The first recorded trip down the Colorado River was made in 1869 by John Wesley Powell-who, oddly enough, shares a Brooklin, Maine, connection, having died in a summer house there in 1902-and an expedition of men in four Whitehalls. With two men pulling at the oars and one steering from the stern, the 20' boats quickly and safely ferried goods across choppy shipping ports along the East Coast. But the very traits that made a Whitehall so well-suited for handling the wind and waves of open water are what made them ill-suited for running rapids on the Colorado. Their long, straight keels and narrow hulls-useful for tracking straight and carrying momentum through chop-made them unable to turn quickly and unstable in chaotic rapids.It took about a hundred years and dozens of imaginative hull designs before what is now considered to be the quintessential wooden Grand Canyon dory splashed onto the Colorado River at Lees Ferry near Marble Canyon, Arizona. The archetype was designed by Jerry Briggs in 1971. The size and shape of Briggs boats are based on his Rogue River Special, an Oregon-born drift boat admired by fly fishermen, but the addition of internal decking for gear storage and flotation makes the Briggs a whitewater-runner rather than another fishing boat. Its lines and lineage have become legendary among river-runners-so much so that the design is now colloquially referred to as "the Briggs." Nearly all modern Whitewater dories are based on the type, which means they have full sections aft, are comparatively flat and straight amidships, and have more sheer than their McKenzie River drift-boat antecedents to give them even better performance in Whitewater. It was in these craft that river-running in rigid boats in Whitewater finally became practical.
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