We see so much rapid change in our lives everyday, from technology to fashion trends. But even as things are constantly changing some things never do.

With 90 years running the Colorado River through Grand Canyon among many other rivers, Hatch family history is steeped in the waters of the Southwest! In this installment of Flashback Friday, Ted gives some background about his family and their love of running rivers in the Southwest.
E. Sowards: Kind of give me a little bit of history on your family. Your mom and dad… how did they meet? Did they ever tell you the story about how they met? Or did they just meet each other at church?
Ted: Probably… they never said exactly how they met. Dad used to describe when he would go up into Dry Fork to see mom, up at the old Caldwell Homestead – where Matthew Caldwell lived. He had to let the air out of the tires on his car to drive through the sand, and then pump them up again to go on up. Usually when he went up to see them he had to stay all night. He would stay that day and then come back the next day, because the road was so bad. Then, the creek would flood, and to get across the creek to the old Homestead was difficult. But he would always go up to see her. They never really told me exactly how they met.
E. Sowards: How many children are in your family? I am not a native of Vernal, so I don’t know your family.
Ted: My mother and dad had five boys. I am the youngest, and my brother Gus is the oldest. Then there was one named Foy, and Don and Frank and then me.
E. Sowards: How do you spell Foy?
Ted: F.O.Y. He died when he was about a year-and-a-half old from a heart condition.
E. Sowards: Oh.
Ted: Gus is in Florida running a giant Soy Bean Ranch for Bunge Corporation. […] It’s a Dutch Grain and Soy Bean Exporting and Importing Firm.
E. Sowards: You have a brother that runs the Snake River?
Ted: Don has the trips up here on the Green and the Yampa and the Middle Fork and Cataract and Desolation. I do Grand Canyon. My brother Frank is in Salt Lake City, and he is a C.P.A. in the Continental Bank. All of us have run the river at different times. Don and I stayed with it, the rest prefer to do something else. It wasn’t all that profitable in the early days. I mean, we didn’t make any money. We did it because we liked to do it. We went for years and years, just because it was fun. We would always have our big family trip, you know. We would go out and run the Yampa.
Plenty of families make a business out of doing what they love and sharing it with their siblings and children. The Hatch family is fortunate that for them that means guiding people on Grand Canyon river adventures.
Thanks for coming around for another installment of Hatch family history! It’s interesting to see how the river calls to some people so strongly that they build their lives around it, and others become CPAs. Different strokes for different folks. Check back next week, when Ted tells us about the job duties and training process of a “swamper”.
Book a 2024 or 2025 river trip today to experience the Canyon first hand! And don’t forget to get your 90th Year T-shirt or sticker!
We see so much rapid change in our lives everyday, from technology to fashion trends. But even as things are constantly changing some things never do.
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