Coconino Community College

Otis Marston went on his first river trip in the Grand Canyon in 1942. His life was never the same again. Within a few years, Otis, nicknamed Dock, rowed with fellow boatman Norm Nevills through Glen, Cataract, Lodore, and the Grand Canyon, as well as the Snake and Salmon rivers in the Pacific Northwest. Dock became fascinated with the stories of the river people. In 1947 he started writing a history of those adventurous souls, not realizing he would still be working on it at the end of his life in 1979. Dock saw the National Park Service transform from trying to prevent most river trips from even launching to regulating river recreation with permit systems. He participated in the change in watercraft from unwieldy wooden designs to inflatable rafts, with and without motors. He participated in the one and only jetboat trip that ran upstream in the Grand Canyon powering up the rapids. In the middle of it all, Dock was friends with NPS superintendents, rivermen and riverwomen.

Comet Talk Presenter Tom Martin is the author of "Dock Martson: Grand Canyon’s Colorado River Running Historian Volume 1". Tom is a Colorado River historian and worked on this project for a decade. He reviewed tens of thousands of documents from The Huntington Library's Otis Reed Marston Collection, National Park and Bureau of Reclamation archives scattered across the country, as well as private and university collections. He also tracked down and interviewed river runners who boated with Dock. Books will be available for purchase, or you can order ahead of time: https://www.vishnutemplepress.com/

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Image citation:  Call number V163/0167, Papers of Otis R. Marston: Still images, 1870-1978, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California