Holmstrom, Buzz, 1909-1946

Haldane "Buzz" Holmstrom, 1909-1946, was an early river runner. He was born in 1909 in a logging camp in the southern coastal forests of Oregon. He was raised in the area of Coquille, Oregon, the second of four children. He graduated from Coquille High School in 1928 and worked for many years in a local service station. In 1934 he began building boats and running whitewater rivers. In 1934, he ran the nearby Rogue River from Grants Pass to the ocean, solo. In 1935, he completed a second boat and ran the Rogue again with a friend. In 1936, he built a third boat and did a solo trip down the Salmon and Snake Rivers form Salmon, Idaho, to Lewiston, Idaho. He achieved national fame in 1937 when he built a fourth boat and ran it down the Green and Colorado Rivers, form Green River, Wyoming, to Boulder Dam - the first to do it alone. In 1938, he retraced the Green and Colorado trip accompanied by Amos Bur, who made a short film of the trip, Conquering the Colorado.

In 1939, Holmstrom was hired by Edith Clegg to take her across the USA by boat: up the Columbia and Snake Rivers, down the Yellowstone, Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, up the Ohio and Allegheny Rivers, across the Erie Canal, and down the Hudson to New York.

Holmstrom later worked in Binham Mines near Salt Lake City (1939-1940); then for the Bureau of Reclamation on the Echo Park Dam project and survey of the Green River through Desolation and Gray Canyons (1940). He returned to Coquille for a year, working at a local lumber mill (1940-1941), then returned to the Bureau of Reclamation at the Bridge Canyon Dam Project in lower Grand Canyon (1940-1941).

In 1942, Holmstrom enlisted in the Navy and served as a carpenter's mate on PT boats, both in the South Pacific and Europe. He was discharged in October of 1945. In early 1946, he returned to the Bureau of Reclamation, this time in central California on the Friant Dam. In April he transferred to the Coast and Geodetic Survey to build and run boats for a survey of the Grand Ronde River. On the second day of the survey he was found dead, age 37, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Motives for the suicide are unclear.

From the guide to the Buzz Holmstrom Collection, 1935-1944(bulk 1935-1938)., (Cline Library. Special Collections and Archives Department.)