By Kristy McCaffrey
In 1938, Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter became the first women to descend
the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
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| Elzada Clover |
Elzada Clover was a botany instructor and assistant curator
of the botanical gardens at the University of Michigan. She believed the Grand
Canyon would reveal many species that would help to round out their collection.
Originally, she had planned to descend the canyon by pack mule, but after meeting
river runner Norm Nevills, he convinced her that a boat trip would be better.
He proposed a 660-mile trip from Green River, Utah, to Lake Mead. If
successful, it would make Clover the first botanist to catalog plants along the
Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
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| Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter |
Clover invited 24-year-old Lois Jotter, a close friend and former roommate of Clover's who
was a graduate student in botany at the same university, and Eugene
Atkinson, a zoology major. Also accompanying them were Bill Gibson (a
commercial artist from San Francisco hoping to further his photography career)
and Don Harris (a USGS engineer).
Three boats were constructed for the expedition—sixteen feet
long, four feet across the stern, five feet amidship, and tapered to a pointed
bow. The boats were called the Wen (Norm Nevill’s father’s initials),
the Botany (in honor of the expedition), and the Mexican Hat (a
rock formation in Utah near where Nevills lived).
By 1938, several men had navigated the Colorado River through
the Grand Canyon, but only one woman had attempted it. Unfortunately Bessie
Hyde had disappeared with her husband Glen before finishing, and while it was
never clear what happened to the couple, it’s believed that they drowned somewhere
near Diamond Creek.
The trip launched on June 20, 1938, on the Green River, with
plans to reach Lake Mead by the end of July. It wasn’t easy, but they
succeeded, the trip taking 43 days. It would be Elzada Clover’s only trip
through the Grand Canyon. She often gave talks about her adventure, as well as
spoke to her classes about being the first woman to run the Grand Canyon. A
complete report of her and Lois’s botanical findings appeared in the November
1944 American Midland Naturalist under the title “Floristic Studies in
the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River and Tributaries.” Clover led an active life
until her death in 1980 at 83.
Lois Jotter returned to Michigan to complete her Ph.D, during
which time she married. She stepped back from academics to raise two children
but following her husband’s death in 1963 she joined the faculty at the
University of North Carolina as an assistant professor of botany. In 1984, she
retired. Lois returned to the Colorado River in 1994 to participate in a
Legends Trip, a group of “old-timers” whose purpose was to compare river
conditions before and after the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. In 2013, she died
at the age of 99.
Though the
botanical collections were not as comprehensive as originally planned, Elzada
Clover and Lois Jotter made history by becoming the first females to
successfully descend the Colorado River through its major rapids.
Come along with Texas Ranger Nathan Blackmore and Emma Hart as they journey through Grand Canyon in 1877.
Click here to learn more about THE SPARROW.
Click here to learn more about THE SPARROW.
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