balduin Möllhausen, who wrote his own book about the expedition, in German and published commercially in Leipzig, also in 1861, which has been largely hidden from readers of English. Their sparse remarks about Carroll are dispersed within long texts, and although lots of things have been written about Explorer’s expedition, the engineer has been ignored, save once in a while for his name, who until now did not even have a given name to go along with his surname. He was sketched by Möllhausen, and those little pencil drawings, still owned by family members in Germany, were fortuitously included in a 1995 book about Möllhausen’s artwork from the Colorado River expedition. So while we have an idea of what Carroll looked like, we have lacked a united story about him.
This book does not presume to retell the Ives expedition, so meticulously told by Ives and Möllhausen and recast by historians, professional and avocational alike. It is instead a précis of Carroll’s perspective of things; a story never gathered. On the Colorado, we rely wholly on Ives and Möllhausen since Carroll never wrote about his adventures. Ives kept to the factual details of duty in writing about Carroll. Möllhausen wrote more personably and at greater length, but his rendition has never come down to us in English, except for excerpts, and those were not about the engineer. It’s a shame, because Carroll’s Colorado River story is a remarkable one, brief as it is. Here was a young man, an Irish immigrant in his mid-twenties, sent with a boat kit from Philadelphia to the mudflats of the Colorado River delta (by way of Cuba, Panama, and California ports), where he had to get the sea-weathered pieces into shape (literally), put the kit together with its three-ton boiler and engine running, and then handle its controls under the orders of the hired captain—orders that changed frequently because of the fickleness of the untamed Colorado’s currents, shallow bottom, and obstructions. For a man used to Philadelphia’s gently tidal, unrocky Delaware River, this was something altogether different. Carroll, according to Ives, thought the Colorado was “the queerest river to run a steamboat upon.”
Without his expertise the expedition could not have continued with its planned landward venture that took Ives and part of his command to the Grand Canyon. So even though Carroll never got to see the canyon, he made it possible for the first exploratory expedition to reach it—and more importantly, to publicize it through word and art. True, others would have gotten to the canyon, eventually, but Carroll served as a shipwright and engineer and followed the hails of the pilot above his head. He delivered in one piece to their embarkation point at Beale’s Crossing the international group of Lt. Ives, Dr. Newberry, Herren Möllhausen and Egloffstein, and the soldiers of the land expedition.
Specifically to place Explorer and its engineer in the light of historical acknowledgment, both Ives’ and Möllhausen’s writings are here specially brought together for the first time. My own contribution has been to learn about the man and the firm that made Explorer. This book celebrates Andrew J. Carroll and his new-found part in the history of the Southwest and of Philadelphia.
November 2022.
The Leipzig Imprints of Balduin Möllhausen's Reisen in die Felsengebirge Nord-Amerikas bis zum Hoch-Plateau von Neu-Mexico (1860, 1861): Bibliographical Notes. (By Earle E. Spamer)
Balduin Möllhausen’s Reisen in die Felsengebirge Nord-Amerikas bis zum Hoch-Plateau von Neu-Mexico, unternommen als Mitglied der im Auftrage der Regierung der Vereinigten Staaten ausgesandten Colorado-Expedition (‘Travels into the Rocky Mountains of North America to the High Plateau of New Mexico, undertaken as a member of the Colorado Expedition on behalf of the United States Government’) was issued under two imprints in Leipzig, both consisting of two volumes. One imprint is that of Otto Purfürst (undated and presumed to be 1860), the other is that of Hermann Costenoble (1861). Alexander Edelmann of Leipzig was the printer for both imprints as well as the lithographs in those volumes.
The Reisen is Möllhausen’s account of his participation in the Colorado River exploring expedition under the command of Lt. Joseph C. Ives during 1857–1858. The expedition ascended the Colorado River in a purpose-built steamboat, from the river’s mouth in the Gulf of California, to Black Canyon. After nearly wrecking the boat there, a brief exploration by skiff reached the confluence of Las Vegas Wash, not far upstream from where today stands Hoover Dam. Returning to Beale’s Crossing, a land component of the expedition left the river, traveling eastward to Fort Defiance, New Mexico Territory (in today’s Arizona). On that trek they visited the Grand Canyon twice — first a descent to the Colorado River in Peach Springs Canyon and Diamond Creek, and second, a partial descent to Cataract Creek (Havasu Canyon).
The U.S. Congress published Lt. Ives’ formal report of the expedition in 1861, which appeared after the Möllhausen volumes (and after Ives had defected to the army of the Confederate States of America). If the presumed date of the [1860] imprint is correct, it demonstrates that Möllhausen’s memoir on the Colorado River expedition was published perhaps nearly a year before Ives’ Report reached its readers and libraries.
October 2022.
Balduin Möllhausen's Grand Canyon: An English Translation from Chapters 21–25 of Travels into the Rocky Mountains of North America to the High Plateau of New Mexico [Reisen in die Felsengebirge Nord-Amerikas bis zum Hoch-Plateau von Neu-Mexico] (Leipzig, 1861) with a transcription of coinciding parts from Chapters 6–8 of the “General Report” of Lt. Joseph C. Ives’ Report Upon the Colorado River of the West (1861). Edited by Earle E. Spamer.
This comprises the first complete English translation of the beginning of the land expedition, March 23-April 15, 1858, under the command of Lt. Joseph C. Ives, which reached the Grand Canyon at Diamond Creek and Cataract Creek. It complements Ives' own General Report (1861) with additional detail, exploratory notes and illustrations that did not appear in Ives' volume.
The Colorado River expedition, and the land expedition from Grand Canyon to Fort Defiance, New Mexico Territory, and beyond, are not a part of this translation.
FROM THE PREFACE:
HEINRICH BALDUIN MÖLLHAUSEN (1825–1905) left Germany for the first time in 1849 to hunt in the American Midwest, where he supported himself with the odd job of clerking or commercial painting. Two years later he met up with Friedrich Paul Wilhelm, Herzog von Württemberg, better known in American history as Duke (or Prince) Paul Wilhelm of Württemberg, who with a small entourage had set out to explore the Rocky Mountains. Möllhausen asked to join him, and served as a draftsman. They reached Wyoming, but on the return trip Möllhausen was left behind when there was no more room in a mail coach that took the duke away from a snowstorm that had killed their horses. Balduin barely survived, alone on the prairie for several months, and eventually was rescued by Indians. He later rejoined the duke in New Orleans and returned home to Germany. He was soon introduced to the great adventurer–geographer Alexander von Humboldt and met Carolina Seifert, the daughter of Humboldt’s private secretary—or the unmarried Humboldt’s own daughter, if some would have it—whom he later married. From then on, Möllhausen was a keen follower of his mentor, and Humbolt provided prefaces and salutary promotions for Balduin’s publications.
His experiences on the prairie gave him a taste for further adventures promised in the American West. With a letter of introduction from Humboldt, Möllhausen returned to America to see if he could join one of the western government-sponsored expeditions then being planned. He was assigned as a draftsman for the 35th parallel Pacific Railroad survey of 1853–1854 under the command of Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple, which passed through the area south of the Grand Canyon, eventually arriving on the lower Colorado River and proceeding to the west coast. He also provided illustrations for Whipple’s final report (1856). Back in Germany again, he also published his own account of the expedition in 1858, Tagebuch einer Reise vom Mississippi nach den Küsten der Südsee [Diary of a Journey from the Mississippi to the Coasts of the South Sea (Pacific Ocean)], which has seen reprintings and translations.
In 1857, Lt. Joseph C. Ives, U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, who had also accompanied the Whipple expedition, invited Möllhausen to join him again, on an expedition that this time Ives would command, as the expedition’s illustrator and assistant in natural history. After the conclusion of this expedition he returned to Germany for the final time, where he turned out in 1861 his Reisen in die Felsengebirge Nord-Amerikas bis zum Hoch-Plateau von Neu-Mexico [Travels into the North Ameri-can Rocky Mountains to the High Plateau of New Mexico]. This expedition was (officially) to ascertain the head of navigation of the Colorado River, though it also investigated the extent of Mormon incursions into the regions south of Utah. Once the head of navigation was determined on a trip upriver in the Explorer, a small steamboat built in Philadelphia just for this expedition, Ives divided his command into two groups; one returned down the Colorado River, the other, under Ives, traveled eastward overland. Although some intentions were had to explore other areas, the group finally concluded its work at Fort Defiance, New Mexico Territory.
At the conclusion of the river expedition, Möllhausen accompanied the overland party, which became the first to purposely reach the Grand Canyon in an attempt to ascertain more surely the geographical relationships of the region, most importantly the coordinates of the confluence of the Little Colorado River with the Colorado (which they failed to accomplish due to the impassable canyons and side canyons).
Ives’ formal report was published as a U.S. Congressional document in Washington, D.C., in 1861. The significance of Möllhausen’s work to Grand Canyon–Colorado River history is that it predates the release of Ives’ formal report, by several months at least; it constitutes the first-published comprehensive accounting of explorations on the Colorado River and in the Grand Canyon. It also provides details and perspectives not included in Ives’ report. It is unfortunate that his Grand Canyon story, at least in his own words, has been lost in the backwaters of canyon history, having lacked a translation that would have made it accessible to English-speaking readers. This volume offers an expedient answer to the problem, at least until such time that a more proper historiographical study of this part of the expedition is produced by scholars in the field.
October 2022.
"My God, there it is!" The World Encounters the Grand Canyon, 1540–1926. Compiled and edited by Earle E. Spamer.
Part I. The Writers
Part II. The Poets
Quotations from publications are arranged chiefly in order of the year of visit to the Grand Canyon; and when that is not known, the items are placed according to year of publication.
Items that are in languages other than English are provided only in translation in this volume. Readers who may need to review the quotations in the original languages are referred via cross-listings to the more complete bibliography titled, The Grand Canyon! (see below), which includes the texts in both their original languages and in translation.
FROM THE PREFACE:
This book compiles an edited series of transcriptions (and some translations) of the Grand Canyon visits that have come down to us between 1540 and 1926. The cut-off is not arbitrary, but reflects the fact that the publications to that year are now in the public domain; if they had had any copyright protection, it has lapsed. But 1926 also represents the earliest time when the Grand Canyon was one of the United States’ new national parks, which in itself meant that even more people were drawn to visit the chasm. Visitorship had been ramping up under the prolifically successful advertising campaign of the Santa Fe Railway, which for decades had been enticing its ridership to stop by the canyon—if indeed it was not the principal destination. The railroad drummed it into the collective consciousness of Americans of every traveling caste, whether they were aboard parlor cars and upper berths, or among the steerage class of those who bought only a seat. Even so, some of the early visitors arrived on their own, overland; and if they published anything about their experiences, it is also here.
Here I quote from early visitors’ encounters with the Grand Canyon. If they had little to say, well and good, but those who gushed at length have had to be accommodated as well. Most were enthusiastic, as we might hope they would be, but there were a few who groused of their experience. They are all part of one story, a compilation of which has never before been made. There are anthologies, of course, that delve into a few of the works cited herein, but often even they curtail some of the additional interesting remarks that the writers had made. But I have no intention of replicating every word that they have written—especially those of the pioneer chroniclers, Balduin Möllhausen, Joseph C. Ives, John Wesley Powell, and Clarence E. Dutton in particular, who wrote entire books. I instead have had to arrange a transcript of worthwhile parts of their texts, which deliver specifically personal observations of their encounters with the Grand Canyon, going further than many of the time-honored (perhaps worn-out) series of quotations, although for comprehensiveness I must also embrace those exhausted scripts.
Beyond the luminaries, many if not most of the authors quoted here will be unknown; or perhaps just forgotten in the passage of years. Some were brief; others elaborated at such great length that the more essential accounts of their experiences had to be culled from even longer texts. They report observations, but better yet many of them go into personal reflections. Those who wrote in languages other than English are translated here, usually for the first time.
Despite the tedium of reexpression that one will encounter in this book, each of the hundreds of people quoted herein had taken the time to put their experiences on paper. A lot of them were indeed original, each in their own way; and a few were honest enough to credit any quotations they made. Some were very good at crafting their narratives; a few are stellar examples. And others, well, read on and discover them, too . . .
October 2022.
The Grand Canyon! A Worldwide,Year-By-Year Anthology and Annotated Bibliography of Personal Encounters With the World's Greatest Draw 1540–2022. Compiled and edited by Earle E. Spamer.
Introduction: On Foot, In Saddle, and With Motor, Oar, and Paddle
Part I. Primary Explorations
Part II. To, Into, and Expressing the Canyon
Part III. Down (and Up) the Colorado
So much has been written about the Grand Canyon from personal experience that it may be surprising that a comprehensive record of these impressions has never been put together. Never has every reference been compiled—nor for that matter have so many items been forgotten from the very time they were published. Yes, there are bibliographies, but most of them are specialized or embrace the tremendous hail of everything that goes beyond personal records and impressions. The Grand Canyon! cites, quotes, and annotates the published records of personal encounters with the Grand Canyon, or accounts told on behalf of those who were there, from 1540 to 2022. Many of the items that are now in the public domain (published before 1927) are quoted from, sometimes at length. Numerous publications are in languages other than English; titles and quotations from them are provided in the original languages and in translation.
This volume documents what is otherwise understood only by intuition or supposition— that the Grand Canyon is an intensely attractive draw, and people have “used” its resources intensely. It goes beyond prose, gathering up the works of poets and the publications that record the work of artists, photographers, musicians, cinematographers, and architects—all of those people who have used their crafts to express their impressions of the canyon. And it has seemed logical to split the main part of this volume into the two principal Grand Canyon venues—arriving and seeing it from the rim and on its trails, and experiencing it along the Colorado River.
This bibliography has a complementary volume composed exclusively of edited quotations from the experiences of visitors to the Grand Canyon, 1540–1926, which are presented there in a more easily read format. See above — "My God, there it is!"
NOTE To Federal and Native American Administrators
THE GRAND CANYON! documents the “use” of the lands you manage as a resource in and of itself. Much of it probably has never come to your attention and thus it may offer a new perspective of the breadth of interest and participation that people have had with the Grand Canyon. These items are, each in their own way, reports of activities; and however elegantly or not the experiences are described or portrayed, their value is limited if an audience does not know of them.
This bibliography omits publications that pertain to scientific research and to cultural resources of the Grand Canyon. Thousands of these publications are already cited and summarized in other bibliographies and documentary sources [see this website in particular]. Instead, here are personal reports and perspectives, first-hand or told on behalf of the participants.
The people who are cited in this bibliography are from around the world. They express their encounters with the Grand Canyon through writing, lecturing, painting, sculpting, photographing, filming, composing music and theatrical performances, and designing architecture. In their activities they share their experiences and impart their impressions of visits to the Grand Canyon, briefly and indulgently alike. These people are your authorities on the ways the Grand Canyon is “used,” by the general public mostly, your expert witnesses to personal Grand Canyon experiences.
The writers and poets have communicated in many languages. The prose accounts not in English are translated herein—often for the first time, so they are bound to be newly recovered information. Writers’ abilities to communicate themselves are subjective, of course, but they all are undeniable. The record assembled here provides far more information than has previously been available. It shows how the world has interacted with the canyon, over centuries. It forms a set of authentic references that document the attention to, activities on, and impressions of the lands that are today secured by governmental agencies of the United States and Native peoples.
September 2022.
Grand Canyon. By Sven Hedin. An English translation of the original 1925 edition. Edited by Earle E. Spamer. Published by Raven's Perch Media.
SVEN ANDERS HEDIN (1865–1952) was a Swedish adventurer best known for his explorations across the Asian continent and for a tumultuous professional life, all of which is beyond the scope of this book. The publications stemming from his explorations are numerous, and he was also widely known for his popular travelogue for young readers, Från Pol till Pol (“From Pole to Pole,” published in 1911) that was translated into many languages. But less well known is the entire book that he wrote about his three-week visit to the Grand Canyon, as a guest of the Santa Fe Railway, in the summer of 1923, based on letters he had sent to his mother and illustrated with his original artwork. It was published first in Swedish in 1925 with the simple title, Grand Canyon; today this is a scarce volume in the antiquarian book market. It was translated into German in 1926 and Russian in 1928. It never was translated into English, until now. The original 1925 volume is now in the public domain. The translation text and Hedin's illustrations may be freely used.
COMING SOON!
- Art of the Grand Canyon: An Annotated Bibliography
- So help me God... Grand Canyon's Debatable Storytellers James White & John Hance: An Indisputable Annotated Bibliography