Buzz Holmstrom

Who was Buzz Holmstrom?

Haldane "Buzz" Holmstrom was a pioneer of running the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. He was the first person to float all the way from Green River, Wyoming to Boulder Dam solo. He built his own rowboats, often of his own design, to run whitewater rivers.

Born in a logging town in southern Oregon, he was raised in Coquille. As a young man, he worked in a filling station. He began building his flat-bottomed boats in 1934, running the Rogue River in southwest Oregon. He ran the Rogue again in 1935 and the Main Salmon in Idaho in 1936. On October 25, 1937, he began his most famous feat, his solo run of the Colorado from Green River down through the Grand Canyon. At the end of his run down the Grand Canyon, Holmstrom eschewed a motorboat tow across Lake Mead, rowing three days. Symbolically, he touched the newly built Boulder dam with his boat at the end of his journey on November 20. The following year, he repeated the trip, with Amos Burg and Willis Johnson. The trip was captured in Burg's short movie, Conquering the Colorado.

Despite the ground-breaking nature of Holmstrom's feat, his river-running was characterized not by bravado, but by humility and awe at his surroundings.