Haldane "Buzz" Holmstrom (1909–1946) was a pioneer of running the
Colorado River through the
Grand Canyon. He was the first person to float all the way from
Green River, Wyoming to
Boulder Dam solo. He built his own rowboats, often of his own design, to run whitewater rivers.
Born on May 10, 1909, in southern
Oregon, he was raised in
Coquille, Oregon. Buzz's father worked as a logger and died when Buzz was twenty.[1] As a young man, he worked in a filling station. He began building his flat-bottomed boats in 1934, running the
Rogue River in southwest Oregon. He ran the Rogue again in 1935 and the
Main Salmon in Idaho in 1936. On October 25, 1937, he began his most famous feat, his solo run of the Colorado from Green River, Wyoming, down through
Cataract Canyon,
Glen Canyon, and the Grand Canyon.[2][3] At the end of his run through the Grand Canyon, the motorboats refused to give him a tow across
Lake Mead, so he rowed the distance in four and a half days.[4] Symbolically, he touched the newly built Boulder Dam with his boat at the end of his journey on November 20. However, Colorado River historian
Otis "Dock" Marston wrote that he actually went to the base of the dam at the end of his following trip.[5] The second trip in 1938 included Amos Burg and Willis Johnson. This trip was captured in Burg's short movie, Conquering the Colorado.[6] Buzz received no financial gain from the film.[7]
Despite the ground-breaking nature of Holmstrom's feat, his river-running was characterized not by bravado, but by humility and awe at his surroundings.[2]
Holmstrom died of a gunshot wound to the head[8] on May 18, 1946, on the second day of a surveying trip for the
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. His body was discovered on a game trail downriver of Rondowa, the confluence of the
Wallowa River and the
Grande Ronde River.[9][10] The motivation for his apparent suicide is not known.[6]
Further resources
Vince Welch, Cort Conley, and Brad Dimock (2004). The Doing of the Thing: The Brief, Brilliant Whitewater Career of Buzz Holmstrom. Fretwater Press.
ISBN1-892327-07-4.
Marston, Otis R., (2014). From Powell To Power; A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press.
ISBN978-0990527022
Notes
^Marston, Otis R., (2014). "From Powell To Power; A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, p. 353
ISBN978-0990527022
^Marston, Otis R., (2014). "From Powell To Power; A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, pp. 354–364
ISBN978-0990527022
^Marston, Otis R., (2014). "From Powell To Power; A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, p. 364
ISBN978-0990527022
^Marston, Otis R., (2014). "From Powell To Power; A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, p. 395
ISBN978-0990527022
^Marston, Otis R., (2014). "From Powell To Power; A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, p. 396
ISBN978-0990527022
^
abMarston, Otis R., (2014). "From Powell To Power; A Recounting of the First One Hundred River Runners Through the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, Arizona: Vishnu Temple Press, p. 397
ISBN978-0990527022
^Welch, Vince, "One Last Buzz", Boatman's Quarterly Review, volume 17, number 1, Spring 2004, p. 44