Oral history interview transcript with Bill and Judy Sanderson, 2004.

              Bill Sanderson and Judy Sanderson oral history interview
December 13, 2004
Grand Canyon River Guides Collection (NAU.OH.53.)

Steiger: This is the River Runners Oral History Project. It’s December 13, 2004. I’m in Page, Arizona, at the house of Bill Sanderson. Here we go. 
Bill Sanderson: Well, I guess all this starts in 1903, when my dad was born. But in 1929, he went to work for the Bureau of Reclamation. Of course that was during the Depression, so he had a pretty good job--irrigation engineer--out of college. We went to Rivers, Arizona, during the Second World War. That’s when they rousted up all the Japanese and put ‘em in prison. That was just north of Casa Grande about thirty miles. 
Steiger: What was the name of that town? 
Bill Sanderson: Rivers, Arizona. But we was there ‘til the war was over. Then they sent Daddy to Saudi Arabia to teach those Arabs how to grow crops, ‘cause he was an irrigation engineer. Of course he got acquainted with King Ibn Saud who was the king then. But he taught ‘em how to irrigate crops and stuff. I think the first crop they grew was carrots. He sent a truckload in to the king there. And the king, a week later, sent a messenger back--a runner--and told my dad he was out of camel food. So the government sent a cook over there, to teach him how to cook all these vegetables.
But after he got back in ’52, I think, that’s when the bureau sent him up here to start investigatin’ the dam sites. And this is where he started, right here at Glen Canyon Dam. That lasted a couple of years. Then on down to Marble Canyon, a couple of years down there; and Bridge Canyon. 
Steiger: Was there even a town here? 
Bill Sanderson: No, it was called Manson Mesa. I didn’t move here until 1956. In fact, it was still called Manson Mesa at that time. But the bureau had started puttin’ in some temporary trailer houses. In fact, my oldest brother, Larry, and myself was the first ones that moved here--just about this time in 1956. We was the first guys that ever made residence here. It was a lonely place. There wasn’t no bank or nothin’. No hospital.
But in getting back to this river operation, I think it was 1953 when Dad was investigating the Marble Canyon dam site, this Dock Marston came through in an oar boat. And he didn’t know anything about the rapids, so he got Dad to go down the river with him a ways, and show him how to run these things. That’s how he got started. Dock Marston got these power boats. He told Dad if he took him down the river three years, he could have all the equipment. And Dock Marston would only take about--well, they had three boats, and he’d only haul four passengers, so he could haul three passengers. I remember one year was. . . [unclear], and he was president of the Hawaiian telephone company. He went down. Like you mentioned a little bit ago, what was his name from Prescott? 
Steiger: Dr. Euler. 
Bill Sanderson: Euler. Yeah, we took him down a couple of years. 
Steiger: And so Dock Marston had funded, had built those--these are those boats we looked at, these three power boats here? 
Bill Sanderson: Seth Smith built ‘em down in Phoenix. 
Steiger: Dock Marston paid him to do that? 
Bill Sanderson: No, they just give it to him. In fact, Evinrude give him the motors. Didn’t cost him a dime. Because there hadn’t been any power boats down the river, and they wanted to test this stuff out. 
Steiger: When your dad was workin’ for the bureau, he’d already been boatin’ down there. What kind of boats was he using then? 
Bill Sanderson: Just a little sixteen-foot with probably a 15 horsepower Evinrude. 
Steiger: And he’d go both ways, up and down, with that? 
Bill Sanderson: Not very far. 
Steiger: Not very far up. 
Bill Sanderson: One rapid to the other. You know, between Marble Canyon. But everything that he used down there was hauled down a cableway--two cableways, actually. They lived on the inner gorge. The cook actually lived up on the rim--the cook and his wife--and he’d come down every mornin’ on the first cableway, cook their dinners, stay there all day. Then his wife would pull him back up. 
Steiger: There must have been some kind of big ol’ motor winch deal? 
Bill Sanderson: No, actually they used a pickup. She’d hook the long cable on the ball of the truck, and she’d back down until the cable got slack, and she knew that he was down. And then they had a time where five o’clock or somethin’, she’d hook the cable back on the pickup, and she’d start pullin’ him back up. When he got to the top, he’d lock the brake or whatever. 
Steiger: Well, now, that was from the top down to the middle? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, down to the inner gorge. 
Steiger: There were two runs of cable, is that right? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, from the inner gorge down to the river.... 
Steiger: ... was another deal. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. I don’t know exactly how that worked, to tell you the truth. But they all lived in tents there on the inner gorge. I remember the story goes that the cook up there took all those guys’ per diem checks into Flagstaff and bought the groceries and brought ‘em back. That’s what they ate on. He’d take ‘em down there, and they didn’t have any refrigeration at that time, so they had to buy groceries quite often. One day the cook got in his chair, cable cage, and he thought his wife had the thing on the pickup, so he let go of the brake. 
Steiger: Oh, no! 
Bill Sanderson: And the way Dad tells it, she was just gettin’ ready to hook it up, when it jerked out of her hand. And he slammed on the brake. She had to back up the pickup. And she was gettin’ ready to hook it on again, and he let off the brake. Well, this happened about three times. Finally, she got it hooked up, and she pulled him back up. They got in the pickup and hooked up their trailer and they left. 
Steiger: That was it! (laughter) 
Bill Sanderson: So here all these guys was down there, they had to do their own cookin’. They’d draw straws or somethin’ like that. Everybody took their turn. I don’t know, somebody said something about, "Whoever complains about my cookin’ is gonna cook next." So this one dude, he cooked a bunch of beans, and he put about a pound of salt in those things. Well, that’s one guy--I don’t want to mention names--‘scuse my language, but he tasted those beans and, "[expletive] these beans are salty! But that’s just the way I like ‘em!" (laughter) He wasn’t about to cook tomorrow.
But from there they went on down to Bridge Canyon. And of course their theory was at that time--the Bureau of Reclamation--was they would have Glen Canyon and Marble Canyon and Bridge Canyon. They would all be lakes, all the way down to Lake Mead--like from here to Lee’s Ferry, fifteen miles of river, dependin’ on the lake level. What else do you want to know? 
Steiger: So you were talkin??--I interrupted you--I’m gonna just pause this thing for one second. (tape paused) Back rollin’. Well, back to Dock Marston. I interrupted you. You were sayin’ that Dock Marston promoted these boats. They were built by Seth Smith, and then Johnson gave ‘em the motors? 
Bill Sanderson: Evinrude. The first ones, I don’t remember, they started out with two 16s, and then two 25s the next year. And then they gave him motors for three boats, two engines on each. 
Steiger: Was that so you’d have a spare if somethin’ [went wrong]? 
Bill Sanderson: No, we had a spare down in the hatch. 
Steiger: But it was two anyway? I wonder why two, instead of just one big one. 
Bill Sanderson: They didn’t make ‘em that big that was waterproof, [unclear]. When I was in high school, Dad bought a hydroplane for me--racin’ boat. It was an Evinrude, 33 horsepower. Had a big ol’ flywheel on the top, and had to wrap a rope around that. A four-cylinder. Wide open. Had to crank that thing. It only had forward speed, no reverse. So you had to make sure your boat was pointed out into the river. 
Steiger: It didn’t have a neutral or anything? 
Bill Sanderson: No. Direct drive. You had to have it pointed out, where you wanted to go, before you pulled that thing. I remember one time I was settin’ in front there, steering it, [Dad] pulled that thing and it just fired right off, and he fell over the motor, and the flywheel was chewin’ him in the chest, and he had both arms over all the spark plugs. Oh! that was exciting! Of course he killed the engine, ‘cause he just shorted out the whole thing. 
Steiger: Boy! What was Dock Marston up to? Was he just runnin’ the river for fun? 
Bill Sanderson: Well, he’d been oarin’ the river. 
Steiger: With Nevills he started that? 
Bill Sanderson: Norman Nevills, [Martin] Litton--he knew all those guys. He just died. I really didn’t know him that well. Hell, I was just in high school. Him and his wife would come from--I think they lived in Berkeley, California. And we was livin’ in Needles at the time. 
Steiger: So that’s where you went to high school, was Needles? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, I went to freshman and sophomore [years] there. 
Steiger: And drove the power boat down there? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. 
Steiger: So comin’ up here, your dad ran those three trips for Marston? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. 
Steiger: And then got those boats? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. And then he just give him the whole load. And we run ‘em for, oh--well, Dad died in ’64. Hell of a thing. He put in his thirty years with the Bureau of Reclamation, retired, and only lived six months after that. Hell of a retirement. He got cancer on not the lobe, but whatever that part of the ear is. 
Steiger: Skin cancer? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. They cut it off, but they didn’t get it all. It went down into.... (aside about microphone) It went down into his lung. He was takin’ those cobalt treatments, and he kept tellin’ that doctor, "My left arm is sore." The doc told him, "Well, that’s kind of normal, ‘cause that’s pretty high radiation." We was there at [Lu-low?] and all my uncles was there--Dad’s brothers. There was five boys in the family there. Uncle Bill, he was next to the youngest, he smoked cigars, and he give Dad one. Dad took a puff off of that, and he damned near choked to death. And when he went through one of these radiation treatments, he told the doctor, "Boy, I liked to choked to death." "Well, let me give you a chest X-ray." And that’s when he found out that he just--his lungs was just saturated. Give him six months, and he barely made it. He wanted to go down to Cholla Bay where we had the cabin, but Jerry and I--you’ve met Jerry, of course-- [unclear]--we talked him into stayin’ there in Phoenix. And we got Helen over from Fullerton--the oldest daughter--she was a registered nurse. She took care of the guy for six months ‘til he died.
I was workin’ for Lucky Ditch Liners [phonetic] in El Centro, California. We put in concrete ditches for the farmers, and we just happened to be over in Glendale, I think, diggin’ some ditches for the Salt River Project. My next brother, he was two years older than myself--Richard--he was workin’ there [unclear] dam. It was my birthday. Jack Hopkinson [phonetic] and myself was stayin’ in this motel, and Dick stopped by. He said, "Dad just died this morning." Hell, [unclear]. We went to work anyway--nothin’ you could do. 
Steiger: Yeah. 
Bill Sanderson: Richard--we called him Dick--see, I was born in ’37, he was born in ’35, two years older than myself. That’s a funny thing about our family, is that Dad died in ’64, Dick died in ’74. He was only forty years old. Bud--Raymond Floyd was his name--he died in ’84. He was only sixty-one. And Mother died in ’94. She was born in ’03, whatever that made it--ninety-one years old. And when we buried all those guys down there in the cemetery in Page, Jerry says, "Well, I wonder who’s gonna die in ’04?" Well, he just had a bypass, just about three weeks ago. 
Steiger: Yeah, I heard. Actually, that’s how come I got here, was I called him. I spoke to him, and he said he didn’t feel up to talkin’ to anybody, and said I ought to talk to you. 
Bill Sanderson: I don’t blame him! 
Steiger: No, I don’t either. 
Bill Sanderson: I know I’m gonna have one. 
Steiger: A bypass? 
Bill Sanderson: No, I’m gonna die right here on the floor, and they’re gonna load me in the trunk, haul me to Kanab and give me a haircut. Well, actually, they’re gonna burn it off. 
Steiger: You got it all figured out? 
Bill Sanderson: Oh, yeah. I’ve even got my cookie jar in there [to put my] ashes in. And Craig, he’s a pilot, flies one of those twin Otter, high-wing, fixed-gear, two-engine turbo-prop, nineteen-passenger airplane. And he’s also kind of head of the second command out at the airport there at Grand Canyon, South Rim. 
Steiger: Is that your son--Craig? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, he’s the oldest one. He lives on the South Rim. [unclear] Anyway, it shows what Craig does. 
Steiger: Oh, yeah, director of operations at Grand Canyon Airlines. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. But he’s gonna take this cookie jar and fly over Gunsite Butte over there, and he can throw it out. 
Steiger: Throw the whole jar out? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. Well, I bought it at--not Marble Canyon, but goin’ to Flagstaff there. Where is that place right there, by the Little Colorado? 
Steiger: Oh, Cameron? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. And it’s Indian-made, you know. And somebody comes over there by Gunsite Butte, "Oh my goodness, there’s some pottery!" (laughter) So that’s about the end of my story. I only got twelve more days to live, ‘cause I’m gonna be the next one that kills the pocket. Hell, I’m already on this oxygen. 
Steiger: You just holler if you need to hook that stuff up. We can hook it up. You got a nasal deal, one of those nasal canulas? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. Well, a big tank in the closet. 
Steiger: Well, if you get to wantin’ to hook it on there, just holler. 
Bill Sanderson: I do when I’m out of breath. Oh, I’ve got.... (whistles "whew") 
Steiger: Do you want to hook it up right now? 
Bill Sanderson: No. Long as I keep talkin’.... It’s when I go to sleep is when my oxygen drops down below. Once it gets below 83, then you’re in trouble. 
Steiger: Yeah. Well, my dad’s been down to 13. 
Bill Sanderson: Oh, he’s a dead person! 
Steiger: Well, he definitely isn’t as good as he was. 
Bill Sanderson: This little machine.... (chuckles) (aside about oxygen apparatus) 
Steiger: On those trips with Dock Marston, did you go on those? 
Bill Sanderson: Larry and Jerry and I used to go on ‘em all the time. I would go from Lee’s Ferry down to Phantom Ranch. Jerry would hike in there, and he’d go on down to Whitmore Canyon. And Larry would come in there, and he’d make the third part of the trip. 
Steiger: Was that just to split it up, or was that ‘cause you guys couldn’t be out of school any longer than that? 
Bill Sanderson: Well, they couldn’t haul that many passengers. 
Steiger: So your dad wanted to spread it around? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. And each place, like at Phantom Ranch, we’d take on a hundred gallons of fuel, and they would haul that down on mules. And at that time, I think fuel was only 38¢ a gallon, but it cost $1.00 a gallon to get it down. 
Steiger: Yeah, I’ll bet it did. 
Bill Sanderson: And Chet Bundy would deliver us a hundred gallons [at Whitmore Wash]. He’d haul that down on horseback. In fact, I think the second trip we took, he took a couple of 50-gallon barrels in there, and he’d run it along, half-inch hose like that, black plastic hose down there. And we had all the jerry cans settin’ out there, and he started siphoning one of those barrels, and when it got down to the bottom, 3,000 feet, there was so much pressure, we couldn’t hold the hose. So we flagged him off, and he pulled the hose out of the barrel. So we wasted thirty gallons of it [unclear]. So he had to haul some more down on horseback. 
Steiger: So the hose didn’t work? 
Bill Sanderson: No. Wasn’t no good a’tall. I think the next year it did work, but where it come out of the barrel, he drilled some holes in it, so it was suckin’ a little air at the same time, and that slowed the pressure down a whole bunch. 
Steiger: I vaguely remember that line, even when I started. He left it there, didn’t he, that line that went all the way down there? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. 
Steiger: It’s not there now. 
Bill Sanderson: Well, the sun just destroyed it, you know, and it fell all apart. 
Steiger: What was it like drivin’ a boat your first time down the river? 
Bill Sanderson: Well, it wasn’t that big of a deal, because I’d been drivin’ boats since I was out of grade school. 
Steiger: Down there at Needles, on the river? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, on the Colorado River. Every year--well, I think twice a year--I used to take a trip down to Lake Havasu on this hydroplane and boat race, back at Needles. And there’d be thirty boats, something like that--just young kids like me. It was weird, ‘cause you was all by yourself--took you about three hours. And I won twice, I think, out of four years, or somethin’ like that. But the old boat got too.... Well, the original name of it when my dad bought it there in, I think, ’52, was Mr. Spinach. After I’d flipped that thing three or four times, he renamed it Bottoms Up. 
Steiger: You flipped it? 
Bill Sanderson: Oh, yeah. It would just go airborne. 
Steiger: And then up and over? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, over backwards. It’d get airborne. Heck, I was doin’ 60 miles an hour with that thing. It’s only a sixteen-foot hydroplane. Had big wings on the outside like that. It wanted to fly, instead of go on the water. And the water’d get so rough sometimes it’d start skippin’. And then all of a sudden (whistles) right over backwards like that. 
Steiger: How would you survive that? 
Bill Sanderson: We didn’t even know what seatbelts was in them days, or canopies. It was all open, no windshield. (whistles) 
Steiger: Did you have a technique for when it went over backwards? 
Bill Sanderson: I didn’t even have a life jacket. 
Steiger: What did you do? 
Bill Sanderson: Just dove underneath and come out and climbed up on the dock--you know, on the bottom--wave for somebody to come by, help you out. That’s all you could do. Those was--well, I’d like to say the good ol’ days, but they wasn’t so good, really. We didn’t have any safety features--nothing like you got nowadays. And it wasn’t so dangerous [unclear]. These things go 200 mile an hour, you know, and they blow up. 
Steiger: On the Grand Canyon, if you had three boats, and you took on a hundred gallons at Phantom and at Whitmore, that’d be thirty gallons to a boat. So that means, if I’m doin’ the math right, it’d be ninety gallons a boat just to get through there. Is that right, does that make sense? 
Bill Sanderson: Well, you have to figure we always went through the flood stage. Daddy’s birthday was on June 6. 
Steiger: So you wanted the water high. 
Bill Sanderson: Oh, yeah, you always hit the flood stage. That water would be goin’ 25-30 miles an hour. Your boat was doin’ 25 or 30. You was doin’ 60 miles an hour. Well, it’s only 86 miles to Phantom Ranch, and you wanted to take four days, so you could only run four hours a day, and then the rest of the day you did hikin’. Them days, we didn’t have any ice coolers. We didn’t take beer or pop. The only thing we had was like a little pill. And I don’t think they make ‘em anymore. They was called Fizzies. It was like an Alka-Seltzer, and kinda sweet, like orange juice. You’d dip up this muddy water out of the river, and you’d drop that pill in there, and it’d fizz up, and all the mud would settle to the bottom, and you could drink the clear water. 
Steiger: That stuff settled the mud out? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. 
Steiger: It wasn’t designed to do that, but it just.... 
Bill Sanderson: No, it did that. I don’t think they make ‘em anymore. I haven’t seen ‘em in years and years. 
Steiger: So you didn’t have to pack water or worry about settlin’ it, or any of that, too bad? 
Bill Sanderson: Well, we did take lime and alanine and aluminum sulfate. That kind, later in the years, I was filter plant operator in Page. That was after they put the Culver’s [phonetic] Dam in, they eliminated the boat job.... Byron Daylen [phonetic], he was the head honcho for the bureau here. He offered me a job at the water plant or at the warehouse. And the water plant paid a little more money, so I took that. And they sent me to school with the filter plant operator and the sewer plant operator [unclear] run that. But anyway, I knew how to clear this water up. So we used to take those chemicals down there and dip up a couple of five-gallon buckets of water every night and put the chemicals in. And you had to cover it. Otherwise, in the morning there’d be a couple of rats swimmin’ in it. (laughs) 
Steiger: So your first Grand Canyon trip, what year would that have been? Did you say ’56, was that right? 
Bill Sanderson: No, no. Dad died in ’64. We started runnin’ the river in these power boats in ’54--1954 when we started runnin’ the power boats. And we kept runnin’ ‘em all the way ‘til after Daddy died in ’64. 
Steiger: Were you doin’ about a trip every year? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. In ’65, we made two trips. That year, we’d take about six payin’ passengers--pretty expensive. In them days it cost about $800. In fact, that last year, James Arness [phonetic] from "Gunsmoke," we scheduled him a trip. But he got tied up somehow on one of his series, and he sent his skipper.... He owned a big sailboat, and this gal, Peggy Slader [phonetic] was her name, he sent her instead, to take the trip. We went for ten days. I don’t like to say this, but she weighed about 320 pounds. (laughter) 
Steiger: Had to make her sit in the middle. 
Bill Sanderson: We went through, I think it was Deubendorff. She was ridin’ in Jerry’s boat. Jerry liked to do everything fast. I mean, full power. He’d just hit the top of the waves. And Peggy flipped up, and when she came down she just broke the whole seat. That’s the reason nobody liked to ride with me, because I’d just go [unclear] around the wave like that, and nobody had any fun. 
Steiger: A little easier on the boat, though. 
Bill Sanderson: Oh, yeah. That was my main concern. That year we had a lot of motor problems. Those motors were gettin’ old. We’d mentioned Bob Euler. One year, when he went down, I think we had Uncle Bill and Uncle Buzz--two of my dad’s younger brothers--and Bob Euler. Of course there wasn’t electric start--you know, you had to pull the handle. And Bob said, "I’ll crank this one." And he cranked one of those motors, and threw his right arm out of joint. My dad jumped on him, taught him how to pull. One of ‘em sat on the chest, and the other stretched his arm out like this, pulled it back into joint. Had one foot on his neck, and one foot here. (squerch) The rest of the trip, he wore a sling. 
Steiger: But he got it back in place? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, they got it back into joint. But you know he had to be hurtin’. 
Steiger: He must have had it go out before then, for it to go out.... 
Bill Sanderson: I think so, he had a problem with it before. But he didn’t realize he was gonna pull it out, just startin’ a motor. 
Steiger: As it caught, was that it? 
Bill Sanderson: Well, I think it kinda backfired or something, jerkin’. But boy, he was wonderful to go with. We pulled in there at Nankoweap one time, and the river kinda goes kind of in a left-hand curve, but there’s a little wash that if you take off to the right, it’s not very deep, but the river goes around this island. We pulled in there, and he said, "There’s some Indian ruins up there I want to look at." So we went on up there, against the cliffs there. The walls wasn’t very high, [unclear] folded in. But that whole place was just covered with pottery and arrowheads. We was all just pickin’ ‘em up. When we got back down to the boat, Doc Euler had this tarp folded out there. He said, "Okay, girls and boys, let’s see what you got." We dug in our pockets, threw ‘em out there. He went through ‘em, "Yeah, you did a good job." Then he just folded up the corner on the tarp, and he takes it back up on the beach and throws it back on the beach. 
Steiger: "You’re not gonna take those with you." 
Bill Sanderson: No. That was Jerry’s motto, of course, all the time. "Take only pictures, and leave only footprints." 
Steiger: That’s a pretty good motto. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, that was his motto. So you didn’t haul anything out. 
Steiger: Now, that pottery, was that down in the next riffle below Nankoweap? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, below the rapid. Clear on the right-hand side, above the cliff. If the water was low, you couldn’t get in there. It had to be fairly high water--I’d say about 40,000. Then it would go around that island, and you could go on down, get back into the main stream again. So these days, very, very few people ever go in there, ‘cause the water isn’t high enough. 
Steiger: So it’s up at the top of the rapid--there used to be a channel that went on around? I haven’t seen it over 30,000--except for in the mid ‘80s, and then that one.... I guess they just ran 40,000 through there. 
Bill Sanderson: In the power boats, we used to stop there at the head of Nankoweap, and we filmed each boat goin’ through. These days, they don’t even stop there. They just go ahead and run right through the rapid and go on down. That channel isn’t there anymore, unless it is after they make this big flow here or somethin’. 
Steiger: We’ll see. 
Bill Sanderson: I haven’t been down--’85 was my last trip. 
Steiger: So the typical trip was those three boats that are in that picture, and about three people per boat? 
Bill Sanderson: Four [people]. 
Steiger: What kind of campin’ gear? Did you just cook on a fire? Did you have stoves and like that? 
Bill Sanderson: No, no. Pick up some rocks. 
Steiger: Did you have tents? 
Bill Sanderson: No, we didn’t have tents. 
Steiger: Sleepin’ bag? 
Bill Sanderson: Sleepin’ bag. 
Steiger: Air mattress? 
Bill Sanderson: I don’t think they made ‘em in them days. 
Steiger: So everybody just put their sleepin’ bag out on the sand? 
Bill Sanderson: Smooth the sand out, yeah, and just slept. 
Steiger: I guess you were goin’ usually in June, so it wasn’t too rainy or nothin’. 
Bill Sanderson: It was rainy a lot of times, as I remember. But like I said, we didn’t run that much a day. And we’d fly in some beach and find a cave or somethin’ to hide in while it was rainin’. But it never was cold, you know, in June, so it wasn’t that bad. But I went on a lot of trips. After these boats was over, when I went to work for Jerry in 1969, he had the rubber rafts then--those thirty-three-footers. And him and I used to make a couple of trips a year. The rest of the time, we was in the office or shop. But that was always good times. But a much slower trip--you’d just float or putz along. 
Steiger: How did he end up goin’ from runnin’ the trips in the power boats to startin’ a company? 
Bill Sanderson: He was a police officer here in Page. (someone enters, tape paused) He was actually, I think, a United States marshal, ‘cause he worked for the United States government. One year, in the power boats we took (dog barks) this fella, Joe DeLoge [phonetic] was his name. In fact, he owned half of Mitten Mines States [phonetic] here. But he called Jerry, and he said, "I want to make a river trip." Jerry didn’t have any boats or anything. And Larry was still working for the bureau.
[END AUDIOTAPE 1, SIDE A; BEGIN AUDIOTAPE 1, SIDE B] 
Bill Sanderson: So they run down to Las Vegas, and they bought one of these rubber rafts, thirty-three-footers. They took, soon as it’s ’68, I guess, took Joe DeLoge and twelve of his family [unclear]. And just all of a sudden, word of mouth got out--bam!--next summer everybody wanted to take a trip. And it just exploded like that. And here he was, goin’ down, gettin’ more boats down there in Las Vegas someplace. I forget the name of the outfit, but they had all that surplus stuff from the army. 
Steiger: Did he have side tubes on ‘em right away? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, they bought those, too. They took that from--I think they got that from Georgie White. She run that type of thing. They called ‘em snouts, snout boats. It was all black, you know. We bought a bunch of silver paint. We’d have to paint ‘em every trip, ‘cause the water’d be muddy. When we got back, they’d be brown, instead of silver. They was a lot of fun. Took a lot of people down the river. 
Steiger: Lot of people. 
Bill Sanderson: Airline stewardess.... Well.... 
Steiger: Yeah. 
Bill Sanderson: You got to know a lot of people. Jerry sold out the company there in ’83, just in time. That’s when we had the big flood. Had to put those four-foot side boards on top of the dam, to keep the water from sloppin’ over. And they was kickin’ out between 80,000 and 90,000 [cubic feet per second]. That’s amazing about that--the lake was full--80,000 or 90,000. When they opened those tubes here a month ago, the best they could get was 38,000. The water’s so low, no pressure. 
Steiger: They wanted to do 40,000, and they couldn’t even do that. 
Bill Sanderson: No, they didn’t make it. He sold the company to Del Webb, of course, at that time. They hired Jerry as a consultant for a year. And since they incorporated three companies--Fort Lee Company--Tony Sparks, he had the one-day boat trips--and Jerry--downriver. In fact, Tony Sparks used to go down to the Little Colorado and choppered the people out. Then they hired me two years to get all these kids together. 
Steiger: And get ‘em lined out, yeah. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. So each one of us knew what we were supposed to be doing. So in ’85, I was gone. And I got a breath of wind. I decided I was gonna go to Hawaii. So I moved to Hilo, where my mother lived, on the big island. And boy, I looked for a job, and looked for a job. I wanted to get into civil service. You’d have to go take the civil service test. There’d be fifty of ‘em, and they’d only pick the six highest on the test. I went to three or four interviews--there’d be a dozen Hawaiians, and of course each one of ‘em had their own brother-in-law or son-in-law, so a white guy didn’t have a chance. 
Steiger: Gettin’ into civil service in Hawaii, yeah. 
Bill Sanderson: They didn’t want any white guys. They believed in culture. I’ll tell you one thing, it’s like they used to ship eggs over here from Vermillion Cliffs. You know where that’s at? Colorado City. They used to ship eggs over to Hawaii. But the Hawaiian eggs cost more than those Colorado City eggs. They raise a lot of beef there in Hawaii--big ol’ ranch there on the big island, that is bigger than the King Ranch in Texas. Their beef was more expensive than what they shipped from Arizona or Texas. But as far as the canned vegetables, they was about the same. I stayed with my mother at that time. I could have rented a furnished apartment for $225 a month, furnished. Because, you see, over there, the weather is so constant, you don’t have to have any heating, you don’t have to have any cooling. It’s just 75 or 80 degrees all the time. You always sleep with your window open. That’s why it is so cheap there, ‘cause utilities doesn’t cost you nothing.
You want to know anything about the rest of the river outfits? 
Steiger: Well, let’s see, I guess just when you look back on it, you saw this country before the dam, before there was Page. Did you go up Glen Canyon? Did you see that before they filled it up? 
Bill Sanderson: Yes. I told you I took a bunch of people, two or three groups, clear up to the Crossing of the Fathers. That’s as far, I think about thirty-five miles, upriver. They took pictures. That’s where the Mormons come down, you know, and crossed the river. 
Steiger: So you did that a few times until they started the diversion tunnel or whatever? 
Bill Sanderson: Once they put in cofferdams.... 
Steiger: Then that was over. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. 
Steiger: Did you put the boats in at Lee’s Ferry then? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. We lived in Kanab. We used to drive about every day, down to Lee’s Ferry. There was a survey party--we surveyed, actually, all the way up the river ‘til we got within ten miles of the dam above and below. And then we cross-sectioned every ten feet, all the way down the walls, and [even the river?], so they knew exactly how much dirt it was going to take, and all this. 
Steiger: What they were workin’ with. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. 
Steiger: And they lived at Kanab, ‘cause that was the nearest town? That was where you were gonna live. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. The bureau built us a little trailer park there. We was just livin’ in like twenty-five-foot trailers--a couple guys per trailer. 
Steiger: When you look back at your career on the river, what sticks out for you? Was there a time you could point to, like the best day or the best moment that you had down there? 
Bill Sanderson: Well, summertime, of course, was nice. [unclear] I was thinkin’ about goin’ up to the Crossing of the Fathers. I made three or four trips up there with geologists or Euler. You know, there was a lot of Indian ruins all the way up through there, that of course got covered up by the lake. But that was about the most interesting. I never got above Crossing of the Fathers. But those poor Mormons, it took them six months to cross that river. 
Steiger: To lower those wagons down. 
Bill Sanderson: And chopped.... You could even see where they chopped the footprints in the sandstone so the horses could get up. Then they floated. They went across in the dead of winter, so the water was real low, but they still had to float the things across--the wagons. But that was real interesting, seein’ all the Indian ruins and stuff, and the petroglyphs, where those Indians had carved all those little marks and stuff. That was about the.... The rest [unclear] it was work--it was. 
Steiger: Goin’ down the Grand Canyon was work? 
Bill Sanderson: Oh, no, no, I’m talkin’ about workin’ for the government. 
Steiger: [unclear] up there, yeah. 
Bill Sanderson: I had probably sixteen guys down there at Lee’s Ferry, and I could only haul five guys. I only had an eighteen-foot boat, and a 35-horsepower Evinrude. And I’d take five guys, five miles up the river; come back, get another bunch, tag ‘em. That’s what I’m saying--it was work. I’d help some of ‘em survey during the day. Then I’d turn around. It was the same thing goin’ back, and we’d jump in the Jeeps, head back to Kanab. There was so many of us, it was like a convoy. We’re talkin’ about fourteen Jeeps, station wagons. There was one time we got to, oh, ten miles out of Kanab, and the cops stopped us at a road block, ‘cause we was speedin’ and makin’ too much dust. And this head honcho--Norman Keifer [phonetic] was his name--he come out of about the third Jeep and he says, "This is a government convoy. Clear the road! We’re going through." (laughter) Norman Keifer. 
Steiger: From Lee’s Ferry down, when you look back on that whole experience, your experience of runnin’ the river, is there something that sticks out as being your most memorable time down there--rapid-wise, or just experience-wise? 
Bill Sanderson: Well, like I told you before, we got on this wire. My dad had been down the canyon so many times, doing dam investigations--and I don’t think even my son flies over there all the time, there at Marble Canyon. Like I told you, Badger Creek comes in one side, and Jackass Canyon comes in on the other. Over from the Vermillion Cliffs, where they have all the condors up there, that’s the only place in the river where two canyons come in across from each other. Of course the more downriver you progress, the worse the rapids get, you know. When I was runnin’ the rubber boats, I don’t know where you come out--Diamond Creek? Did you come out at Diamond Creek? 
Steiger: We did for a while. At first we did. But we went down to the lake, too. We went to Pearce’s Ferry, we went to South Cove. 
Bill Sanderson: At first, you know, we used to go on the lake. We’d hook the boats together. Holy kadoly, you’re talking six hours down to Temple Bar. And then we finally got the Separation Connection, and that’d haul thirty-six people. He’d buzz up to Separation Canyon. So we didn’t have any passengers, but run the boats on down to Pearce’s Ferry. That was a son-of-a-gun because it was just the crew that had to row those things. We didn’t have any passengers. So that took a lot longer.
But that Separation Connection worked out really good. The people loved it. It was only two hours down there. There was one time--in fact, I went down to pick up a trip--the boats didn’t come in, the boats didn’t come in there at Temple Bar. And finally I called the office and I said, "The boats haven’t come in. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon." And Bill Diamond told me, "Better call [Earl] Leisberg." He had that little airplane out of Las Vegas or Henderson. Well, he come over to Temple Bar and picked me up, and we flew upriver. Sure enough, they was up above Separation Canyon about ten, twelve miles. They was out of gas.
What had happened was, when Jerry had those units built at [Parks?], they had the ice chest--the ice chest and the gas tanks was hooked together. And due to the fatigue goin’ through the canyon, one of the gas tanks corrupted, and it run into the ice chest, and it contaminated all the food. And of course they had run out of gas. So Earl Leisberg [and I] flew around them, and they had a radio. They could hear us, but we couldn’t hear them. Earl said, "If you’re out of gas, throw a life jacket out in the water." And we was watchin’, and all of a sudden thirty life jackets.... (laughter)
So we flew back to Pearce’s Ferry, we borrowed a bunch of jerry cans, and we flew up there, just below ‘em a ways. He called it Leisberg International, just a sandbar. Lucky to have that. It was a Cessna 610 fixed gear. 
Steiger: So you guys landed on the sandbar? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. It was only about 600 feet long, but it was soft enough that it didn’t take that long to slide to a stop. It was scary. 
Steiger: Oh, man. 
Bill Sanderson: And we unloaded the gas, and both of ‘em got down there [unclear]. But we went ahead and took off. Just barely cleared the damned bushes. Scared the hell out of me. 
Steiger: Oh, I bet! 
Bill Sanderson: He had to turn over into the water. 
Steiger: So that was like a wet sandbar? 
Bill Sanderson: It was dry. 
Steiger: And that was up above Diamond Creek, or down below? 
Bill Sanderson: No, no, it was above Separation Canyon, about twelve miles, somethin’ like that, on the right-hand side. 
Steiger: Man, oh man. 
Bill Sanderson: Leisberg International. That was before we had Separation connection. By the time the people got down to.... 
Steiger: Separation? 
Bill Sanderson: Temple Bar. It was a hell of a deal. There was a whole bunch of people that was supposed to go to Las Vegas. We sent the message they only had enough gas to go to Pearce’s Ferry. So I had to send the bus around to Pearce’s Ferry clear through halfway to Kingman. And of course all those people missed their overnight stay. It was a terrible ordeal. 
Steiger: Yeah, a big wreck. Oh man. That must have been somethin’ landin’ in there and takin’ off out of there. Boy. 
Bill Sanderson: Well, the biggest part was, right there at the end of the bushes at this sandbar, there was a big ol’ granite boulder about, oh, six feet high and eight feet around. I didn’t mind it when we touched ground. I used to smoke cigarettes at that time, and boy, the gas fumes was just somethin’ else in that airplane. Earl said, "Whatever you do, don’t light a cigarette!" (laughter) But takin’ off, of course he had to get clear back as far as.... And just before we got to that big ol’ rock, he turned that thing to the left, and we almost hit the water. But he had enough power without the [weight of the] gas and everything, and we made it up. But I’ll never forget that pull-off, I’ll tell ya’. I call it a pull-off, takin’ off a trip. That was about the best experience that I ever had. 
Steiger: So runnin’ the rapids is pretty routine, you felt like? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. 
Steiger: I guess those boats, you had a lot of power, huh? The hard-hulled boats. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, the last ones, in the picture there, are two 35s. Well, like I said, they’d clip along at 35 miles an hour. And we’d always go on high water. That’s before the dam was in. He was doin’ 60-70 miles an hour. So you could only run two, three hours a day. Otherwise--well, my dad said one time, "Give me one of those power boats, I could run to Temple Bar in one day." ‘Cause you’d be doin’ 70-80 miles an hour, and it’s only 320 miles to Temple Bar. It’d be daylight ‘til dark, but he said he could do it in one day. But we always took ten days, so you could only run a couple hours a day, and then sometimes you’d spend the thing--oh, like there at Thunder River and Deer Creek, we’d always spend an extra day there. We did a lot of hiking up the canyons, and stuff like that. We’d always spend a whole night there at Phantom Ranch. That was a luxury part about the trip. We’d rent one of their motels and we had a big dinner overnight there at the restaurant. That was always a lot of fun. 
Steiger: I guess it was pretty good while the pool was there. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, we did go swimming. In the summertime it was nice and warm. I wasn’t on the trip, but Dock Marston, my dad, and I think Mrs. Ballard-Atherton [phonetic] president of Hawaii Telephone Company, Ballard-Atherton, and Bud was his brother. But they pulled into Phantom Ranch and they always used to go up there and rent a motel, and they’d have a big banquet. I don’t know exactly how it went, except that my dad introduced Dock Marston to the people, "This is my daddy." And when it’d get to that, Marston, he stood up, and, "I want to introduce you to Rod[phonetic]. He’s my bastard son." (laughter) Deep. 
Steiger: When your dad started you guys out, how’d he go about teaching you guys to run? Did he give you a lot of instruction, or how’d that go? Did he just put you in there? 
Bill Sanderson: We just all had the knack. 
Steiger: Had the touch? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. Well, of course I boat raced there in Needles. In fact, that’s how I got the job for the Bureau of Reclamation. I was only eighteen years old, August 1956. Larry, Jerry, and myself, we was workin’ for North American Aviation there in Downey, California. I was just out of high school at the time. And Dad said, "Hey, they transferred me up here to Glen Canyon to Kanab. You guys want to come up? I’ll get you a job." Jerry got on at the [unclear]. Larry got on as a high-scaler. Dad took me into the office and said, "I’ve got a kid here that is a boat pilot." [unclear] He said, "Normally I send all these guys in to get a physical, but," he said, "you look good enough. You’ve got a job." (laughter) Hell, I was only eighteen years old. But they needed help. We had guys comin’ from Arkansas and Missouri. They worked for the bureau, but they shipped ‘em out here. They needed over a hundred people to get the show on the road. 
Steiger: That was a heck of a thing for ‘em to do, to build that dam. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. $421 million was the bid on it. And they finished it, I think, eight months ahead of schedule, which was good. But it was tough goin’ to start with. We was all livin’ in Kanab. The road was just dirt out here. And we could only get to Wauweap. There wasn’t any bridge across the river at that time. If we had to cross the river, they had to call an airplane, Wright’s Flying Service, out of Flagstaff. They’d come out, pick us up at the airport there at Wahweap, fly us across the river to a little airport clear down here by the school. There was one time it’d rained like heck, and the Buckskin Wash was washed out. We couldn’t get across. So they took us back to Kanab, to the airport, and they got a government plane out of Salt Lake. He flew down in a four-place airplane. We was all settin’ there at the airport. They didn’t want us around Kanab, minglin’ around. So they flew us all out here. And I got out here about eleven o’clock. And about one o’clock, he flew back in, took me back to Kanab. We didn’t get much work done that day. (laughs) 
Steiger: No, I guess not! Typical. Well, probably not typical, but somebody got some work done somewhere along the line if they could come in eight months ahead of schedule. 
Bill Sanderson: There was one thing--you’ve been at Lee’s Ferry, of course--out there just above the Paria, where the Paria comes in. There’s a big ol’ rock sets out there in the middle of the river. And Daddy always said if he could see that rock, he knew that the river was less than 25,000 cfs, and he wouldn’t go in those power boats. I mean, you have those low units hangin’ down, all that weight. But if it was runnin’ over the rock, go for it! (chuckles) 
Steiger: Tim Whitney asked me to ask you about Boulder Narrows. He said you had told him a story about that big boulder down there below House Rock, in the middle of the river. He said somethin’ about you had an encounter with the hole there. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, I just was in one of them boats in 1957. That was when it was runnin’ 129,000. And I snuck around the right-hand side, and I looked down behind that boulder, and there was a whirlpool, I swear, thirty foot deep. Of course power boats had two motors, so he had two throttles. And I crammed on those throttles, and I felt that [expletive] suckin’ me. And finally (whistles) he come out. Otherwise, hell, we’d all have got drowneded. But boy, that scared the heck out me. 
Steiger: At that level, were there other places like that? 
Bill Sanderson: There was--especially below Lava Falls. Well, at that time we went clear to the left-hand side, just kind of snuck around it. Your rubber rafts can go down the right side and go down, bump the rock. But like 205 and 227, Dock Marston, I remember him sayin’, "I’ve never seen anything like this! They were just easy and neat before, but boy, they was bad, really bad crap." So there was rapids there, the water was so high it was hittin’ these rocks that was comin’ in on the canyons, and makin’ big wakes like that. 
Steiger: I remember the highest I ever saw it was 72,000. That was in ’83. I didn’t even see the peak, ‘cause I was in between. But I remember there was a big line between the current and the eddy lines. There were huge--you know, the current would be goin’ down, and then it’d be like six feet down to the eddy, or more. 
Bill Sanderson: Well, you’ve gone through Crystal before they cut her off, then? 
Steiger: I saw Crystal at its worst, and I was there in the middle when the Georgie boat turned over, and the two Cross boats got stuck. And then we were in there, we helped pick up the pieces of that. Then the next day, the Tour West boat tipped over, and that guy drowned. And then they closed it. 
Bill Sanderson: That’s when they shut it off. 
Steiger: Yeah. And it was amazing, you know, that rapid. But I guess Crystal, in the early days, didn’t amount to nothin’. 
Bill Sanderson: In high water, we run it clear on the left-hand side. And it wasn’t much to speak of. The water was just goin’ so fast, it was just kind of a roller coaster. We always loved, in those power boats--Hermit was our most fun ride. Just big, long waves like that--like bein’ in the ocean. (laughs) But we always used to stop there. We’d go into the cave on the right-hand side, and then we’d hike up to Indian ruins on the left. That was one of our favorite stops. 
Steiger: At Hermit? There’s a cave in there? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, it’s an old mine in there--copper mine. 
Steiger: Up above it, on the right? Or no? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, just up above it. 
Steiger: I’ll be darned. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, on the right-hand side. 
Steiger: I’ve never even noticed that. 
Bill Sanderson: Very few people stop there, because that’s a fun ride in the rubber boats. But we used to stop there. There used to be--heck, the old prospector had left all his shovels and picks and stuff in there. You had to have a flashlight to go in there, 60-70 feet straight back. And I guess he didn’t walk out. 
Steiger: That is on the right, up above Hermit? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, on the right-hand side. 
Steiger: Do you think that was old Boucher that was in there, that that was his? 
Bill Sanderson: No, I don’t think so. That guy was way down before [unclear]. I don’t remember who this was. I think his name was Herman. 
Steiger: I wonder, would you mind just describin’ your dad for me--what it was like havin’ him as a dad, and what he was like--what it was like growin’ up with him, and kinda what he was like on the river. Dr. Euler gave me a little description, but he’s a pretty historical figure, and it sounds like he was an amazing guy. 
Bill Sanderson: I was only thirty-two, thirty-one, when Daddy died. All my life... When he got back from Saudi Arabia, I was only about five, six years old. From then on, ‘til he died, to me he was Jesus Christ. Most beautiful person I’ve ever known. Everybody loved him. After he got back from the Bridge Canyon dam site, we went to Needles for a couple of years. That’s when I was in high school the first couple of years. And then we moved to Yuma, and Daddy was watermaster there. Had about eight zanjeros--we called ‘em ditch riders, workin’ under him, deliverin’ water to the farmers. 
Steiger: Zanjeros? 
Bill Sanderson: That’s the Spanish word for it, zanjero. They had pretty good Dodge pickups. Of course Daddy couldn’t work twenty-four hours a day, but these ditch riders had to work twenty-four hours, and worked eight-hour shifts. The guys at night, they’d run these ditches in these pickups, 60-70 miles an hour. Hell, they had their work done in three hours, and then they’d run to the bar. Daddy had all these pickups took into the shop and put governors on ‘em, so they’d only do 35 miles an hour. So it took ‘em seven hours to make the trip. Oh! they hated him! But that only lasted a few weeks. They realized that they’d been screwin’ up all the time.
When we moved here to Kanab, Daddy was kinda seein’.... He was superintendent of O&M, operations and maintenance. He took care of--oh, he was buildin’ the houses, plantin’ the lawns, and all that stuff. They had plumbers and electricians. I remember, Hanks was his name--he was an electrician. And then there was a plumber--can’t remember his name right offhand. Hanks told me one time, "Whatever you do, tell your dad to not stop, because he’ll be pullin’ that plumber out of his ass." (laughter) But everybody loved the guy. When he was in college, his junior year--I can’t remember now--but he played football, excellent. He played basketball, football. But he was such a good football player that they had an exhibition game down in Phoenix someplace, and they talked him into--this was Christmas day--they changed his name and all this, gave him a hundred dollars. Well, he was so good that everybody recognized him. 
Steiger: They realized, huh? 
Bill Sanderson: Well, that screwed him up--turned professional then, you see, so he couldn’t play any more college ball. 
Steiger: Oh, ‘cause he took that hundred bucks? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. So that really messed his college up, as far as his sports. I don’t know how they work it nowadays--I think they just give ‘em a new car or somethin’. But he loved motorcycles and rode those half his life. Loved huntin’ and fishin’. Boy, anytime we had a chance, if he’d go someplace, he wanted to take all of us kids, even when we had to ride in the back of the pickup. (chuckles) But he always enjoyed us goin’ huntin’, deer huntin’ or elk huntin’ with him. Mom would always go too. She’d buy a license, Dad would get his deer, and then he’d take her license and he’d go get her deer! (laughter) And she’d stay in camp and cook. 
Steiger: Was that out on the Kaibab? Would they hunt out there? 
Bill Sanderson: Kaibab, and we used to go to Mount Trumbull and up in Lake Mary. Used to go up there for elk huntin’. Big ol’ deer there--used to be--in Mount Trumbull. Know where Chet Bundy lived? We hunted on his land. I’ll never forget [the time], there was about, oh, five inches of snow, and I seen these four buck up there ahead of me, and they was walkin’ to the left. I figured, "Uh-oh, they’re gonna go up that little hill there." So I went around to the right, and I seen this cedar tree. One limb was layin’, oh, about 45 degrees. I climbed up on that thing, set down. I was about thirty feet above the ground there. And I looked over there, and here come these four buck, right up that hill.... I cocked my gun. The lead there was the biggest one. So I lowered the boom on him. But I only had this .30-.30, and they was about 400 feet away. I hit him right in the back, paralyzed him. But he was still floppin’ around like this. So I stepped back and cocked my .30-.30 again, only there wasn’t anything to step back on. I fell thirty feet, right on my head. Oh... hole’s still there. After I woke up, I walked up to that deer, and he was still alive. I was scared to cut his throat, because he was flashin’ his horns around, so....
[END AUDIOTAPE 1 (dub), SIDE B; BEGIN AUDIOTAPE 2, SIDE A] 
Bill Sanderson: I took this .30-.30--the butt had already broke off, so it was more like a long-handled pistol. I didn’t know whether that was gonna blow up or not. I was gonna put it between his eyes and boom! I hurt like heck, but I went ahead and gutted him out, shoved some snow in there, and threw my rifle inside of his belly. I headed to camp. I remember it took me four or five hours. But I know when I got there, Mother thought I’d got shot. Blood was runnin’ down my face and down my coat there. She washed me up, put me into the sleepin’ bag. I didn’t wake up for two days. 
Steiger: Boy! 
Bill Sanderson: Luckily, my uncles. . . Uncle Bill, he had his army Jeep. "Where’s that deer at?" We finally found him. You know, I hadn’t even tagged the sucker. Anybody who’d come along. . . . He had such big horns, Uncle Bill says, "Can I have his head? I want to mount it." "You got it!" He ended up mountin’ that thing and puttin’ it on his wall. That was like a thirty-eight-inch spread, somethin’ like that. But that huntin’ season liked to kill me, but I enjoyed every bit of it. But that’s what Dad liked to do. 
Steiger: So the river must not have been that big of a deal for him--or was it? It sounds like it was just kinda one little chapter for him, in his life. . . and the canyon and all that. I wonder what he thought of all that, all his time that he spent down there? 
Bill Sanderson: Well, you have to understand that he was an irrigation engineer, and any place the bureau sent him, except for Arabia, he was always on the Colorado River: here and Blythe, he spent a couple of years in Blythe and Needles and Yuma and here, always on the Colorado River. So that was his life, was the Colorado River. He investigated these dam sites, Marble Canyon and Bridge Canyon. Each one of those took two years. That was six years out of his life. And all that time, he was havin’ to run a boat up and down as far as he could.
One time Norman Nevills come down and his oar boat. He talked Dad into takin’ his power boat on down--bureau power boat--and downrun Lava Falls. Of course I don’t know how many times Nevills had run Lava Falls. Dad had never seen it. They was pullin’ up to the rapid, and Nevills said, "You’re faster than me. Go right down the middle there." Dad didn’t know any different, so he crashed over that big rock and down into that hole. And he said, "I felt the bottom of the boat hit the bottom of the river. And then all of a sudden I floated up. And then I hit more waves, and the motor was dead. And then here comes Nevills, he skirted around on the right-hand side and missed the rock." Dad said, "I could have killed that [expletive]! He did that on purpose!" He didn’t want any power boats to go down through the canyon. He wanted it to stay oars. Of course that didn’t happen. 
Steiger: No, that didn’t happen. 
Bill Sanderson: My father was just like God to me. Never a cross word. Never smacked me. If I did somethin’ wrong, Mother’d have to take the double-backed razor strap to me. But he wouldn’t touch anybody like that.
One time we were livin’ on a ranch there in Skull Valley. Folks had bought that right after the Second World War, 240 acres. The folks had, I think, thirty head of Hereford cattle, and one bull. I remember his name, Prince Domino the Third. One day Dad told me to go up to the barn and get something. It was only about 500 feet. Well, I was day dreamin’. Hell, I got to the fish pond there, about a half mile, before I realized, whoa! I’d gone too far. I come back. But that was a beautiful place there in Skull Valley, Arizona. All the time we was livin’ there, that’s when Daddy was workin’ on these dam sites, and they would work ten-fours. They’d be gone ten days--actually eleven days--‘cause the bureau let ‘em drive on their time, and then they’d come back on their time. You only had three days off every two weeks. And he was tryin’ to raise this ranch and a big ol’ garden, two horses with a plow. (whistles) He finally got rid of the reins and he’d take one of us kids and put on the horse and we drove the thing, and he just did the plow. 
Steiger: So he saw all those dams be built on that river. 
Bill Sanderson: They just built this one. 
Steiger: Well, down below it, Parker and Needles, didn’t they.... 
Bill Sanderson: That was all before his time. 
Steiger: Those were already built when he showed up. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. 
Steiger: I didn’t realize. 
Bill Sanderson: Hell, Hoover Dam was built in ’32. Well, he was only born in ’29. Those were all--Imperial Dam and all those down there. Yeah, they were already built. 
Steiger: Already done. 
Bill Sanderson: When we was in Needles, this is when he was in charge of the O&M there, they had a big ol’ sand dredge, and they straightened out the river. It was just curvin’ around. Dug it deep, straightened it out, put the sand on each side. And then went into this quarry and dug up rock, like in the fireplace there. And they loaded ‘em on big barges about 40 feet by 70 feet flatbed. They had a caterpillar on, drive that dump truck on there and dump rock. They’d pull in to the side of the shore, and that caterpillar would put the rock off onto the sand--riprap. They had two engines on that deck. And they was outboards, only they was three inboard diesel engines. 
Steiger: I guess so! 
Bill Sanderson: The propeller was two feet. Yeah, tons of horsepower. But like I said, Daddy had a good life, and he enjoyed every ounce of it, I know. But it’s just one of those things, probably puts in thirty years, goin’ on retirement, and bam! 
Steiger: Yeah. Boy. (dead air for a few seconds) 
Bill Sanderson: ... [unclear] anything to get out of. 
Steiger: This is the River Runners Oral History Project, and it’s December 13, 2004, and I’m still at the house of Bill Sanderson. This is Tape 2 of this project. This is Lew Steiger here. Present also in the room now, is Judy Sanderson, Bill’s sister. We’re gonna just review the Sanderson family’s river-runnin’ career here.
On the phone, you were tellin’ me just about how your dad.... I just wanted to ask your impression of your family’s career on the river. You were tellin’ me some stuff, you were just describin’ how they got goin’ in the power boats and stuff like that, and I thought that was an interesting perspective. 
Judy Sanderson: Well, when I was in the boats, it was really wild and wooly, you know. The runs now are pretty tame compared to what they were, all the movies that we have, the 8mm and 35mm. Mama was always there, capturing every moment, I think. 
Bill Sanderson: She even used to take her wire recorder down. 
Judy Sanderson: Yeah, the old original wire recorder. 
Steiger: To get sound?!
Both Sandersons: Yes.

Bill Sanderson: Get the sound of the rapids and stuff. 
Steiger: Your mom did that? 
Judy Sanderson: Yeah. 
Steiger: And you were sayin’ Jerry has all that stuff, those recordings? I wonder where.... 
Judy Sanderson: Jerry, I believe, has the wire recorder, doesn’t he? I believe so. 
Bill Sanderson: I don’t know what he has. 
Judy Sanderson: Larry has a lot of the stuff. 
Steiger: Boy, that must be interesting stuff, I would think. 
Judy Sanderson: Yeah. 
Bill Sanderson: Jerry used to own a house, three doors down, across the street. He had it for years, but he sold it. And the people that bought it, went up in the attic one day, and they found that picture that you just seen over on the stereo. The people that bought the place.... 
Steiger: ... found that picture. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. It’d been there for years I guess. 
Judy Sanderson: It probably didn’t fit the décor. 
Steiger: And that picture is a picture of the three power boats, that I guess were the original fleet (
Judy Sanderson: Yes.) and each one has a twin outboard on it, and they’re rippin’ across the flatwater there in Lake Mead. And those boats were named the Rattlesnake.... 
Judy Sanderson: Cactus and Bootoo [or is it Butu? Or Boo II?] 
Steiger: How did they come to be named? 
Bill Sanderson: Dock Marston named them. When we run those with Dock Marston, he always had two little flags with a skunk on ‘em. 
Steiger: I wonder what that meant? 
Bill Sanderson: I have no idea. They was stinkers, I guess. 
Steiger: But, now, you did a trip through the Grand Canyon, Judy, right? What was that like? 
Judy Sanderson: Oh! awesome! There’s really--it’s hard to describe, it was so exciting and beautiful down there. 
Steiger: What year was that? 
Judy Sanderson: ’60, I believe, or ’61. I can’t really remember for sure. I’m just tryin’ to date it from when.... Bill’s wife, Ardine [phonetic] and myself, we seemed to alternate havin’ children. So I’d take care of hers when she went down the river, and she’d take care of mine when I went down the river. So it worked out. But I think that was just before Byron was born.
Oh, but it was just awesome. The beauty of the canyon, like Vasey’s Paradise. That was the time that Larry climbed way up into that--what do they call it, the hole in the.... It was a little natural arch. 
Bill Sanderson: Thunder River. 
Judy Sanderson: We climbed up. I went part way, but he made me stay. Probably a good thing--I wouldn’t be here today. We climbed up petrified or calcified or whatever waterfall. 
Bill Sanderson: Deer Creek? Thunder River or Deer Creek? One time he went up Thunder River and come back Deer Creek. 
Judy Sanderson: Well, this time he came back the same way. He climbed clear up to the top, high scaled it. He had guts. He didn’t have a whole bunch of climbing gear, I don’t think. 
Bill Sanderson: I didn’t get to do that much hiking, because I was kind of a mechanic. They always left me on the river to overhaul the motors, while everybody else went hiking. 
Judy Sanderson: Well, how about that time the bottom of the boat was tipped up, and it was all welding for days? 
Bill Sanderson: Well, that’s when Dad hit that rock there below Hance someplace. We had to pull the boat up on the beach there at Phantom Ranch. 
Judy Sanderson: Those boats, I think, just were patched with tin cans. And on the bottom, just to get it far enough. 
Bill Sanderson: We tried weldin’ it, but it didn’t work. 
Judy Sanderson: Bubble gum and tin cans. 
Bill Sanderson: So we ended up using pop cans with tar on ‘em, and screwin’ ‘em onto the crack. (laughter) 
Judy Sanderson: Whatever works until you get to where you can really fix somethin’, where you have the materials, you know. Like flyin’ by the seat of your pants. 
Steiger: Well, what do you remember most about ridin’ in the boats? You were sayin’ it was a wild ride. What was it like as a passenger, just to ride through there in ‘em? 
Judy Sanderson: It was fantastic. Your stomach just goes right up in your mouth when you go over the first little swell that you drop into the rapids. And from there on, it’s just.... Hang on! Just hang on and enjoy the ride. Better than a roller coaster--a lot wetter. 
Steiger: Were there a couple different seats in those boats? Or were there any.... I’m tryin’ to look. It looks like they were pretty open, by and large. 
Bill Sanderson: Actually, those boats, Dock Marston designed ‘em. Had that little windshield on the front, only it was turned this way. 
Steiger: To shed the water off of you. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. And then actually had Seth Smith build those things so the bow was down. So it cut through the waves, instead of bounced over ‘em. And yeah, the floorboard was actually above the water line, and it had holes in the side of the boat, so when the water come in, it’d run out, back into the river. 
Steiger: So they were self-bailing? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, more or less. They did have a bailer in ‘em too. And we had a foot pedal like a brake, that pulled a cable. And then we had a three-inch valve on the back of the boat. And once you got up to speed, you could push that pedal (whoosh!). 
Steiger: And it’d suck the water out? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, drain it right out, real quick. 
Judy Sanderson: You utilize all of your space, every inch. Things get packed down tight and everything. There were boxes built in that stuff was stored in, and that’s what you sat on. 
Steiger: Those boxes were built into the seats, into the benches? 
Judy Sanderson: That’s what they were. 
Steiger: Was there a closed compartment in the bow, floatation in ‘em? Did you ever come close to sinkin’ one? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. 
Judy Sanderson: (laughs) Turned a few over. 
Steiger: You did?! Those little ones turned over a time or two? 
Bill Sanderson: Well, the Cactus did. Larry had Helen and Keith... he flipped his over, there in Lava Falls. 
Judy Sanderson: Well, you know, that one big rock was like droppin’ into a three-story hole. 
Steiger: The rock on the right, at the bottom of Lava? 
Bill Sanderson: No, the center. 
Judy Sanderson: Right in the middle. 
Steiger: Oh, the ledge! 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. 
Judy Sanderson: And then you go right in. That’s one you’ve gotta keep out of. My brother Bud was so daring, and, well, a little foolhardy. I had a lot of fun, because he was the pilot that time. I had an awful row with my dad. He wanted me to walk Lava Falls. He didn’t want me to go down Lava Falls with Bud as the pilot, because Bud took too many chances, he thought. Bud made the prettiest run that year, of all the boats. (laughs) And there were quite a few bad rapids. 
Bill Sanderson: That one year when we had all the motor problems--the last year we run--Larry went through, and he dropped his motor off, down on the left-hand side of Lava Falls. Bud and I went down there, ‘cause we only had one engine. It took us about two and a half or three hours to carry that motor back up. Mert [phonetic] was on that trip. 
Steiger: You had to pack a motor up the left side there? Oh, man! 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. 
Judy Sanderson: And those routes are hard, hard, hard. 
Bill Sanderson: It took us about three hours, and we finally got it on the boat. And we were gonna run it there on the left-hand side. Soon as we hit that first wave, that motor conked out. (laughter) 
Steiger: So you were down to none, or just down to one? 
Bill Sanderson: To one. That one we carried up there conked out on us. (laughs) Could have run it with one to start with! 
Steiger: Yeah, didn’t even have to do that. 
Judy Sanderson: We had the oars. 
Steiger: Oh yeah, in this picture there are oars, aren’t there, right there. 
Bill Sanderson: We carried oars for spares. 
Judy Sanderson: But you’re so busy under those circumstances, if you got one of the oars out, you’d lose it before you got it hooked down. It wouldn’t be much use. 
Steiger: Well, the time there was the flip, how did that transpire? 
Bill Sanderson: That was Larry. He went down the right side of Lava Falls, and holy cow he almost made it through the river, but he turned sideways to go over to the left bank, and just hit a wave-- flipped him right over, clear down below the rapid. 
Steiger: Right there in the tail waves? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. My aunt and uncle, my mom’s sister and her husband, was on the boat--scared them to death! But nobody drowned. 
Steiger: Was somebody down there? Were you able to get the boat over and get it back rightside up? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, Dad run right through. 
Steiger: He was up above and saw this, went and got ‘em? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. He run right through and picked ‘em up, and they pulled the boat to shore. 
Judy Sanderson: I can’t imagine Auntie Helen bein’ scared. Keith, yes. 
Bill Sanderson: She was. But we had so much motor problems that particular year, that like I say, Bud and I carried that motor up which just [unclear]. They got Larry’s boat out, the Cactus, and he ran on down to Whitmore--that’s where we usually picked up the gas from Chet Bundy--and he hiked out, and Chet Bundy took him into St. George and got a bunch of motor parts that we could use to fix ‘em up. 
Judy Sanderson: I went down in the Boo Two. (aside to dog) 
Steiger: You said there were some really bad rapids. Do you remember ‘em? What stands out in your mind as bein’ the bad ones? 
Judy Sanderson: Well, bad for different reasons. There was Sockdolager and Hance, and of course Lava Falls. 
Bill Sanderson: Crystal. 
Judy Sanderson: Yeah. I know one of ‘em was so shallow then that--was that Hance? Or is that Sockdolager or Crystal? 
Bill Sanderson: Hance, number two. 
Judy Sanderson: Okay. Hance number two. 
Steiger: Hit a rock down there? 
Judy Sanderson: Well, you know, there’s a number of ‘em. 
Bill Sanderson: I went down--one year we had three oar boats, and I talked Jerry into lettin’ me take the fourth one. And I got a couple friends to go. 
Steiger: Now, those are the snout boats? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. I got a couple three of my friends to go with me, and we got down to Phantom Ranch and we had a changeover. Kevin, my nephew.... 
Judy Sanderson: Jerry’s son. 
Steiger: Hoss? 
Bill Sanderson: Hoss, yeah. So they pulled over there, and I tried, but I didn’t have any passengers to get off or anything, so I wasn’t really worried about it. And from then on, our boat was named "See you later boat." (laughter) We finally found a rock down below. We named that Coors Rock. 
Steiger: Those boats were hard--those snout boats. 
Bill Sanderson: There were several times where--well, my buddy, Craig Pack [phonetic] that I took down, he grabbed one oar and I’d grab the other--give a little more leverage. But you go through those rapids, sometimes you’re fightin’ against it, you know. 
Judy Sanderson: Well, you go through in those boats, I know. You go through ‘em so fast. It’s like you’re in and you’re.... 
Bill Sanderson: Well, when you go through ‘em forwards, you’re oarin’ backwards, tryin’ to slow yourself down. At least that’s what I did. 
Judy Sanderson: Maybe if your buddy had done the same, you’d have been okay. But it just seems like it’s all over too fast. Actually, the most boring day in my entire life was the end day, across Mead. It’s just depressing. After all that excitement, even though you just can’t wait to take a bath and just kick back and let your sunburn--maybe by now it’s over with, or tan. 
Bill Sanderson: Hot. 
Judy Sanderson: Oh, and so hot! 
Steiger: That was a long ol’ journey. 
Judy Sanderson: But that is so boring, Lake Mead, after the rapids and the excitement up above. It’s just like it gets real quiet. 
Bill Sanderson: That’s when we started comin’ out at Pearce’s Ferry. And then that’s when we moved up to Diamond Creek [unclear]. There was one time, Darrell Diamond, I went down to pick him up there at Diamond Creek. I used to figure on gettin’ there about noon. Well, I guess he had such a rotten trip that he went down there and he camped there all night. 
Steiger: At Diamond Creek! "Let’s get outta here!" 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. Well, at eight o’clock or seven, those people were ready to go. The bus come down to get the people, and I was down there to get the boat at noon. Well, hell, half the people was hikin’ out already. 
Steiger: Well, quite an adventure. Did you [Judy] go down with the rubber boats too? You just went that one time in the power boats? 
Judy Sanderson: Yeah. 
Steiger: I wonder what else I should ask. What would be a smart question to ask? If you were makin’ a tape for your great-great-great grandchildren, to describe what this was like, what would you say to them, that we haven’t said? 
Bill Sanderson: They ain’t talkin’ yet. 
Judy Sanderson: Tell ‘em to do it! 
Bill Sanderson: Leesha’s [phonetic] too stunned to talk now. 
Judy Sanderson: And leave your phone at home. 
Steiger: Yeah. 
Bill Sanderson: Did you ever know Jet, did you ever meet him? 
Steiger: Yeah. Sure. You betcha. 
Bill Sanderson: Gene Steinberg was his name. He always amazed me--I went down the river with him a couple times. The first thing we’d do was do about twenty pushups in the morning when we got up. 
Steiger: You’d do ‘em with him? 
Bill Sanderson: Oh yeah. 
Judy Sanderson: Those were the old days. 
Bill Sanderson: And then we would run down and work on the motors. And then he’d rush up there and start cookin’ breakfast, but he forgot to wash his hands. (laughs) [unclear] black. He was goin’ with Karen Byerly [phonetic] at the time. That was a tragic thing to happen there. I was sure glad to see that statue down there in Marble Canyon with him. Of course she was married to Ken Kazan [phonetic] at that time. 
Steiger: Yeah. Was he Catfish? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, that was his nickname. 
Steiger: He was an awful good guy too. 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah, I loved him. After we sold the river operation, and Jerry rented the shop out there to the Coconino County College, and the county owns the building right there next door. Kazan, he was the juvenile probation officer at that time. 
Steiger: That’s what he became, Catfish did? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. I used to go over there and have breakfast with him all the time--or coffee. 
Steiger: I had a visit with him, I saw him. He was still runnin’ the river a little bit, wasn’t he? Or was he? 
Bill Sanderson: No. 
Steiger: ‘Cause I had this visit with him.... 
Bill Sanderson: He spent most of his time on Jerry’s houseboat out here, while Jerry wasn’t there. 
Steiger: Taking care of it for him. 
Bill Sanderson: I went out there to work on one of the motors one day, and I had to get a ride out, you know, a taxi. And there was about ten kids out there on his houseboat. All of ‘em was nude. (laughter) Well, I hope your secretary gets her ears full! 
Steiger: Yeah, she will. Well, that was quite a group, the whole company. There’s been a lot of really colorful characters that worked for Sanderson’s. I think of all those guys. I remember that guy, Giant, and Hoss, and Schmedley [phonetic], and Catfish, and Wolf. All those guys really impressed me. Jet. I think I already said him. Who am I forgetting? 
Bill Sanderson: Woodard. 
Steiger: Yeah, that was Stick, right? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. Stacey. 
Steiger: Yeah. I guess none of those guys, nobody’s still.... 
Bill Sanderson: Stick’s a doctor there in Flagstaff. Stacey.... I don’t know what he’s doin’--teachin’ school someplace. 
Steiger: What’s Hoss doin’? 
Bill Sanderson: He works for a company up in Colorado Springs, CEO [chief executive officer], makin’ a bunch of money. He did that Amway for quite a while. They told him, "Well, when you get to makin’ more money at Amway than you can on the river, then quit the river." So that’s what he did. He did that for four or five years. Finally, he was over in Maui. He met up with a guy who was an Amway hotshot, and he offered him a job up there in Colorado Springs. He’s doin’ good, got a couple of kids.
I always liked that Stacey. He did all our boat painting. Never complained, that guy. I really liked him. I bought a car off of him, Oldsmobile. It was one that Jerry had down at the airport in Phoenix, when he used to fly down there. He finally got tired of paying rent for the thing, so he brought it up and he sold it to Stacey, and I bought it off of Stacey. And I had to go over to the bank. The gal that notarized the papers was Stacey Woodard, which was his brother’s wife. You talk about gettin’ confused! (laughter) That MVD [motor vehicles department] just.... They couldn’t handle it.
Well, I’m glad you dropped by. 
Steiger: Well, thanks so much for havin’ me. I’m gonna stop this tape here. I know I’m forgettin’ somethin’. I know there’s somethin’ that I should have asked you guys, but I can’t think of what it is. (tape turned off and on) 
Bill Sanderson: Dad took in his power boat, when they pulled in to Vasey’s Paradise, Dad was in.... We had that real bad winter in 1951. 
Judy Sanderson: And there was one in ’47. 
Bill Sanderson: So it was in ’52, the big hole over there on the right-hand side, he said it was gushin’ out as big as a 50-gallon barrel. (whistles) Wasn’t even hittin’ a rock. 
Steiger: Vasey’s Paradise, all the way down to the water? 
Bill Sanderson: Yeah. Well, it was shootin’ twenty feet out. You know, it wasn’t runnin’, but it was just gushin’. 
Steiger: You know, this fall, there wasn’t any water comin’ out of there--just a trickle. Just a little dribble, just wettin’ the cliff. It’s just been so dry. Amazing. I’m sure it’ll run again, but it’s gonna be a while, I’m afraid. 
Bill Sanderson: I hope that this year will give us a little.... 
Judy Sanderson: I took an awful nice shower there. Cold water! 
Bill Sanderson: This winter’s been really funny. Now, Craig left here yesterday, and I told him, "I’d like to go back to the Grand Canyon, visiting, but it’s just too cold there." Well, it’s 40 degrees here, and I watched the weather channel, it was 45 in Flagstaff, and it was 50 in Grand Canyon!" 
Steiger: That is odd. Okay, I’m stoppin’ this tape.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
HISTORICAL SKETCH CF WILLIAM G. SANDERSON AND ROY BLISS SANDERSON
William G. Sanderson was born in Limestone County, Alabama July 29, 1826. He joined a wagon train and came west as soon as he was old enough to leave home. He worked for a mining company at Salmon City, Idaho for a few months and then decided to try panning gold for himself. He built a rowboat and went down the Salmon River, the Snake, and part of the upper Columbia. He then moved north and made his first sizable find in British Columbia about 1847. This was a sand bar on the Frasier River from which he took over $2,000 worth of gold.
The California gold strikes of 1849 gave promise of even richer fields. William panned gold in northern California for the next several years. He amassed several thousand dollars here but lost his entire savings in an ill-fated canal building venture in this same area.
The late 1860s found William back in the gold fields. This time he located pay dirt in the area of Kingston, California: He also found the girl he wanted to marry. William married Louise Catherine Davis at Kingston, November 20, 1870. With this marriage he acquired a ready-made family, for Catherine had taken over the care of Mary Lizzie and George Truelove, the orphaned children of her older sister.
During the next eight years four Sanderson children were added to this family. Roy Bliss Sanderson, born on September 10, 1871, was the oldest. His brother John was born September 25, 1873. Martha was born on May 12, 1875 and William Morris on December 23, 1876. 
The family now lived at Visalin, California and William Sanderson again accumulated several thousand dollars in his mining ventures. This time he decided to take a look at the territory of Arizona before investing his capital.
William came to Arizona in the spring of 1877. What he saw during his first weeks in Arizona gave him an enthusiasm for this new area which he never lost. He sent for his family in the summer of 1877.
Roy Sanderson was nearly seven years old at this time. He remembered the trip to Arizona as a time of high adventure for the seven children under Catherine Sanderson's care. The Southern Pacific Railroad had just completed its line to the west bank of the Colorado River opposite Yuma, so the first part of their trip was made in the comparative comfort of travel by train.
Rail transportation terminated abruptly on the west bank of the Colorado River, however. Here a crew of railroad workmen was rushing the construction of the first railroad bridge across the Colorado, opposite Yuma, in the spring of 1877. When it was finished, the Federal government refused to allow trains to run over the federal stream or across the military reservation on its east bank.
The American Guide Series book on Arizona explains that the Southern Pacific engineers were unable to resist the temptation of forbidden ground. At night they quietly took an engine across the new bridge and then tied down the whistle valve to celebrate the arrival of the first train on Arizona territory. The startled soldiers chased the trespassers back to the California side, however, and the railroad was not able to secure permission to extend rail transportation to central Arizona until October 1878.
The Sanderson family therefore eventually reached central Arizona but by a very roundabout route. Most of the commerce of the territory of Arizona before the completion of the railroad, moved up the Colorado River by river steamer and then inland by wagon train.
Catherine Sanderson and the children boarded a flat-topped river steamer at Yuma and traveled up the Colorado to the junction of the Bill Williams River. Here William Sanderson met his family with a covered wagon for the inland journey.
William was a resourceful frontiersman and an able traveler. He took his family across country to Prescott, down to Camp Verde and Fort Apache, then along the Gila River to Fort Thomas, without accidents or undue difficulty. At Fort Thomas, William bought a dairy farm and began selling milk to the soldiers stationed there.
Several acres of this farm had been planted in cane of the type commonly used in making sorghum. Catherine immediately saw the possibility of selling sorghum as well as milk. William solved the problem of crushing juice from the cane in true pioneer fashion. He made wooden rollers from nearby trees and by using a wheel from a wagon and strips of old harnesses, he fashioned a cane crushing mill. A horse was hitched to a protruding wooden shaft and the mill kept running by the small boys of the family who took turns riding the horse in a close circle around the mill.
The juice extracted was then boiled down to the thick consistency of heavy syrup. The sorghum was produced in such quantities that it immediately became necessary to require the sorghum buyers to bring their own keg or bucket.
Selling sorghum proved very profitable and by the second year at Fort Thomas, William had built two additional sorghum mills on his property at Fort Thomas. But while business prospered the family had health worries. Several of the children were ill, including the new baby, Edward born January 9, 1879. Finally one of the older boys George Truelove, died of malaria. This convinced Catherine that the climate was not good for the children.
William was perfectly willing to move on, so the family sold their property at Fort Thomas and started for Tombstone in the fall of 1880. This time they took two wagons, several head of cattle, extra horses and a large crate of chickens.
After several days travel, they entered the Sulphur Springs Valley and camped about 20 miles east of Tombstone. The following morning a cowboy rode into their camp with the news that there was a smallpox epidemic in Tombstone.
William was apparently a man who wasted little time making up his mind. He is reported to have said, "Catherine, turn out the chickens. We'll stay right here."
The Sanderson family stayed in this area for the next twelve years. William built up a prosperous cattle ranch, known as the Spike S. He was an active man during these years and made many contributions to the settlement of the Sulphur Springs Valley.
Among them was the discovery of the first artesian well. This account is given in a history, "Arizona Under Our Flag," by Ida Flood Dodge.
"In 1875, by an act of the eighth legislative assembly, an offer of $3,000 reward was made to the person first in obtaining a flowing stream of water by means of an artesian well. The water so found was not to be upon the United States Military or Indian Reservations and should continue to flow uninterruptedly for the period of six months. In 1884, Governor Tritle refers to this act of 1875 and says that the reward was claimed in 1883 by William Sanderson in the Sulphur Springs Valley and that the deepest well bored was 83 feet."
During the twelve years spent in the Sulphur Springs Valley, five more children were born to William and Catherine Sanderson. Jerry was born March 3, 1881, George July 17, 1883, and Joseph November 5, 1885. The next child born December 21, 1887 was named for Grover Cleveland, and a girl born June 28, 1891 was named Carrie Sanderson.
William Sanderson's Spike S. Ranch was one of the most prosperous in southern Arizona but William became restless and felt like moving on. Catherine, saddened by the death of baby Carrie at the age of two months, was more than willing to move again.
William sold his ranch in 1892 to George Pridum and bought a farm at Bloomfield, New Mexico. His youngest daughter, Rhoda Belle was born there August 3, 1893.
Soon afterward he secured a government contract to deliver mail between Pagosa Springs and Edith, Colorado. For the next four years he delivered mail, packages and passengers by stage coach between these two towns.
A frontiersman to the end, William again moved on. This time he went to Meeteese, Wyoming. He engaged in farming and mining activities there until shortly before his death at seventy-seven years of age November 23, 1903.
The boy from Alabama who had come west to see the country had carried on mining, farming, and ranching activities in seven western states. He had displayed courage, resourcefulness and a love of adventure which would strongly influence the lives of his children.
***
Roy Bliss Sanderson was Williams's oldest son. His life was marked by the excitement of frontier events at an early age. When he was eleven years old, he witnessed the gun battle of the Earps and Doc Holliday with the Lowry brothers and Billy Clanton in Tombstone. He recalled running to the scene with his father when they heard the sound of shots and seeing his father stoop over the body of Billy Clanton to exclaim, "He fired three shots after he was hit in the heart."
The family ranch was not far from Cochise Stronghold, favorite mountain retreat of Apaches at that time. The family escaped any serious encounters with the Indians but guns were always kept handy and the boys learned marksmanship as a matter of course. 
Roy loved to hunt and ride and was none too happy when his father decided that he must go to school. He was sent to Phoenix by stagecoach when he was twelve to stay with Mary Truelove (now Mrs. Tedrow), whom his mother had raised. Roy had been tutored at home and found his lessons easy but uninteresting compared with life on the ranch. At the end of one term he was allowed to return to the ranch in the Sulphur Springs Valley.
Two years later, at the age of fourteen, he served as a guide for General Lawton and a troop of U.S. Cavalry, directing them to Guadalupe Canyon in southeastern Arizona, where Geronimo and his band were hiding.
Roy was seventeen years old when his father sold the Spike S. cattle ranch. The new owner, George Pridum, offered him a job as foreman and Roy accepted. Average cowboy wages at that time was $30.00 per month. Roy received $45.00 and was considered a very able foreman.
After four years as foreman of the Spike S. Ranch, Roy left this job to join his father at Pagosa Springs, Colorado. There, he met the former Bessie Chambers and they were married May 4, 1898, at Duran go, Colorado.
Roy was elected the sheriff of Archuletta County soon afterward. He lived in Pagosa Springs while serving his two-year term. His oldest son, Ray, was born there April 9, 1900.
The following summer Roy moved to Farmington, New Mexico and engaged in farming and freighting in that area for the next several years. His second son, Raleigh, was born at Farmington June 6, 1903. A third son, Joe, was born in Durango, Colorado on April 7, 1905.
Roy and his family returned to Arizona by wagon in 1906. He engaged in ranching near Douglas for the next year and then moved to Nacozari, Mexico. He helped in the building of a smelter at Nacozari and worked for a year as powder man in the copper mine at Pelaris, Mexico.
Roy became the foreman of the Cuchuverchi Ranch in Sonora, Mexico in the spring of 1909. The activities of the Mexican Revolution soon made it seem unwise to keep the family in Mexico, however. 
Roy moved his family to Douglas early in the year of 1910. He served on the city police force there for a year and was then appointed by Governor Hunt to be one of four rangers to patrol the border during the rebellion of Pancho Villa. Roy's fourth son, William was born there June 19, 1912 on a ranch near Douglas.
Roy returned to Pagosa Springs, Colorado in 1914, and engaged in farming for the next four years. His youngest son, Roy Byron, was born there April 9, 1915.
Roy Sanderson's final move was back to Arizona in 1918. This time he settled in Phoenix and engaged in stock raising and mining in that area until forced to retire, because of ill health, in 1947. 
Roy Sanderson died at his home in Phoenix September 11, 1955. He was eighty-two years old. He had seen Arizona change from a frontier territory into a well-settled state. Those who knew him loved to hear him tell stories of Arizona's early history. He had become one of Arizona's well-known pioneers and was honored at many pioneer reunions in the later years of his life.