Reunion at Lees Ferry

Lees Ferry Reunion

They travel hundreds of miles, some from as far away as Georgia. Each September they meet again, at the Lees Ferry Reunion: the pioneers and their children and grandchildren. The old folks in their 80s and 90s may lean on canes or younger arms for support, but their strong, weathered faces beam with joy as they rediscover childhood friends, longseparated relatives, and the spectacular, desolate land they once called home.

Shared experience has formed special bonds among these oldtimers. They include river runners, ranchers, ferrymen, photographers, road builders, trailblazers, mule skinners, miners, freighters, and those who helped build Navajo Bridge and the historic Marble Canyon Lodge.

The annual reunion awakens dormant memories, and as the old friends talk, we younger listeners can imagine them as they were. In their minds and ours, lovers again go courting on horseback, wiry cowboys break wild horses, and ranchers haul feed to blizzard-stranded cattle. Frontier wives set pigs loose in the garden to eat the rattlesnakes before they go out to plant and weed. Tough river runners defy the Colorado's most dangerous rapids in handmade wooden boats. Children race barefoot across the burning desert sand, dropping handfuls of hay to stand on before charging ahead again.

They tell us how it was to slide down sandstone hills on wooden planks and snare catfish in the Paria River with bare hands. With them, we taste again the melons and fruits that grew in abundance at the Lonely Dell Ranch. We weep for the deaths of the people they loved and laugh as they recall practical jokes they played on one another. To listen is to know their fears and frustrations, their triumphs and defeats.

The National Park Service began staging the Lees Ferry Reunion in 1986 to gather historical information. “The amount of history that took place in this one little place is phenomenal,” says Dave Pape, who took charge of the latest reunion for the Park Service. “The ferry was the main point of southward expansion into Arizona. Until 1929, when Navajo Bridge was completed, it was the only place where the Colorado River could be crossed for hundreds of miles in either direction.” Lee family members shared recollections of their patriarch, John D. Lee, for whom the ferry is named. Lee was executed by firing squad for his participation, along with 50 other Mormon men and a party of Paiutes, in the 1857 massacre of a California-bound wagon train at Mountain Meadows. Only Lee was punished for the crime.

Warren M. Johnson was sent to operate the ferry after Lee's death. Today, descendants have brought diaries written by some of his children. Warren Dart Judd, a Johnson grandson, recalls many happy visits to Lees Ferry. “The first time was in 1908,” he says. “Charlie Spencer was operating his steamboat then.” (In the early 1900s the steamboat was used to carry coal downriver to a dredge it was hoped would extract gold from the Colorado's depths. The operation, directed by engineer Charles H. Spencer, proved a failure.) While Dart Judd played cattle rustler, George and Mary Fisher actually knew the Text continued on page 30 Continued from page 23 wife of a real outlaw and rustler. One of the couple's best friends was Grandma Nelson, once the wife of Two-Gun Maxwell, said to be a member of the Butch Cassidy Gang which frequented the Lees Ferry district. "Grandma cooked for the miners here at the crossing," says Mary. "After her husband was shot, Grandma often hid Butch and his gang from the posse. She was a little bitty woman who liked to drink. Her second husband, Al Nelson, didn't like that, so Grandma would sneak a bottle with her when she went to hoe the potatoes."

For two old river runners, details of the disappearance of Bert Loper are a lasting mystery. Loper was among the first to run the Colorado River after Major John Wesley Powell's explorations in the 1870s.

"Bert was 80 when he insisted on going down the Colorado River one more time," says his old friend Don Harris. "He had had a heart attack. We didn't learn until later that the doctors had warned him not to go. We [Loper, Harris, and fellow river runner Wayne Nichol] pulled out of Lees Ferry on July 6, 1949.

"Bert insisted on rowing his own handmade boat. The next day at Mile 24, his boat capsized, and I never saw him again. I will always believe he planned to go out of this world just the way he did."

Mamie Lowry Fetters' father built the Marble Canyon Lodge. She recalls many of the people who stayed at the lodge in the 1920s and '30s, among them Zane Grey, John D. Rockefeller and his family, and Gary Cooper. Her favorite memories, however, are of Shine Smith, an early missionary to the Navajos.

"Shine refused to own anything," says Mamie. "He relied on others for the necessities of life. He spent the winters with us during the 1930s. One year he arrived wearing a woman's sweater he had gotten from a sort of 'care package.' He looked ridiculous. Later, when I went off to school, he would send me postcards that others had mailed to him. He just scratched off the messages and replaced them with his own."

Si Fryer was not a Lees Ferry pioneer, but his grandparents were among those who early on traveled across the plains and later crossed the river here. His grandmother gave birth to Si's uncle Gus at the Lonely Dell Ranch, two houses and a stone corral built by John D. and Emma Lee, one of Lee's three wives. Emma named it Lonely Dell. Si points with pride to a rock nearby on which his grandparents carved their names.

In the 1960s, Si and his wife bought an interest in the Lonely Dell and spent several summers restoring it, before it was finally purchased by the Park Service. "I replanted orchards and rebuilt ditches," recalls Si. "I think I worked every bit as hard as old John D. Lee and Warren Johnson ever did."

Si came from Georgia to attend the 1987 reunion. Others have traveled from Wyoming, California, and all over the Southwest.

"It took us four years to collect the names of 25 pioneers to send invitations for the first reunion," says Larry Wiese of the National Park Service. "More than 130 pioneers showed up. With the help of the Salt River Project and the Bureau of Reclamation, we have videotaped their stories and copied their photographs, albums, and diaries. All this will be placed in our future visitor center. Ultimately, we hope to establish a living history ranch, where people can see firsthand what it took to survive out here.

"And as long as the pioneers or their descendants attend, we will hold a reunion every September at Lees Ferry."

Author's note: The 1989 reunion takes place September 21-23 at Lees Ferry, Arizona. For information, telephone (602) 645-2511.

Freelance Kate Ruland-Thorne is writing a biography of Sedona Schnebly, for whom the town of Sedona was named. Photographer Gary Ladd lives in Page, Arizona.