Haldane "Buzz" Holmstrom (1909-1946) was a pioneer of running the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. In 1937, he became the first person to float all the way from Green River, Wyoming to Boulder Dam solo. He accomplished this feat in a homemade white water boat of his own design.

What makes Holmstrom most significant in today's world of river running is not so much his astonishing prowess as a boatsman, but his humbleness and deep appreciation of the power and beauty of the river. In his 1937 journals and letters, he cut to the essence of what today's river experience should be about. It is not man against nature. It is man overwhelmed by nature. In his 1937 letter to his mother, he wrote:

A whiff of smoke from the dying campfire blows over here once in a while but I don't mind. I can see the rim of the Canyon walls on both sides of the river, black and jagged against the starlit sky. Well Mamma, I wish you were here and I believe if you were, you would say it is pretty good too. - Haldane

The second of four children, Haldane Holmstrom was born in a logging camp in southwestern Oregon to logger and boatsman Charles M. Holmstrom and schoolteacher Frances (Johnson) Holmstrom. He was named after his maternal grandmother's maiden name of Hall; and Dane was added to honor his father's Danish heritage. As a baby, he was called "Buzz" when his two-years-older brother could not pronounce "brother." It sounded like he was saying "Buzz" and the nickname stuck for life. The only one who ever called him Haldane was his mother.

The Holmstrom children were raised in the McKinley-Coquille area of Coos County, Oregon. When he was a young teenager his father died, leaving Buzz and his older brother Carl to support their mother and two younger siblings, Anna and Rolf, on the family farm at McKinley. When the farm proved unmanageable, the family sold out. They moved into the city of Coquille, where the Holmstrom children attended school.

After becoming the first of the Holmstrom children to complete high school (Carl had dropped out in the 8th grade to run the farm and to work in the woods), Buzz took a job at the local filling station. This was a job he held on and off for the rest of his life. There really was not a more unlikely candidate to become one of America's greatest white water adventurers and boat designers.

Buzz had been in and around boats all his life. In 1934, at the age of 25, Buzz began building his flat-bottomed boats. That same year, he soloed Oregon's Rogue River. He flipped the boat twice in his maiden voyage. However, he never flipped a boat again. In 1935, he went back and ran the Rogue again. The next year he soloed the Salmon River in Idaho, which was nicknamed the "River of No Return." Before each trip he designed and created a new boat, subsequently improving his previous designs.

On October 25, 1937, Buzz began his most famous feat, his solo run of the Colorado from Green River down through the Grand Canyon. He arrived alone in Green River, Wyoming in a ten-dollar Dodge towing his latest boat, quietly launched it, and headed downriver. Holmstrom had come to the Green and Colorado Rivers not to achieve fame, but to fulfill a private quest.

Since John Wesley Powell had first explored the river in 1869, only a few dozen trappers, miners, scientists and adventurers had braved the Green and Colorado's white water. Not all had survived. Holmstrom's trip would be the fifth to do the entire Wyoming to Nevada route. It was an outlandish thing to attempt alone, and one reason he was so quiet about his intentions was his fear of someone trying to stop him. Yet he was not attempting the trip unprepared. He had memorized everything written about the Green and Colorado. His rowing technique was modeled after Vernal, Utah trapper Nathaniel Galloway, who had pioneered flat bottomed boats in rapids, facing downstream and rowing to slow his speed and maneuver around the rocks and waves. Holmstrom's earlier trips had given him skill and confidence in rapids, and he headed down the Green with a surprisingly realistic idea of what he was up against.

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. He wrote:

...Just beyond the mesquite and almost over me is a big pine tree outlined clearly against the sky with many stars twinkling through its branches and over here the stars really do twinkle.

He evaluated each rapid, and more often than not, ran them. He found himself obsessed not with the toil and danger ahead, nor with any pride over his progress so far, but with the astounding beauty and power that surrounded him. At each stop he would look up anyone with river experience, riddle them for information and stories and continue on.

Near the end of his journey, he wrote:

...I had thought once past there my reward will begin, but now everything ahead seems kind of empty and I find I have already had my reward - in the doing of the thing. The stars and cliffs and canyons, the roar of the rapids, the moon, the uncertainty, worry, the relief when thru each one, the campfires at nite, the real respect and friendship of the rivermen I met and others...This may be my last camp where the roar of a real rapid is echoed from the cliffs around and I can look at the stars and moon only thru a narrow slit in the earth. The River and Canyons have been kind to me, I think my greatest danger is ahead, that I might get swellheaded over this thing. I am going to try to keep my mouth shut about it, go back to work in the old way and have it only for a memory for myself. I have done no one any good and caused a few people great worry and suffering I know. I think this river is not treacherous as has been said. Every rapid speaks plainly just what it is and what it will do to a person and a boat in its currents, waves, boils, whirlpools and rocks, if only one will read and listen carefully. It demands respect and will punish those who do not treat it properly. Some places it says, "go here safely, if you do it just this way", and in others it says, "do not go here at all with the type of boat you have", but many people will not believe what it says. Some people have said, 'I conquered the Colorado River.' I don't say so. It has never been conquered and never will. I think, anyone who it allows to go thru its canyons and see its wonders should feel thankful and privileged. I know I have got more out of this trip by being alone than if a party was along as I have more time, especially at nite, to listen and look and think and wonder about the natural wonders rather than listen to talk of war politics and football scores. A perfect nite, every star in the sky lighted up brighter than usual, still, the moon comes up later now.

Buzz Holmstrom rowed steadily across the rising waters of Lake Mead for the next four days. Finally he hit the concrete face of the dam with a deliberate thunk. And then Buzz Holmstrom returned home to Coquille.

As much as Buzz had hoped to avoid fame, the story of his amazing feat spread. He was featured that spring in the Saturday Evening Post and on many radio programs of the day. He loathed publicity, but as a family breadwinner in the middle of the Great Depression, he simply needed the money to be gained from it.

When the United States entered World War II, Holmstrom enlisted in the Navy. Upon his discharge in 1945, he went back to work for the Bureau of Reclamation, where he had briefly worked before the war.

In April of 1946, Buzz transferred to the Coast and Geodetic Survey to build and run boats for a survey of northeastern Oregon's Grande Ronde River. On May 18, in the late afternoon, he died of a gunshot wound on the steep banks of the river. The coroner determined that Buzz Holmstrom had committed suicide but others suspected that he had been murdered for some unknown reason. The circumstances surrounding his death remain puzzling to this day.

Haldane "Buzz" Holmstrom (1909-1946) was a pioneer of running the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. In 1937, he became the first person to float all the way from Green River, Wyoming to Boulder Dam solo. He accomplished this feat in a homemade white water boat of his own design.

What makes Holmstrom most significant in today's world of river running is not so much his astonishing prowess as a boatsman, but his humbleness and deep appreciation of the power and beauty of the river. In his 1937 journals and letters, he cut to the essence of what today's river experience should be about. It is not man against nature. It is man overwhelmed by nature. In his 1937 letter to his mother, he wrote:

A whiff of smoke from the dying campfire blows over here once in a while but I don't mind. I can see the rim of the Canyon walls on both sides of the river, black and jagged against the starlit sky. Well Mamma, I wish you were here and I believe if you were, you would say it is pretty good too. - Haldane

The second of four children, Haldane Holmstrom was born in a logging camp in southwestern Oregon to logger and boatsman Charles M. Holmstrom and schoolteacher Frances (Johnson) Holmstrom. He was named after his maternal grandmother's maiden name of Hall; and Dane was added to honor his father's Danish heritage. As a baby, he was called "Buzz" when his two-years-older brother could not pronounce "brother." It sounded like he was saying "Buzz" and the nickname stuck for life. The only one who ever called him Haldane was his mother.

The Holmstrom children were raised in the McKinley-Coquille area of Coos County, Oregon. When he was a young teenager his father died, leaving Buzz and his older brother Carl to support their mother and two younger siblings, Anna and Rolf, on the family farm at McKinley. When the farm proved unmanageable, the family sold out. They moved into the city of Coquille, where the Holmstrom children attended school.

After becoming the first of the Holmstrom children to complete high school (Carl had dropped out in the 8th grade to run the farm and to work in the woods), Buzz took a job at the local filling station. This was a job he held on and off for the rest of his life. There really was not a more unlikely candidate to become one of America's greatest white water adventurers and boat designers.

Buzz had been in and around boats all his life. In 1934, at the age of 25, Buzz began building his flat-bottomed boats. That same year, he soloed Oregon's Rogue River. He flipped the boat twice in his maiden voyage. However, he never flipped a boat again. In 1935, he went back and ran the Rogue again. The next year he soloed the Salmon River in Idaho, which was nicknamed the "River of No Return." Before each trip he designed and created a new boat, subsequently improving his previous designs.

On October 25, 1937, Buzz began his most famous feat, his solo run of the Colorado from Green River down through the Grand Canyon. He arrived alone in Green River, Wyoming in a ten-dollar Dodge towing his latest boat, quietly launched it, and headed downriver. Holmstrom had come to the Green and Colorado Rivers not to achieve fame, but to fulfill a private quest.

Since John Wesley Powell had first explored the river in 1869, only a few dozen trappers, miners, scientists and adventurers had braved the Green and Colorado's white water. Not all had survived. Holmstrom's trip would be the fifth to do the entire Wyoming to Nevada route. It was an outlandish thing to attempt alone, and one reason he was so quiet about his intentions was his fear of someone trying to stop him. Yet he was not attempting the trip unprepared. He had memorized everything written about the Green and Colorado. His rowing technique was modeled after Vernal, Utah trapper Nathaniel Galloway, who had pioneered flat bottomed boats in rapids, facing downstream and rowing to slow his speed and maneuver around the rocks and waves. Holmstrom's earlier trips had given him skill and confidence in rapids, and he headed down the Green with a surprisingly realistic idea of what he was up against.

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. He wrote:

...Just beyond the mesquite and almost over me is a big pine tree outlined clearly against the sky with many stars twinkling through its branches and over here the stars really do twinkle.

He evaluated each rapid, and more often than not, ran them. He found himself obsessed not with the toil and danger ahead, nor with any pride over his progress so far, but with the astounding beauty and power that surrounded him. At each stop he would look up anyone with river experience, riddle them for information and stories and continue on.

Near the end of his journey, he wrote:

...I had thought once past there my reward will begin, but now everything ahead seems kind of empty and I find I have already had my reward - in the doing of the thing. The stars and cliffs and canyons, the roar of the rapids, the moon, the uncertainty, worry, the relief when thru each one, the campfires at nite, the real respect and friendship of the rivermen I met and others...This may be my last camp where the roar of a real rapid is echoed from the cliffs around and I can look at the stars and moon only thru a narrow slit in the earth. The River and Canyons have been kind to me, I think my greatest danger is ahead, that I might get swellheaded over this thing. I am going to try to keep my mouth shut about it, go back to work in the old way and have it only for a memory for myself. I have done no one any good and caused a few people great worry and suffering I know. I think this river is not treacherous as has been said. Every rapid speaks plainly just what it is and what it will do to a person and a boat in its currents, waves, boils, whirlpools and rocks, if only one will read and listen carefully. It demands respect and will punish those who do not treat it properly. Some places it says, "go here safely, if you do it just this way", and in others it says, "do not go here at all with the type of boat you have", but many people will not believe what it says. Some people have said, 'I conquered the Colorado River.' I don't say so. It has never been conquered and never will. I think, anyone who it allows to go thru its canyons and see its wonders should feel thankful and privileged. I know I have got more out of this trip by being alone than if a party was along as I have more time, especially at nite, to listen and look and think and wonder about the natural wonders rather than listen to talk of war politics and football scores. A perfect nite, every star in the sky lighted up brighter than usual, still, the moon comes up later now.

Buzz Holmstrom rowed steadily across the rising waters of Lake Mead for the next four days. Finally he hit the concrete face of the dam with a deliberate thunk. And then Buzz Holmstrom returned home to Coquille.

As much as Buzz had hoped to avoid fame, the story of his amazing feat spread. He was featured that spring in the Saturday Evening Post and on many radio programs of the day. He loathed publicity, but as a family breadwinner in the middle of the Great Depression, he simply needed the money to be gained from it.

When the United States entered World War II, Holmstrom enlisted in the Navy. Upon his discharge in 1945, he went back to work for the Bureau of Reclamation, where he had briefly worked before the war.

In April of 1946, Buzz transferred to the Coast and Geodetic Survey to build and run boats for a survey of northeastern Oregon's Grande Ronde River. On May 18, in the late afternoon, he died of a gunshot wound on the steep banks of the river. The coroner determined that Buzz Holmstrom had committed suicide but others suspected that he had been murdered for some unknown reason. The circumstances surrounding his death remain puzzling to this day.