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Martin Litton papers (PARTIALLY PROCESSED) 1938-2014

NAU.MS.352
Accession 1998.26
Accession 2007.10
Accession 2010.24
Accession 2016.16
Accession 2017.14

Biographical Note

Clyde Martin Litton was born in Los Angeles, California on February 13, 1917, and he grew up in Gardena, California. His father Clyde originally came from Tennessee, while his mother Elsie grew up in San Francisco, California. Litton was the oldest of four children. The family moved to Inglewood, California, when he was seven years old. Litton graduated from Inglewood High School in 1934. At 18, Litton wrote his first letter to the editor, a 1935 letter to the Los Angeles Times decrying the destruction of Mono Lake at the hands of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

After completing high school, Litton attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He met his future wife, Esther Clewette, in one of his college classes. During his time at UCLA and some friends started a club called "California Trails," which successfully protested proposed roads over Kearsarge and Olancha Passes in the high Sierra. Litton also enrolled in the mandatory two-year ROTC program during college, continuing on to an optional officer training program for his final two years at UCLA, before ultimately becoming a reserve officer upon his graduation. He graduated in 1938 with a bachelor's degree in English.

Litton's first job after college was as a public relations person for the Wigwam Resort near Phoenix, Arizona. Around the same time, Litton took up photography, both professionally and personal. He then briefly worked for the Los Angeles Times. At the age of 22, he visited the Grand Canyon for the first time. In July 1941, Litton was called to active duty to serve the Army Air Corps in the European campaign of World War II. Due to his colorblindness, he was disqualified from becoming a P-40 fighter pilot. Somehow, however, he managed to convince doctors that he had no such eyesight problem when he applied to become a glider pilot.

Martin Litton and Esther Clewette married in 1942 while Litton was home on leave, before his deployment with the 82nd Airborne's 325th Glider Infantry Wing. Litton's unit was involved with Operation Market Garden, which successfully kept the German Army from destroying the bridges in the Nijmegen sector of Grave, Netherlands. Litton piloted a 15-troop glider, the Waco CG4A. They flew behind enemy lines on September 18, 1944. The glider came under fire as Litton flew his payload of troops and equipment toward Nijmegen One wing was shot through, and several of the soldiers on the plane were hit by shrapnel. Litton, however, survived his mission unscathed.

After he returned from the war in 1945, Litton again went to work at the Los Angeles Times as a salesman. During this time, he began to write freelance articles about environmental issues for the Times, often illustrated with his own photographs. In 1952, Litton documented a Mexican Hat Expeditions river trip in the Grand Canyon, which led to his meeting several notable river runners of the Colorado. The same year, Martin and Esther Litton and their children went on their first river rafting trip on the Yampa, Lodore, and Green Rivers in Dinosaur National Monument on the border of Colorado and Utah. The trip was organized by the Sierra Club and led by Bus Hatch of Hatch River Expeditions in Vernal, Utah. When he learned that the Bureau of Reclamation had proposed damming these beautiful rivers, Litton was immediately fired up to act. He wrote several articles for the Los Angeles Times decrying the proposed Echo Park and Split Mountain dams, which would have flooded the Echo Park district of Dinosaur National Monument as part of the Colorado River Storage Project. In an August 30 1953 article titled "Children in Boats Run Utah Rapids," Litton refuted claims that Green River's rapids were "too dangerous" for recreation by describing his own 1952 trip with his wife, their 4-year-old-daughter, and his 7-year-old son.

Litton's articles attracted the attention of the executive director of the Sierra Club, David Brower. Brower invited Litton to become involved with the campaign against the dams in Dinosaur National Monument. He also asked Litton to contribute photographs and articles to Sierra Club publications. Throughout the 1950s, Litton campaigned with Brower and the Sierra Club against damming rivers including the Green and the Colorado. Litton took photographs and wrote articles and letters to politicians which expressed his opposition to the Colorado River Storage Project and all the dams it entailed. In 1956, the Sierra Club agreed not to oppose the Glen Canyon Dam in exchange for the elimination of the Dinosaur National Monument dams from the Colorado River Storage Project. Both Brower and Litton later expressed regret for failing to protect Glen Canyon from the dam, and both later advocated for the destruction of the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell and the restoration of the Colorado River and its ecosystem.

Through the Sierra Club, Brower and Litton grew to be close friends; Brower allegedly called Litton his "conservation conscience." In 1954, Brower recommended Litton for an editorial position at Sunset Magazine. Litton and his family moved to San Francisco, California the same year, where he became the Travel Editor at Sunset Magazine. The next year, Plez Talmage (P.T.) Reilly invited Martin and Esther Litton to join a rafting trip down the Colorado River in Glen and Grand Canyons. Litton, who had injured his shoulder, was unable to row an oar-powered boat himself. In 1956, he re-did the trip, powering one of Reilly's cataract boats himself to become one of less than 200 river runners who had traversed the Grand Canyon at the time.

In 1964, Litton was elected to the board of the Sierra Club. The same year, he led a Grand Canyon rafting trip with Brower, photographer Philip Hyde, and Francois Leydet which resulted in the Sierra Club book Time and River Flowing (1964). When the Bureau of Reclamation announced plans for two dams between Lake Powell and Lake Mead as part of the Central Arizona Project, Litton and Brower galvanized the Sierra Club's opposition to the Bridge Canyon (later Hualapai) and Marble Gorge Dams. They took out full-page ads opposing the dams in the New York Timesand the Washington Post, arguing that the dams would destroy the splendor of the Grand Canyon. Those ads, as reported by the New York Times in 1966, prompted a federal investigation of the Sierra Club by the IRS regarding its tax-exempt status. Ultimately, the Sierra Club, other conservation organizations, politicians, and citizens successfully blocked the construction of both dams.

During his time with the Sierra Club, Litton advocated against Disney Production's proposed ski development in Mineral King, which would have entailed building a road through the middle of Sequoia National Park, and opposed the board's endorsement of a nuclear generator project at Diablo Canyon. He wrote one book, The Life and Death of Lake Mead, which was published by the Sierra Club in 1968. The same year, Litton quit working for Sunset when an article he had written about Redwood National Park was not printed in the magazine. He ended his time as a board member of the Sierra Club a few years later in 1972.

In 1970, following several years of rafting with Reilly, Litton incorporated Grand Canyon Dories. Grand Canyon Dories Inc. was one of only 16 commercial companies licensed to run river trips down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. His company utilized customized oar-powered drift boats designed by Litton and created by Jerry Riggs, which he called "river dories." Litton named his dories after natural wonders like ", wild places that had been lost to human development or were currently being threatened by humans. Litton owned and operated Grand Canyon Dories, Inc. until 1987, when he sold the company to George Wendt and Ed Gooch of O.A.R.S (Outdoor Adventure River Specialists). Litton also founded Northwest Dories. Even after selling his rafting companies, he continued to run the Colorado and other rivers in his spare time.

In addition to his work protecting rivers, Litton was highly engaged in efforts to conserve, protect, and restore old-growth redwood trees. For years, the Sequoia National Forest in California was subjected to logging by the Forest Service despite its protected status. Litton wanted to save the old growth conifer forest, especially giant sequoias, from further logging damage. In October 1960, Sunset Magazine ran a cover story by Litton titled "The Redwood Country," featuring a picture of Litton's family in a redwood grove. This story sparked the beginning of a campaign which led to the Sequoia Preservation Act and the creation of Redwood National Park in 1968. In 1990, the Forest Service agreed to restore and conserve previously logged sequoia groves, but logging persisted in redwood country.

Litton continued to advocate on behalf of giant sequoias, redwoods, and the unique conifer ecosystems of California until his death, becoming increasingly dedicated to the cause of the giant sequoia forests in the last few decades of his life. In 2001, Litton founded Sequoia ForestKeeper, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and restoring the forest ecosystems of southern Sierra Nevada. In 2009, during a fundraiser for Sequoia ForestKeeper, Litton broke his own record as the oldest person to run the Colorado River at the age of 92. This was Litton's last trip through the Grand Canyon, due to worsening health issues.

Martin Litton died November 30, 2014 in his home at Portola County, California at the age of 97.

Information in this biographical note was derived from materials within Litton's papers, including numerous published and unpublished profiles of Martin Litton, such as a 2014/2015 profile in Boatman's Quarterly Review, obituaries from the Sierra Club, Sequoia ForestKeeper, Sunset Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, and oral history interview transcripts.

Scope and Content

The Manuscripts group of the Martin Litton papers (NAU.MS.352) documents Litton's work as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times and Sunset Magazine, as a conservation activist with the Sierra Club and other conservation organizations, and as the founder and owner of Grand Canyon Dories, Inc. The bulk of the processed manuscript materials consist of business records for Grand Canyon Dories, Inc. found in Series 1. Litton recorded nearly every launch that the company sponsored; trip cards from 1977 to 1988 include the names of participants for each launch. Other manuscript materials include correspondence, financial records, trip logs, promotional materials, and news clippings, mostly dated from 1954 to 2004.

Unprocessed materials in the Martin Litton papers (Accessions 1998.26, 2007.10, 2010.24, 2016.16, 2017.04) include photographs, film reels, maps, sound recordings and additional manuscript materials related to Litton's conservation and river running activities. Please contact Special Collections and Archives for more information.

Arrangement

Restrictions

Conditions Governing Access

No restrictions on access to the processed materials in the Martin Litton papers, except not available through interlibrary loan.

Portions of the Martin Litton papers, notably materials from Accessions 2007.10, 2010.24, 2016.16, and 2017.04, have not yet been processed as of May 2022. These materials include audio recording and moving image materials which are fragile and/or obsolete or near obsolete and which cannot be accessed on site in Cline Library due to a lack of necessary playback technology. Other materials may be made available on request. Please contact Special Collections and Archives at least three weeks in advance to request access to unprocessed materials.

Copyright

It is the responsibility of the user to obtain permission to publish from the owner of the copyright (the institution, the creator of the record, the author or his/her transferees, heirs, legates, or literary executors). The user agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the Arizona Board of Regents for Northern Arizona University, its officers, employees, and agents from and against all claims made by any person asserting that he or she is an owner of copyright.

Related Material

Martin Anderson Collection NAU.MS.77

Arizona River Runners Inc. Collection NAU.MS.30

William Belknap Collection NAU.MS.288

Carnegie Cal-Tech (Robert Sharp) Collection NAU.MS.293

Colorado River Controversy Collection NAU.MS.248

Lois Jotter Cutter Collection NAU.MS.69

Dellenbaugh/Bonney Collection NAU.MS.42

Grand Canyon River Guides Collection NAU.MS.247

Haldane "Buzz" Holmstrom Collection NAU.MS.311

Emery Kolb Papers NAU.MS.197

Edith Kolb Papers NAU.MS.222

Martin Litton Oral History Interview NAU.OH.53.2

Norm and Doris Nevills Collection NAU.MS.317

Plez Talmadge Reilly Collection NAU.MS.275

Georgie White Clark Collection NAU.MS.270

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Martin Litton papers [manuscripts], NAU.MS.352, Series [ ], Subseries [ ], Box [ ], Folder [ ]. Special Collections and Archives, Cline Library, Flagstaff, Arizona.

Martin Litton papers [photographs], NAU.PH.2010.24.[ ]. Box [ ], Folder [ ]. Special Collections and Archives. Cline Library.

Martin Litton papers [moving images], NAU.MI.1998.26 [ ]. Special Collections and Archives, Cline Library, Flagstaff, Arizona.

Please note that this body of material was originally titled the "Martin Litton Collection." Samantha Meier changed the title in September 2020 to better reflect the nature of the materials, according to Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS).

Acquisition Information

Martin Litton donated materials to Special Collections and Archives (SCA) in 1995, 1998, 2000, 2007, and 2010.

Esther Litton donated additional materials in 2016 and 2017.

Processing Information

Special Collections & Archives staff, including Deanna Davis, processed the initial donation of manuscript (textual) materials within the Martin Litton papers in 2004. At this time, photographic and audiovisual materials may have been removed or separated from textual materials. Staff processed additional manuscript materials between 2007 and 2010.

Will McMullan inventoried later accruals (Accessions 2007.10, 2010.24, and 2016.16) to the Martin Litton papers between 2016 and 2018. These accruals largely remain unprocessed or minimally processed. Please contact Special Collections & Archives for more information.

In spring 2020, McMullan physically processed foldered textual materials from Accession 2016.16 under the direction of Samantha Meier. He also roughly separated materials in Accession 2016.16 of the Martin Litton papers by format (photographic, moving image, sound, textual).

However, McMullan's processing work was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which required a cessation of processing activites. Materials in Accessions 1998, 2007.10, 2010.24, and 2016.16 have yet to be fully processed and may not be available for research access and use. Please see the Conditions Governing Access note to learn more.

Olivia (Liv) Hall partially processed 7 boxes of photographic materials from Accession 2016.16 of the previous Martin Litton papers in fall 2021.

Sam(antha) Meier carried out a rough format sort of materials in Accession 2017.04 of the Martin Litton papers in April and May 2022. Meier created a box-file inventory for the 3 boxes of textual materials and 1 box of audio recordings and moving images in Accession 2017.04 in May 2022.

The bulk of the Martin Litton papers, particularly photographs, video recordings and film reels, and sound recordings, remains unprocessed as of May 2022.

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