Waubonsee Community College

High, wide, and handsome, the river journals of Norman D. Nevills, edited by Roy Webb ; with a foreword by Brad Dimock

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

contains biographical information

illustrations

index present

non fiction

High, wide, and handsome

dictionariesbibliography

62266085

edited by Roy Webb ; with a foreword by Brad Dimock

the river journals of Norman D. Nevills

<DIV> When he started taking paying passengers by boat through the rapids of the Colorado River's canyons, Norman Nevills invented whitewater tourism and the commercial river business. For twelve years, from 1938 until his death in a plane crash in 1949, he safely took, without a single life lost, friends, explorers, and customers down the Colorado, Green, San Juan, Salmon, and Snake Rivers in boats he designed. National media found him and his adventures irresistible and turned him into the personification of river running. Logging seven trips through the Grand Canyon when no one else had completed more than two, he was called the Fast Water Man. Boatmen he trained went on to found their own competing operations. Always controversial, Nevills had important critics and enemies as well as friends and supporters, but no one can dispute his tremendous impact on the history of western rivers and recreation. Nevills's complete extant journals of those river expeditions are published for the first time in High, Wide, and Handsome. They contain vivid stories and images of still untamed-by-dams rivers and canyons in the Colorado River system and elsewhere, of wild rides in wooden boats, and of the few intrepid pioneers of adventure tourism who paid Nevills so they could experience it all. They have been transcribed and edited by river historian Roy Webb, author of If We Had a Boat: Green River Explorers, Adventurers, and Runners and Call of the Colorado. </DIV>

Foreword; Introduction; Cataract and Grand Canyons, June 20 to August 1, 1938; Green River through the Grand Canyon, June 17 to August 22, 1940; Grand Canyon, July 14 to August 5, 1941; Grand Canyon, July 12 to August 7, 1942; Salmon River, July 11 to August 3, 1946; Snake River, August 4 to August 17, 1946; Green River, June 16 to July 5, 1947; Grand Canyon, July 10 to August 5, 1947; Grand Canyon, July 11 to August 5, 1948; Green River, June 19 to July 3, 1949; Grand Canyon, July 12 to July 31, 1949; Coda, Monday, September 19, 1949; A Note On The Sources; Notes; Index