Otis R. Marston - Knowledge

539: 368: 211: 31: 440: 652:. The death of his mother Idela in 1956, an amazing woman in her own right, the completion of Glen Canyon Dam in 1963, and the loss of his wife of forty-four years to cancer in 1968 were difficult blows. In 1973, Marston moved into an apartment at the Bohemian Club, and rented an adjacent apartment to house his huge collection of Colorado River material. Dock continued to work on his book before he died August 30, 1979, at the age of 85. 636:, accounts that were often full of the good things done but left out all the bad things. Early on, Dock decided his work would not be one-sided. Besides chronicling river history, by this time Dock had completed a list of what he called the first 200 river runners to complete a fast-water transit of the Colorado River from Lee’s Ferry to the Grand Wash Cliffs. 607:

By 1953, Dock had already spent five years trying to sort out river-running history fact from fiction, and he was well underway writing his definitive account of Grand Canyon river-running. Dock had some help in his writing at this time from an elderly neighbor who had recently moved to Berkeley. The

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who participated in a large number of river-running firsts. Marston was the eighty-third person to successfully complete the water transit of the Grand Canyon. He spent the last thirty years of his life writing his magnum opus on the history of the first 100 Grand Canyon river runners. In researching

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and Grand canyons in 1947. On that trip, Dock and Garth were the first father-son team to each row a boat on the same trip through the Grand Canyon. Dock swam Dubendorff Rapid without a life jacket or air mattress. It was the first record of anyone intentionally swimming a Grand Canyon rapid free of

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and thought it would be great to go with Norm on a Grand Canyon cruise. Otis joined Wilson and the two men, accompanied by their sons, cruised the Grand Canyon with Nevills in 1942. By the end of the trip, Otis had grown a bushy beard making him look like an "old time pill-roller" or "Doc". The name

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in 1883. The couple was married the next year. Idela gave birth to her first child, Sibyl, in 1885, followed by her first son, Ellery William, in 1886. Tragically, Ellery choked to death while the family was at sea in late 1888 and he was buried there. Idela gave birth to four more children: Elsa,

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broke down and was abandoned by Hudson. In the first helicopter rescue of river runners in the Grand Canyon, Hudson and his son Edward were helicoptered out of the canyon while Dock completed the cruise in the Chris-Craft. The next river trip in Grand Canyon, almost a month later, discovered the

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By 1949, Dock was interviewing river runners and searching out original letters, logs, photographs and journals. Marston would eventually amass an unparalleled collection of anything and everything to do with the history of the people who boated any part of the Colorado River watershed. This

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Otis met Margaret “Mag” Lowell Garthwaite and the two were married on January 4, 1925. They had three children, a son named Otis Garthwaite “Garth” and twin girls, Loel and Maradel. In later years, Mag became a prime mover in the University of California Alumni Association and Berkeley's

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Marston began to write a simple book on Grand Canyon river running history in 1947. He assumed it would take six months to a year, at which time he would return to financial planning. But the more he worked on the book, the more he realized what had been written was woefully inaccurate.

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Dock kept running rivers, and in 1957 ran the Grand Canyon on 126,000 cubic feet per second (3,600 m/s), the highest Colorado River flow ever navigated. In 1958, Dock led a three motorboat group through Grand Canyon. Renowned artist

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II watercraft, and walked around a number of rapids they had never experienced at higher water flows. This river journey was the first river trip through Grand Canyon after the closing of the bypass tubes around Glen Canyon Dam.

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around 1930, and he soon realized he was better at his job if he understood the psychological make-up of his clients. To this end, he read a number of books on psychology. The work with Hutton was terminated in 1947.

616:. The two men became great friends and spent hours on hours trying to understand the actions of the river people Dock was writing about. They also analyzed the biographers who had written accounts about people like 604:

extensive collection was eventually contained in 492 boxes, 60 albums, 163 reels of film, and 38 video cassettes and was the basis for Marston's manuscript on the first 100 river runners through the Grand Canyon.

591:. Along the way, they rediscovered the 1836 inscription made by Denis Julien. Not long after Dock and his friends located it, the reservoir waters rising behind Glen Canyon Dam submerged the inscription. 451:. In 1951, he orchestrated the first successful down-run of outboard motorboats through the entire Grand Canyon. The 1951 "Marston Motorcade" consisted of two outboard motorboats and three stock 504:

in 1959 as a technical adviser, Dock lead a film crew through the Grand Canyon to film river running and background scenes for a perfectly horrible movie about Powell’s first transit called

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In June 1953, Dock and his wife Mag did a Grand Canyon river trip to do some reconnaissance for a possible Walt Disney film. They used three single-engine outboard boats, including the

690:"Otis Reed "Doc" MARSTON b. 11 Feb 1894 Berkeley, Alameda, California, USA d. 30 Aug 1979 San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA: Lowell and Block Genealogy and Social History" 550:

began impounding water. That August, with the dam releasing water at about 1,000 cubic feet per second (28 m/s), Dock and others cruised the entire Colorado River in

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Marston made a total of twenty-two river trips through the Grand Canyon. The following is a recounting of some of those river trips. It is not a complete list.

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in June 1889. It was seen again in the summer of 1891 by the Best Expedition, then went unnoticed. In late March 1964, as the reservoir was filling behind

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Gale, Phil, (2011). "The Marstons in Berkeley Part Two: The Children. Exactly opposite: The Newsletter of the Berkeley Historical Society, Vol 29, No. 1

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to the National Park Service where the boat is preserved to this day. Just after completing the 1950 cruise, Dock and Mag joined Moulton Fulmer for a

230:, and saw Hermit Rapid on Christmas Day. By the close of 1919, he had completed his qualifications as a submarine commander with the Navy on the 559: 1268: 1263: 1226: 1090: 1050: 1001: 981: 941: 849: 789: 760: 731: 711: 382:, with Egbert "Ed" Hudson in 1949. Hudson had built the boat to design specifications provided by Canadian Naval Architect 297: 244: 554:

and the Grand Canyon, just downstream of Glen Canyon Dam. It was monsoon season, and the side tributaries, especially the

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Reilly, Plez Talmadge, Oral Interview With Otis Marston, P. T. Reilly papers, 1947-1986, Utah State Historical Society,

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Reilly, Plez Talmadge, Oral Interview With Otis Marston, P. T. Reilly papers, 1947–1986, Utah State Historical Society,

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Reilly, Plez Talmadge, Oral Interview With Otis Marston, P. T. Reilly papers, 1947–1986, Utah State Historical Society,

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Reilly, Plez Talmadge, Oral Interview With Otis Marston, P. T. Reilly papers, 1947–1986, Utah State Historical Society,

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in his teens where he became a master mariner and eventually owned a large shipping business sailing the Pacific out of

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where he graduated as an ensign in 1918. While on leave on Christmas Eve 1918, Otis rode a mule to Hermit Camp in the

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in 1836 had not been seen by river runners since the late 1800s. The Stanton Party found the inscription in lower

272: 174:. The forty-eight-year-old captain met twenty-one-year-old Idela Alice Reed while sailing one of his ships from 689: 355: 1219: