Norman D. and Doris Nevills papers

Collection

Identifier: MS 0552

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The Norman D. and Doris Nevills papers (1890s-1952) constitute one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of original research materials on the history of travel on the Colorado and Green Rivers and their tributaries. All materials have been left in their original and are divided into five sections: I. Personal Materials; II. Correspondence; III. River Trips; IV. Clippings; V. Miscellaneous Finances.

Section I, Personal Materials, consists of two boxes. Box 1 contains biographical materials about Norman, his father and grandfather; biographical notes by Joan Staveley and Thorn and Lygia Mayes, close personal friends of Norman and Doris; material gathered for a possible biography in the 1950s; miscellaneous materials from Mae Nevills, Norman's mother; and miscellaneous personal items. Also included in this box are clippings about Norman and Doris' death in September 1949, tributes to them, and correspondence about the memorial plague which was placed in their honor above Marble Canyon in 1952. Finally, there is correspondence about the donation of Norman's boats and equipment to various museums after his death, and correspondence and supporting documentation for a proposal made in 1957 to name the reservoir rising behind Glen Canyon Dam after Nevills. Box 2 contains miscellaneous records from the Mexican Hat Lodge, which was operated by Mae Nevills.

The heart of the entire collection is found in Section II. Unlike most manuscript collections, the incoming correspondence in the Nevills papers is accompanied by his outgoing correspondence, since Nevills made carbon copies of virtually all his letters. This is an unprecedented treasure trove for the researcher, for it allows entry into Norman's everyday thoughts and actions in a way that is normally not possible. There are approximately 5000 letters in the collection. This section is divided into four categories: Family, Personal, Government, and Business. Family correspondence is contained in only one box. Personal correspondence is the bulk of the collection, and is contained in boxes 3-22. It includes inquiries about and letters reserving places on river trips, since the basis of his river outfitting business was personal contacts, and it would have been virtually impossible to separate river trip correspondence from the purely personal correspondence. Government correspondence contains letters with the U.S. Geological Survey, his employer from 1943 until his death, the National Park Service, and various other federal and Utah state agencies. Business correspondence is arranged into subject categories and includes correspondence about automobiles, airplanes, insurance, oil, and so on. It should be noted that this category does not include any materials about river trips.

Section, III, River Trips, also contains a wealth of materials. Included are Norman's diaries, both originals and typed transcriptions; Doris's diary of the 1940 Green and Colorado River trip, including the later published account; diaries, journals, and scrapbooks kept by passengers on Nevills Expeditions who later sent him copies; miscellaneous materials about boats, supplies, equipment, brochures for Nevills Expeditions, and so on; and maps. Diaries sent by passengers, especially those about the San Juan trips, are of particular interest, as Nevills rarely kept a journal on those trips. Finally, the maps in box 34 are those used by Norman on his river trips, and contain many handwritten notations.

Section IV, Clippings contains both newspaper clippings covering the years 1933-1949, and magazines which have articles by and about Nevills, or in some cases advertisements for Nevills Expeditions. Boxes 35 and 36 contain newspaper clippings arranged by year. Box 37 contains issues of Desert magazine, the editor and publisher of which, Randall Henderson, was a close friend of the Nevills. In 1945 Henderson took a San Juan trip with Nevills Expeditions, followed in 1947 by a Grand Canyon trip. Henderson wrote feature articles about both of these trips; the Grand Canyon trip was serialized over several issues. Issues dated after 1949 contain memorials and reminiscences about Norman and Doris. Box 38 contains miscellaneous magazines, in each of which is an article about or a mention of Nevills Expeditions. These are arranged alphabetically by title.

Section V, Miscellaneous Finances, contains those financial records that did not fit into any of the previous categories. This includes canceled checks, check registers, bank statements, receipts and Mae Nevills' trading post account book.

Dates

1890s-1952

Creator

Nevills, Norman D., 1908-1949 (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Twenty-four hour advanced notice encouraged. Materials must be used on-site. Access to parts of this collection may be restricted under provisions of state or federal law.

Conditions Governing Use

The library does not claim to control copyright for all materials in the collection. An individual depicted in a reproduction has privacy rights as outlined in Title 45 CFR, part 46 (Protection of Human Subjects). For further information, please review the J. Willard Marriott Library’s Use Agreement and Reproduction Request forms.

Biographical Sketch

Norman Davies Nevills was born in Chico, California, on April 8, 1909. He was the only child of William Eugene Nevills and Mae Davies Nevills. Norman's paternal grandfather, also named William but known as "Captain Billy" Nevills, had been a successful miner and promoter during the California gold rush of the 1850s who lost everything in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. William E. Nevills was a prospector in Alaska before coming to Mexican Hat, Utah, in the 1920s. William was drawn by one of the periodic oil booms that were common in southeast Utah. After two years of college at the College of the Pacific, Norman joined his parents at Mexican Hat in 1928 to assist with the oil development work. The expected oil fields never materialized, however, (although Norman worked off and on at drilling for oil until his death), and the Nevills family was forced to turn to other means of making a living. They built a tourist lodge above the San Juan River, which flowed through town, and Norman began guiding parties of visitors by car through Monument Valley and other nearby attractions. In between times, he supplemented the family income by doing whatever odd jobs he could find. In 1932, Norman was asked by a miner to haul a load of supplies to a placer mine a few miles downriver, which he did successfully. From this beginning, Norman Nevills launched his river career.

In the summer of 1933, Norman participated in an archeological survey of the area around the San Juan river; part of the survey involved the use of folding canvas boats on the San Juan. On October 18 of that same year, Norman was married to Doris Drown, a native of Portland, Oregon. For their honeymoon trip, Norman decided to take Doris down the San Juan. He built a boat based on a design given to him by his father, who had hauled supplies and passengers on Alaskan rivers during the Klondike gold rush. Family legend has it that Norman built the boat with boards from a horse trough and an old outhouse, and used oil well suction rods with steel blades for oars. The trip, to Copper Canyon in February 1934, was a success. Two years later, knowledge of Nevills' experience on the river had spread sufficiently for a party from California to contact him and hire him to guide them down the river. This he did in March of 1936, and for every year after that until his death in 1949, Nevills led groups down the San Juan River on excursions throughout the summer months. These trips became his bread and butter, and often the receipts and deposits from the San Juan trips financed his other trips on the Green, the Snake and Salmon, and through the Grand Canyon.

Nevills' first major expedition and the beginnings of his subsequent fame as the number-one Whitewater man in America was in 1938. In the summer of that year he led three boats and a crew of two other boatmen and six passengers (including two women) from Green River, Utah, through Cataract Canyon and the Grand Canyon. Although internal dissensions threatened to end the expedition at Lees Ferry, the beginning of the Grand Canyon, Nevills and Elzada Clover, the co-organizer of the trip, were able to keep the party together and complete the trip. Nevills and Dr. Clover had planned to write a book about their experiences on the river, but this never materialized, and each went on to other things. Nevills' second major trip was in 1940. This time he ran almost the entire length of the Green River, from Green River, Wyoming, through the Grand Canyon. The crew included his wife Doris and another woman, and from Green River, Utah on, Barry Goldwater, later to become a powerful Western politician.

In 1941 and 1942, Nevills conducted private charter trips through the Grand Canyon, giving him a lasting place in Colorado River history as the first person to go through the Grand Canyon more than twice. On the later trip, Otis Marston was one of the passengers. Marston and Nevills were at first close friends, but later personality conflicts drove them apart and Marston became one of Nevills' most vocal detractors; this was to have great bearing on Nevills' reputation after his death. By the time the 1942 trip was over, the U.S. was involved in World War II, and Nevills nascent river outfitting business was considerably curtailed. Although he did conduct a few parties down the San Juan during the war years, most of his time was spent working for the U.S. Geological Survey, whom he joined as resident engineer at Mexican Hat in 1943. In 1945, with the war almost over, Nevills took a party that included Otis Marston and Ed Hudson (who had also been on the 1942 Grand Canyon trip), Marston's daughters and wife, and others, down Cataract Canyon of the Colorado. This marked the resumption of a pattern that Nevills held throughout the rest of his life: spring and early summer trips on the San Juan, and then a major expedition on another river later in the summer. In 1946, it was the Snake and Main Fork of the Salmon Rivers in Idaho; in 1947, 1948, and 1949, the Grand Canyon. In 1950 Nevills planned to try a river in Canada or perhaps Asia, but death intervened.

Throughout his career guiding parties on the rivers of the West, Nevills was supported by his wife Doris. Indeed, many who knew them say that Doris was a very real reason for his success. Doris organized all the menus, shuttles, and other logistical details that are absolutely essential for a successful commercial river trip. In addition, she smoothed over disputes and ruffled feelings among passengers and boatmen that were caused by Norman's often abrasive personality. Doris was by all accounts completely devoted to Norman, and endured with good spirit the verbal abuse that she reportedly received from Norman's mother Mae Nevills. Doris' support of Norman's chosen career extended to pawning her jewelry during the early lean years, before Norman became famous, and caring for their two daughters, Joan, born in 1936, and Sandra, born in 1941. The one thing that Doris reportedly did not share was Norman's passion for flying, even though the Piper J3 that Norman bought in 1946 was a great convenience, given their isolated home. It was in Norman's plane that they met their deaths together, when the plane crashed on takeoff at Mexican Hat, on the morning of September 19, 1949.

In today's high-tech and big-business world of commercial river running, where thousands of paying passengers are taken down river annually, and thousands of dollars spent on equipment and permits by outfitters, Nevills Expeditions, with its wooden boats and slim margin of profit, seems quaint, like something out of a forgotten era. Indeed, after his death, Nevills' reputation suffered at the hands of later rivermen, who said he was too cautious, too much of a showman, and so on. Undeniably, Nevills was a showman, and was concerned with his own reputation. Equally undeniably, however, is the fact that to Norman Nevills must be given the credit for a number of firsts (so important to boatmen!) on the Colorado. He was the first to run the Colorado through the Grand Canyon more than twice, the first to run a strictly commercial river trip through the Grand Canyon, the first to take women on commercial river trips, and the first to take women through the Grand Canyon, which was unheard of at the time. Nevills was the first to admit that he was a cautious boatman, but he also was proud of the fact that he never flipped a boat on all the rivers he ran, a safety record hardly matched today. His boat design, the Cataract boat, remained one of the standard river craft until well after the end of World War II; those who continued to use his style of boat did so long after others had converted to inflatable rubber boats. Nevills' principle of "face your danger" (i.e. the boatman faces the obstacle and rows away from it) is still the way rapids are run today, and although others had used the technique before him, he popularized the idea.

Norman Nevills was a pioneer, indeed one of the pioneers of commercial river running, and there are still companies operating today that can trace their roots directly back to Nevills Expeditions. Virtually everyone on the river today is there because Norman and Doris Nevills were willing to "face their danger."

Extent

21 Linear Feet

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

The Norman D. and Doris Nevills papers (1890s-1952) constitute one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of original research materials on the history of travel on the Colorado and Green Rivers and their tributaries. Included are correspondence, diaries, logs, subject files, news clippings, and business records. Norman Nevills (1909-1949), supported by his wife Doris, was one of the pioneers of commercial river running.