Rattlesnakes and Rapids - A Woman’s Journey Against the Current in 1939

Cort Conley
Idaho Yesterdays
Fall, 1984

“By 1938 Edith Clegg, 57, was a widow – daughters raised, and nine times a grandmother. She began to mull a long-held dream, a cross-continent trip, primarily by water, that would roughly parallel in a reverse direction the route of Lewis and Clark from St. Louis. While reading an issue of the Saturday Evening Post, she found an article that actually hatched the notion. The Post story, ‘Lone Voyager Conquers the Colorado,’ was that of Haldane ‘Buzz’ Holmstrom’s 1937 trip down the Colorado River. Holmstrom, rowing a wooden boat, became the first person to complete a solo passage through the Grand Canyon.”

“At the time, Holmstrom was working as a mechanic in a Coquille gas station. Mrs. Clegg arrived, found the station, and spoke with the manager in his office. He summoned Holmstrom. The boatman-mechanic appeared, stared slack-jawed at Edith Clegg, turned and left. She waited, obviously puzzled. In a few minutes, Buzz returned and accepted her offer of $150 a month to lead the expedition. Months later, when she asked him about his peculiar at their first meeting, he explained that it had never occurred to him that the client would be a woman.”

“Knowing that he would need extra men in event of a portage – he had made five on his first trip through Grand Canyon – Buzz settled on two boats and three friends.

Holmstrom had met Earl ‘Doc’ Hamilton in Coquille, where the latter’s wife lived before their marriage. The two men got along like Lewis and Clark. Hamilton had finished three years at Oregon State University and wanted to attend dental school in Portland. He could earn $1.00 a day at the sawmill in Coquille; Clegg’s offer of $150 a month was manna. ‘Doc’ maintained and fixed the motors, hammered out bent props, and ran a boat almost as well as Buzz. He became an essential member of the crew.

Willis ‘Bill’ Johnson, a coal miner from Thistle, Utah, had met Holmstrom in 1938 when he and Amos Burg stopped on the banks of the Green River in Jensen, Utah, en route through the Grand Canyon for a second time (Burg was making a movie of the trip.) Both men were sufficiently charmed by Johnson’s engaging sense of humor and his whimsical stories to invite him along. He proved a useful, compatible companion, and Buzz asked him to join the Clegg expedition from Portland to Weiser, Idaho. Willis again showed his worth, and he did most of the cooking as well.

Clarence Bean completed the crew. He was Buzz’s sidekick in Coquille, a year ahead of him in high school. Bean proved to be an inept boatman – the channel had a way of getting out from under his boat, and he sheared pins whenever he too the throttle. He came to be regarded by the rest of the party as ballast.”

“The expedition plodded upriver toward Lewiston at the pace of a covered wagon. Members of the party saw Indian men netting spring chinook salmon at Celilo Falls; Indian women washing their laundry in the river, ‘looking very decorative in their brilliant clothes’; heron rookeries on the islands; flocks of wild swans; sage grouse, beaver, porcupine, rattlesnakes; agates and arrowheads. After sixteen days they reached Lewiston, at the confluence of the Clearwater and the Snake. Practiced boatmen and hardened hikers, they were now ready for the milltails of Hells”

From Edith Clegg’s Journal:

Monday, May 8th
“In camp on the Snake above Penawawa. Left camp 8:00 a.m. Took photographs of an interesting rock formation. Put into Almota to get oil. Almota is one of Lewis & Clark’s camps, where ‘a stream comes out from behind a hill.’ Very nice ‘old-timers’ people keeping the store. I walked to Wawai. A good store – nothing else. ‘No Sir, not me!’ to a polite profer of a traveller’s cheque. Talked with Jack Shelby, an old-timer (very like an older Hector M.D.) Buzz had known him when he (Buzz) was coming Down the Salmon River. He told us a lot about the Snake rapids. Two other men also, and then two more, all knowing the river. They say no one has been further up in a boat than Granite rapids.”

Wednesday, May 10th
“In camp on an island in the Snake below the bridge at Lewiston, Idaho. Made plans for our trip upstream, and shopped for same. The boats are being taken out of the water to be examined one by one (as one is needed for a ferry).

Hot bath at the ‘Lewis-Clark’ Hotel!!! Laundry. Shoes mended. Films, etc. The bath cost $1.00 which I thought was dear, still it was worth it.”

Saturday, May 13th
“In camp on the Snake.’ We made 21 miles today – good going, with swift water most of the day, and rapids quite hard – though much worse to come. It has been very hot. We have come up 85 feet – 4 feet to the mile. We are now 32 feet miles from Lewiston.”

Monday, May 15th
“Mountain Sheep Rapids, then just above Eureka Creek, Deer Rapids, 11:45 a.m. That was a bad moment. Buzz was going up in the St. George, empty, and was going up splendidly when a wave tossed the boat up in the air like a ball. Buzz fell out, and was not wearing his life-preserver. The boat righted and went down the rapid. The other men were carrying the gear along a very stony shore. They dropped everything and ran to the Mongoose. The Doc got there first, cut the painter and pushed off. The engine wouldn’t start – but he couldn’t get Buzz with the oars. He tried the engine again; it started. Buzz was swimming strongly towards the bank, but an eddy sucked him down twice. The Doc got below him and pulled him in. Thank God. He took Buzz to shore, left him with Bill, and he and Clarence dashed off downstream in the Mongoose after the St. George, which they found floating down the river quite safely, engine still running. The Doc got in and brought her back un-harmed. Buzz was also un- harmed, but feeling very sick and worn out. All this time, I was marooned on the opposite bank. It was the greatest comfort to see Buzz move first one leg and then the other – or an arm – I knew he was alive.

Doc came over and fetched me and told me that Buzz was perfectly all right, though feeling wretched at the moment.”

“We are all feeling tired, emotional strain, I suppose, but we eat a very good dinner. I had said to St. Christopher that I won’t smoke till the end of the trip – a kind of gratitude.”

Friday, May 19th
“Johnson’s Bar 17 ½ miles ahead. Kinney Creek 42 miles ahead. Lewiston 74 miles behind. I sat up by a big camp fire drying my washing. I think this is the most beautiful cam we’ve had. Closed in at the lower end by stern canyon walls, a wider reach of the river, and the upper end is Pleasant Valley, opening out into an amphitheater of peaceful hills.”

Saturday, May 20th
“2 rattlesnakes killed and another seen, but it escaped. We never have a day without seeing one or more, and generally killing one. I believe we are in more danger from rattlesnakes than from rapids.”

Sunday, May 21st
“Walking over the next mountain trail, met the largest rattlesnake I’ve ever seen. It went under a stone. I hated to leave it, but was afraid to tackle it. Bill came up about ten minutes later and I told him where it was. He said it was the hardest fighter he had ever met, and it had 11 rattles and a button.”

Tuesday, May 23rd
“Camped on the left bank of the Snake, above Sluice Creek. My tent was pitched in a little space between two rocks, quite like a little room. Indian paintings on one rock, rather dim. I thought I could trace a brave in feathered head-dress dancing around a fire – the painted smoke of the fire very plain.”

Thursday, May 25th
“Granite Creek Rapids – the worst yet, and the first of a series of bad ones. The men had to portage the boats in places over big boulders. Camped between the Granite Creek Rapids and Granite Creek, which is really a river; you have to go up it quite a little way to a bridge to cross.

Dull this afternoon, but fine and still quite warm. Up to date nobody has taken a boat up the river from below Granite Creek Rapids.”

Monday, May 29th
“In camp on the right bank of the Snake, below Steamboat Rapids. Was awakened this morning by the sound of a car – reaction, ‘how horrible,’ a car in my canyon! Somehow this road from the mine into civilization, though small and poor, is almost an offence.”

Wednesday, May 31st
“In camp above Kinney Creek. Buzz and Clarence went up to see Wheelbarrow Annie, a local celebrity – who lives about a mile up stream. They said she was incredibly dirty, but not crazy as the locals say. Devoted to animals. Looks about 70. They said she talked well, like a person with a good education and a good background. But farouche. There must be some story behind her. She lives absolutely alone in the poorest way, dresses like a tramp (or very much in my own style of the moment) but seems to have money to send away for things. She doesn’t like her neighbors up the creek (apparently she doesn’t like anybody but I gather she has a persecution complex about the post-master at Homestead). These neighbors have made a bridge across the creek. But Annie goes to Homestead, she carries her big boots as far as the creek so as to be able to ford it instead of having to be beholden to the people she dislikes by using their bridge. It doesn’t sound quite sane.”

Monday, June 5th
“It was a very dull and flat landscape that we went through today, though the weather was lovely; I suppose we are spoiled. Our clothes barely lasted us into Weiser. My shoes and Bill’s were flapping – all trousers in a dangerous condition, Buzz’s shirt well ventilated, even the Doc slightly damaged.”

Tuesday, June 6th
“In camp on the Snake at Weiser, Idaho. Bill in a gray suit! Buzz shaved! Laundry, bath, shampoo, facial. A lovely batch of telegrams and a letter from Lucy. The Washington Hotel very nice.

In camp a stream of visitors from morning to night, all very pleasant and friendly and rather excited about the first boat to come up the Canyon. But there is no privacy. You can’t write a letter or tidy your duffle bag or do your washing in any comfort. Reporters came and asked questions and are most leech-like.”

Thursday, June 8th
“In camp at Weiser, Idaho. Went and bought stores. The pins and sparkplugs have not come from Portland so we must wait till the noon train. Went and had another facial, and my face feels rather better. Clarence went off early, Bill waited to show us his prints and see us off. I felt quite sad at saying goodbye to him. He gave me a box of chocolates.

Left camp at 1:40 in grey, cloudy weather just trying to rain. They say it hasn’t rained since March, and that this won’t materialize. This morning it was hot. Went up the river about 20 miles, and camped just below Ontario on a small island at 5:00 p.m. Mosquitoes for the first time. Dull, and trying to rain, and rather cold all the afternoon; landscape a mudflat – I want my canyon.”