Friday, January 8, 2010: 2:50 PM
Elizabeth Ballroom F (Hyatt)
The history of river running on the Colorado Plateau dates to John Wesley Powell’s first voyage in 1869. But it was during the post-World War II years, with their increased prosperity and leisure, that river running became a major draw for adventurers and tourists. In 1954, a handful of river guides met in Salt Lake City to found the Western River Guides Association (WRGA). Over the next 35 years, the group would morph from a semiformal commercial association and social club into an influential force helping to shape environmental policy on western rivers.
The WRGA reflected the complex of motivations that drew men and women to the activity. Members loved the canyons’ natural beauty, but they also wanted to promote their businesses. And as their commercial operations grew, members increasingly shaped the WRGA into a trade association and lobbying arm. Association officials negotiated with the Interior department on issues of permit requirements, numbers of trips, and environmental impacts of commercial expeditions. The WRGA advocated for free-flowing rivers for commercial and, increasingly, environmental reasons. Over the years their tactics matured and their professionalism and effectiveness grew, from a rather inchoate protest against the Glen Canyon Dam in the 1950s to a successful legal effort in partnership with other groups in the 1980s to advocate releases of reservoir water mimicking the lost spring floods. During that same period, however, divisions between guides, outfitters, and private river parties threatened to split the group.
The WRGA also reflected societal changes and resistance to those changes, including in gender relations. Ironically, it was a female president of the WRGA, Sheri Griffith, who guided the group’s merger with the Eastern Professional River Outfitters Association to form America Outdoors in 1990, ending the WRGA’s independent existence.
The WRGA reflected the complex of motivations that drew men and women to the activity. Members loved the canyons’ natural beauty, but they also wanted to promote their businesses. And as their commercial operations grew, members increasingly shaped the WRGA into a trade association and lobbying arm. Association officials negotiated with the Interior department on issues of permit requirements, numbers of trips, and environmental impacts of commercial expeditions. The WRGA advocated for free-flowing rivers for commercial and, increasingly, environmental reasons. Over the years their tactics matured and their professionalism and effectiveness grew, from a rather inchoate protest against the Glen Canyon Dam in the 1950s to a successful legal effort in partnership with other groups in the 1980s to advocate releases of reservoir water mimicking the lost spring floods. During that same period, however, divisions between guides, outfitters, and private river parties threatened to split the group.
The WRGA also reflected societal changes and resistance to those changes, including in gender relations. Ironically, it was a female president of the WRGA, Sheri Griffith, who guided the group’s merger with the Eastern Professional River Outfitters Association to form America Outdoors in 1990, ending the WRGA’s independent existence.