Rowing for the river
One night in July 1974, five Friends of the River activists in Sacramento brainstormed and asked, why not a 200-mile voyage down the Stanislaus River to San Francisco Bay to kick off the fall campaign for Proposition 17?
Roanoke, the campaign consultant (Rob Caughlan and David Oake – Ro-and-Oake!), agreed that “Row for the River” would invite publicity, and would raise funds if the paddlers and rowers could persuade sponsors to pay by the mile—a row-a-thon. But the all-volunteer organizing group would have to do all the work.
So they did it. Organizing on the fly with just weeks before the event started, they scouted camping locations, found an outfitter’s bus and driver for support, worked out permits and food – and recruited people to do the whole trip, all within just a few weeks. It was another Stanislaus campaign accomplishment, where (mostly young) people just dug in and did the impossible. Tom Lovering in particular did heroic organizing of the whole event.
On September 14, one hundred people started at the Camp Nine put in and in kayaks and rafts ran down the 13 miles to Melones, the frothy canyon run, and camped there.
The next morning, a score of kayakers loaded gear onto the bus and portaged around the old cement of Melones Dam; past the foundation of New Melones, where construction crews herded fleets of belching diesel machinery rearranging the walls of Iron Canyon; and past Tulloch and Goodwin dams, putting in by Oakdale for the second day of the journey on the lower Stanislaus.
Counting the upper river, they kayaked through 175 miles – through Central Valley farmland; turning north at the confluence with the San Joaquin River agricultural conduit; through the Delta checkerboard of land and brackish water, out through Carquinez Strait and into San Francisco Bay. It took them eight hard days and a mass of blisters.
Among the twenty were Don Ahlert, Elizabeth Black, Marty Booth, John Cassidy, Ty Childress, Dave Cook, John Evans, Dean Garrison, Larry Jacobson, Jenny Jennings, Jan Komoroff, K.B. (Karl) Lewis, Mindy Lewis, Steve Luke (on crutches with a cast on his leg!), Robin Magneson (Center), Kathryn McHenry, Kathy Meyer, Richard O’Toole, Jay Power, Craig Rieser, Sue Sortman, Keith Ullisse, and Dave Westphal.
At a Tiburon yacht club on Saturday, September 21, more than 80 other supporters joined for the final paddle across San Francisco Bay. The eclectic armada of five rafts, eighty kayaks, canoes, four sailboats, a wind-surfer, a three-masted schooner from the Oceanic Society, and a floating army truck towed by a raft crew crossed the choppy bay to Aquatic Park. Friends of the River’s Graciella Rossi arranged for a fireboat to spray water in greeting, a band, and over 500 people to herald the voyagers.
The river people felt strong and elated and sure that Proposition 17 would win on November 5, six weeks away. If only saving their river was easy as traveling it.
Note: This excerpt is from Tim Palmer‘s Struggle for a River, with additional editing by Larry Orman. Learn more about the 1974 Row for the River.