Harvey Butchart and the Grand Canyon

The following text is taken from the Northern Arizona Libraries online collection of trail logs that were maintained by Harvey Butchart.

Also note that the NAU library has his maps online.

In more than 40 years of Canyon exploration, Butchart found 108 approaches to the Colorado River, climbed 83 summits within the canyon, and scaled canyon walls at 164 different places. He carefully documented these explorations, both in correspondence with other hikers and in his trail logs, maps, and photographs. Specific locations discussed include Bright Angel Trail, South Kaibab Trail, Glen Canyon, Marble Canyon, Surprise Canyon, and Cataract Canyon. Butchart annotated a series of hiking maps, including western and eastern half of the Grand Canyon and others from throughout the Grand Canyon region. His hiking logs were transcribed by Wayne Tomasi, with an index to the transcript compiled by Anthony Williams, and table of contents compiled by Tony Voth.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: John Harvey Butchart was born to missionary parents in Hofei, China in 1907. He received his early education at an American school in Hofei. After the death of his father in 1916, the family returned to the United States. Butchart attended and graduated from Eureka College in 1929. He earned his master and doctorate of mathematics from the University of Illinois in 1929 and 1932. In 1945 he accepted a job in the Mathematics Department of Arizona State College (ASC, now Northern Arizona University, or NAU) from which he retired in 1976. While there, he became involved with the ASC Hiking Club and served as its sponsor for twelve years. During this time he hiked all of the main trails and many routes in the Grand Canyon. His explorations eventually branched out to abandoned, prehistoric, and animal trails.
He died May 29, 2002.

Here are some of Harvey Butchart's diary pages (plain text files):

Here are my html versions that I am working up from the above:

And here they are as PDF files:


Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's hiking pages / tom@mmto.org