Getting to see the old letters was like finding Sappho’s poems or the Mayan codices. And reading them was like sifting through a midcentury time capsule. Although the hand-scribbled notes have no cash value on the open market, in the history of this magazine, they’re priceless — the missing link to one of our early adventure stories. In 1951, Editor Raymond Carlson hailed that story’s arrival.

“Our guide to some interesting places in the backcountry this issue is writer-photographer-artist Allen Reed, a freelance contributor who finds the further he has to go and the harder he has to work, the better he enjoys the assignment. Witness: a long boat trip down the Verde, where we have not been before.”