(upbeat music) - For over the past 60 years, Arizona PBS has told incredible stories of Arizona's distinctive people, beautiful landscapes, and treasured history.

Now, relive those memories we've pulled from the vault.

Hello, I'm a Alberto Rios.

Journey with us to meet two brothers who took a risk and migrated west to set up a photography business right in the Grand Canyon.

Witness their adventures as "From the Vault" presents "Kolb Brothers: Grand Canyon Pioneers."

(gentle guitar music) - [Narrator] This is the story of two of the luckiest, most industrious, and most intrepid brothers ever to set up shop in the great state of Arizona.

Emery and Ellsworth Kolb established and ran a photography business on the south rim of the Grand Canyon that endured and prospered from 1903 until 1976.

Along the way, they produced a body of work that may well last for ages.

(water rushing) In 1911, they ran the Colorado from Wyoming to Mexico, and brought back the first motion pictures of it the world had ever seen.

They showed those movies all over the country, and at the rim, from then on.

A long string of colorful Kolb adventures spiced up the entertainment at their studio as it grew, in fits and spurts, clinging precariously to the rim while the years rolled by.

In addition to the fine canyon views they sold at the studio, the Kolbs photographed mule parties headed into the canyon on a daily basis the entire time they were in business, and thus recorded the better part of a remarkable century on a human scale.

(gentle guitar music) The photos and films they left behind have had a long journey.

As technology passed them by, most of them gradually lost some of their original luster.

But as time goes on, their value rises once again.

Like well worn keepsakes, they help connect us to the grandparents we've all lost, and the world as they knew it.

(camera clicks) - [Emery] My brother came first.

He left Pittsburgh in 1901 with two dollars in his jeans to see the world.

(train chugging) (camera clicks) He beat his way out west to Colorado, worked on a telephone line in Manitou.

(camera clicks) On the snow plow on Pikes Peak, and the trails and roads in Yellowstone, and the same in Yosemite.

He signed up to sail to China, and he decided he'd better see the canyon first.

I wrote to him from Pittsburgh and told him to keep his eye open for a scenic photographer.

He wrote back the possibility of taking the trail pictures of the mules parties going down Bright Angel Trail.

- [Narrator] Ellsworth's timing couldn't have been better.

(train whistle toots) Railroad line itself had only just arrived at the south rim a few weeks earlier.

The Grand Canyon, which had been one of the country's last frontiers, was about to experience a tourist boom.

Ellsworth got a job chopping wood at the Bright Angel Camp, and was soon promoted to porter.

He worked hard and saved his wages.

After he'd been there a year, he sent Emery a train ticket, and together they bought out a struggling photography studio in Williams, Arizona, promising to pay on the installment plan, $425 for the whole thing.

More money, Emery said later, than he thought there was in the whole world.

(gentle guitar music) - [Emery] We came to the canyon with no tents, slept on the ground in October, and it was mighty cold.

Our first dark room was a blanket over one of Cameron's prospect holes.

We had no water to wash our pictures.

Hauled water from a muddy cow pond 11 miles out in the woods.

We would wash our pictures by hand in that muddy water, give them a final wash in clear water, packed up on burros 4 1/2 miles out of the canyon from Indian Gardens.

(gentle guitar music) - [Narrator] In their second year of business at the canyon, Emery and Ellsworth built the first part of their studio at the head of Bright Angel Trail, on a Ralph Cameron mining claim.

Cameron had improved what was once an Indian trail to the river, and staked out several such claims at strategic spots along the way.

It was not a coincidence that Kolb Studio was perfectly placed to monitor the trail head.

From here, the brothers could be sure to encounter each mule party, and anyone else heading into the canyon who might want their picture taken.

It so happened that the Fred Harvey Corporation was building a structure themselves, at the very same time, right next to the brand new train station.

The El Tovar Hotel, completed in 1905, was billed as the most luxurious hotel in the country.

In short order, people who wanted their pictures taken were in good supply.

(camera clicks) (gentle guitar music) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) What was not in such good supply was water.

Pretty soon, the brothers figured out that it was a lot easier to carry their pictures to the creek at Indian Gardens, than vice versa.

In 1906, they built a finish room there, and the daily routine changed.

Now they took a picture of the departing mule party, ran 300 feet back up to their studio, made a proof, then dashed halfway into the canyon, and caught the mules at Indian Gardens.

There, they took the orders for prints and finished them in creek water while the mules went into the river.

They ran back up the trail, arriving ahead of the mules at the end of the day, in time to deliver the goods, and close the sale.

It was a nine mile round trip that covered 3,360 vertical feet.

To supplement the mule photos, the Kolbs ventured far and wide in search of unique views, which they later colored by hand and sold in beautifully bound albums.

(gentle guitar music) For Emery, the event of the decade was he met the love of his life, Blanche, and got married.

They moved into a new tent on the rim.

In 1907, their first and only child, Edith was born.

Before Edith was a year old, she'd been to the river and back several times, and Emery's priorities were firmly in order.

Ellsworth's eye, on the other hand, remained fixed on distant horizons and grand accomplishments.

For years, he'd wanted to run the Colorado, but he was unable to convince Emery that such a thing made good business sense.

Suddenly, however, a new invention came along that changed everything.

The motion picture camera, said Ellsworth, could enable the Kolb Brothers to make their mark on the world.

Since John Wesley Powell first explored the river in 1869, only a handful of others had made the trip.

If Emery and Ellsworth could do it themselves, all the way from Wyoming to Mexico, and come out with the first movies of that country, why, they could show those movies from Cincinnati to Timbuktu.

It would mean risking everything.

For starters, their lives.

There were lots of bones out there of people who'd set out across the canyons, and not come back.

Beyond that, though, they'd also have to wager a huge chunk of everything they'd earned so far, merely to outfit the expedition.

Emery, who had every reason in the world not to go, agreed at once.

He remembered a youthful boast he had made to his mother after a lecture they'd seen at the new Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh.

"Someday," he said then, "She'd see him up there on that same stage."

It took them two years to get ready.

They made lists, ordered supplies, went back east by train to round up the gear.

They found an assistant to help with the portaging and picture taking.

Ellsworth began to take notes for a possible book.

- [Narrator] Early in September of 1911, my brother Emery and I landed in Green River City, Wyoming, ready for our long planned expedition.

We wanted to make the big trip, as we called it, a pictorial record of the entire series of canyons on the Green and Colorado Rivers.

We could not hope to add anything of importance to the scientific and topographic knowledge, and merely to come out alive at the other end did not make a strong appeal to our vanity.

We were there as scenic photographers in love with their work.

And the success of our expedition depended on our success as photographers.

(gentle guitar music) - [Narrator] And thus began an epic journey.

(water rushing) Things went well at first, despite their heavy loads.

"We paid $6 for our shotgun," wrote Emery in a letter to Blanche.

"And I got a duck with the first shot."

(shotgun booms) Emery named his boat The Edith.

Ellsworth, seeing he had no one so close to him as Edith and Blanche, named his boat The Defiance.

The water was low, though, and would've been challenging enough without the additional weight of all the photography equipment.

On September 27, they both ran aground on the rocks.

First Emery, then less than an hour later, Ellsworth.

At the end of the day, it turned out they had lost their guns, and gotten everything else in the boats wet.

After piling all their gear on a tarp spread out on the sand, they were hit by a violent wind and rainstorm which drove the sand into every camera, and thoroughly soaked anything that wasn't already wet.

That night, as they toiled in their tent, cleaning and drying equipment over an alcohol lamp, a massive rock slide crashed down into the canyon, just downstream of them.

(rock rumbling) The next day, an hour after they'd restored and repacked the expedition, they came to Hell's Half Mile, a terrible portage that was, according to Ellsworth, "More like Hell's 3/4 Mile."

They had to carry all the equipment the length of the stretch.

It took nine loads to empty one boat.

- [Narrator] October 19, about 20 miles below Green River, Utah, we reached the home of a Mr. Wolverton, and judging by a number of boats tied to his landing, he was an enthusiastic river man.

He showed us his motorboat with much pardonable pride.

He agreed our experience in the upper rapids had been good training, but said there was no comparison to the rapids below.

He remarked that everyone knew of those who had successfully navigated the Colorado, but few knew those who had been unsuccessful.

He knew of seven parties that had failed to get through Cataract Canyon's 41 miles of rapids, most of them never being heard of again.

October 25th.

An hour or two at the oars this morning sufficed to bring us to the junction of the Green and the Grand Rivers.

We tied up our boats, and prepared to climb out on top.

The view was overwhelming, and words can hardly describe what we saw, or how we were affected by it.

For the first time, it began to dawn on us that we might've tackled a job beyond our power to complete.

Most of the parties which had safely completed the trip were composed of several men, and others had boats much lighter than ours, a great help in many respects.

Speaking for myself, I was just a little faint-hearted as we prepared to return to the boats.

(water rushing) (gentle guitar music) - [Narrator] They made it through Cataract Canyon, and then Glen Canyon.

They entered Marble Canyon, and soon came to Soap Creek Rapid, which had never before been run.

Emery wasn't so sure, but Ellsworth was determined to try.

With Emery on shore, Ellsworth gave it a go, and he hit a rock in mid-rapid, and The Defiance snapped over on its side.

Ellsworth tumbled out, but managed to regain the boat.

Back on shore, they debated the wisdom of trying again.

Ellsworth was hellbent.

As darkness descended, he pushed off in The Edith, but he missed his line, and the Edith flipped end for end.

Ellsworth clung to an oar, and crawled up at the surface onto the boat, but he found he lacked the strength to pull himself out of the water.

It was too dark to see now.

Emery in the unloaded Defiance had just managed to catch him before the next rapid.

They were swept downstream a mile below that rapid, and the gear they had left behind.

It took a whole day to retrieve it.

(gentle guitar music) They reached the Bright Angel Trail November the 14th, and immediately climbed up to their studio on the rim.

It turned out that Blanche had been gravely ill for quite some time.

Emery took her at once by train to the hospital in Los Angeles, arriving, the doctors said later, "Not a moment too soon."

Blanche came through okay, but it took Emery a month to get back.

- [Narrator] December 19, 1911.

A foot of snow had fallen two nights before.

The thermometer had dropped to zero during the week past.

Close to the top, the trail was filled with drifts.

When we returned to our boats, we found a thin covering of ice on small pools near the river.

As we were about ready to leave, a friendly miner said, "You can't hook fish "in the Colorado in winter, they won't bite no-how.

"Better take a couple sticks of my giant powder along.

"That'll help ya get 'em, "and it may keep you from starving."

Under the circumstances, it seemed like a wise precaution.

(water rushing) - [Narrator] They made it through the heart of the inner gorge, and some of the worst rapids, in fine style.

But another wise precaution, as it turned out, was that they had signed up a well traveled mining engineer, Bert Lanzon, to be their new assistant.

On Christmas Eve, they got to Waltenberg Rapid, and Lanzon took up his customary position downstream with rope in hand.

When Emery punched a hole in his boat, and Ellsworth was thrown from his, Lanzon saved the day by diving in to fast, frigid water, and swimming out to The Defiance to row her in.

"Business is picking up, young fellers," said Lanzon on arrival.

"And we're missing lots of good pictures."

(camera clicks) (camera clicks) They pressed on like this for another three weeks, and darn near froze, almost ran out of food.

Tried to shoot a bighorn sheep that had probably never seen a human face before, with their six shooter, but a rusted trigger saved the sheep's life.

Finally, in desperation, they used the dynamite their miner friend had given them.

(explosion booms) It brought up a 14 pound squawfish that kept 'em going.

(gentle guitar music) - [Narrator] January 4, 1912.

On this day, we saw a campfire, and on climbing the shore, found a little old prospector clad in tattered garments, sitting in a dugout about five feet square which he'd shoveled out of the sand.

After talking a while he asked, "What do you call yourselves?"

This question would identify him as an old time westerner if we did not already know it.

At one time, it was not considered discreet to ask anyone in these parts what their name was, or where they were from.

He was 1,000 miles from home, cheerful as a cricket, and sure that a few months at most would bring him unlimited wealth.

He asked us to share his jug with him, but we could see nothing but a very little flour, and a little bacon, so we pleaded haste and pushed on down the river.

(gentle guitar music) - [Narrator] Emery and Ellsworth landed in Needles, California January 18, 1912, a month after they'd headed back in, and 101 days on the river since they'd started.

They had come 1,200 miles, taken hundreds of photographs, and enough good movies to call the trip a success.

Lanzon remarked later that, in the entire time they spent together, he heard not one cuss word, raised voice, or impolite remark from anyone.

(train whistle toots) (train chugging) Emery immediately took the show on the road.

He lectured in Los Angeles, then went back east.

He made it on to the stage at the Carnegie Music Hall after all, and the lecture was a hit.

Movies were a wonder then, and this one played to packed houses, wherever it went.

(train chugging) In Chicago, Emery caught the eye of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, and his son-in-law, Dr. Gilbert Grosvenor, the head of the National Geographic Society.

This led to almost an entire issue of the magazine being devoted to the big trip.

(train chugging) Ellsworth returned alone to Needles the following year, bought a boat, and caught the spring flood down to the ocean in Mexico.

Later that same year, he wrote a wonderful book, which is still in print today, about the whole adventure.

(gulls cawing) (waves crashing) (saws scraping) After the big trip, the Kolb Brothers expanded their studio, and added a small theater in order to show their movie at the canyon.

They took turns running the studio, but except for special occasions, they generally began to go their separate ways.

Ellsworth never could quite take his eye off distant horizons, while Emery had a family to feed, and a business to run.

They always did come together when the chips were down, though.

And this led to several more adventures, which frequently ended up immortalized on the living, breathing silver screen that lit up every day, there on the rim.

(film reel whirring) Emery hung in at the studio through thick and thin, often against long odds, and helped support his entire extended family with the proceeds.

Meanwhile, he photographed the world as it grew up around him.

(camera clicks) (camera clicks) The untamed frontier that the Kolb Brothers faced when they launched the big trip, gradually gave way to the tenacious resolve and ingenuity of their generation.

(gentle guitar music) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (plane engine roaring) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) (camera clicks) Did Emery and Ellsworth ever realize how important each had been to the other?

That's hard to say.

It's hard to say what pioneering traits were most responsible for the Kolb Brothers' success.

Was it Ellsworth's sense of adventure, or Emery's feisty competence?

If not for Ellsworth, Emery might never have left Pittsburgh.

If not for Emery, Ellsworth might have drowned, more than once.

In 1961, Emery lost them both.

Blanche, after 55 years of marriage, and Ellsworth through a stroke at age 83.

But Emery hung in there, and kept the business going another 15 years.

In 1975, at the age of 95, he talked about it in a radio interview.

- [Emery] Yes, the canyon's really been my life's work.

We started showing our pictures in the studio April 15, 1915.

So far as we can learn, it's the longest one stand show in the world.

The way the situation is now, I can live here on the edge of the canyon in my studio, and run the business as long as I live.

But when I die, the contract ceases.

I asked the superintendent of the park what would be done with the studio?

"I'll tear it down," he said.

But now there's a law where they can't tear down a building that's over 50 years old.

This one is much over 50 years in the front part.

This part right here is just 49 years old.

So I have another year to live to hold the studio.

- [Narrator] Emery made it, not by much, but today, decades later, Kolb Studio is well protected by the National Park Service, and the National Historic Register.

The studio still houses a friendly gift shop full of canyon artwork.

The theater has been converted to a space for traveling exhibits.

The Kolb Brothers' films and photos are still displayed.

In its own way, the longest one stand show still goes on.

(gentle guitar music)