The Robert Brewster Stanton Collection includes photographs, diaries and journals, correspondence and other manuscripts pertaining to Robert Brewster Stanton, particularly his participation in a surveying expedition to determine the feasibility of constructing a railroad through the Grand Canyon during 1889 and 1890. The survey is one of the most meticulous primary records ever made of the Colorado River from Grand Junction, Colorado to the Gulf of California.

While some items in the collection are unique, others are copies, primarily from the Robert Brewster Stanton Papers, 1861-1960, housed at the New York Public Library. In 1988, the New York Public Library granted permission to deposit the copies of items from its collection along with other Stanton material in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections. All requests to publish or quote from the material must be obtained from the New York Public Library.

The collection begins with biographical information about Robert Brewster Stanton and his family, including his submission for the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, published by James T. White & Co. A copy of the Stanton coat of arms, including the family mottoes, “In God My Faith” and “Moderate Things Endure,” together with signatures, business cards and ephemera related to Stanton, can also be found in this portion of the collection.

Correspondence includes a letter from Robert B. Stanton to his son regarding his role in the construction of the Georgetown Loop, dated February 10, 1908, as well as a December 21, 1917 letter from Stanton to James White regarding his alleged exploration of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River in 1869. Letters from Anne Stanton Burchard and her husband, Lewis, provide details regarding the creation of an outline map of the Colorado River for Down the Grand Canyon Rapids, Stanton’s work on the Georgetown Loop, other publications on Stanton, and Stanton’s Grand Canyon photographs. Correspondence regarding members of the Miami University Class of 1871, together with Dwight L. Smith’s publication of the papers of Robert B. Stanton in The Hoskaninni Papers (1961) and Down the Colorado (1965), Robert Livingston Stanton’s reminiscences of President Abraham Lincoln and the Franklin Nims diary, completes this portion of the collection.

Stanton served as general manager of the Hoskaninni Mining Company, organized to remove flake gold from the sand and gravel of the Colorado River. In 1900, Stanton led a project to dredge gold-bearing gravel from the river flats. Therefore, the collection includes notes in connection with placer mining work performed on the Colorado in connection with the Hoskaninni Company. In 1957, the Minerals Division, Utah State Office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, sought Stanton’s heirs in connection with the status of several placer mining claims on the Colorado River located from 1889 to 1901, of which Stanton was a co-locator. The collection includes correspondence and legal documents pertaining to the matter, dating from 1957 through 1960.

Anne Stanton Burchard kept detailed notes of information found in her father’s diaries, lists of Stanton’s field notes and diaries, bibliographies of works by her father, and information pertaining to her father’s papers deposited at the New York Public Library and other repositories. Typescript copies and notebooks containing this information can be found in this portion of the collection.

The Burchards recorded copies of several family works, including Robert Livingston Stanton’s reminiscences of President Abraham Lincoln. Written in the 1870s, the original of this work can be found in the Stanton papers housed at the New York Public Library. The typescript copy in this collection provides details of the elder Stanton’s first audience with Lincoln in February 1861, a conversation they had on a subsequent occasion about Lincoln’s “progress in spelling,” and accounts of other exchanges between the two men.

Other typescripts from the Burchards include “A Friendly Debate on a Never-Decided Question,” which focuses on whether Major Powell should have advised President Brown to provide life-preservers for running the Colorado rapids. A foreword for The River and the Canyon, a manuscript about Stanton Point, and typescript copies of incomplete entries from Robert Brewster Stanton’s diaries, annotated by his daughter, are also included here.

A number of Stanton’s original manuscripts are housed in this collection. First, his recollections of the Colorado River expedition reveal that he was hesitant to claim discovery as a result of his exploration. As he writes, “I went down the Colo. in the ordinary discharge of my everyday duties as a railroad engineer for the purpose of locating a RR line along its banks and through its cañons [canyons]. We were not exploring the Grand Cañon [Canyon], nor seeking adventure in it, nor looking for anything – except that RR. line. Therefore I think it out of place to speak even of the somewhat startling adventures that we did meet with which resulted in the death, by drowning, of three of my companions, and the maiming of a fourth….”

Stanton’s revisions to his initial draft of The River and The Canyon, including lists of photographs and other illustrations, can be found in this portion of the collection. A typescript copy of Stanton’s reminiscences provides genealogical information about the Stanton family, his childhood (including memories of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and the Civil War), his days as a student at Miami University, and his early professional experiences until approximately 1877. A page from an early first draft of Stanton’s original manuscript reveals information about his family’s move to Oxford, Ohio and how preparations for the opening of Miami University inspired him to attend college.

The collection continues with four typescript volumes and photostatic copies of Stanton’s field notes from the first and second expeditions of the Colorado River for the Denver, Colorado Cañon [Canyon] and Pacific Railroad survey. Stanton became so involved in writing the history of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon that he never completed his own story. Therefore, his photographs, drawings and papers pertaining to his 1889-1890 exploration of the Colorado River are particularly insightful.

The collection includes an annotated carbon copy of the manuscript Stanton wrote titled The River and the Canyon: The Colorado River of the West, and the Exploration, Navigation, and Survey of its Cañons [Canyons], from the Standpoint of an Engineer. Written between 1906 and 1909, this manuscript records Stanton’s experiences of “an ordinary railway survey, even though the nature of the route made it a perilous undertaking.” The first volume includes 479 pages and 22 chapters, in which Stanton records the history of the Colorado River until 1871. The second volume completes a total of 1,039 pages. Among the 14 chapters in this volume are descriptions of Stanton’s own Colorado expedition and the work of the Kolb Brothers in 1911-1912.

Although Stanton had published two magazine articles and a number of newspaper articles on his team’s journey through the cañons [canyons], he undertook this work to provide a more accurate description of the Colorado River and his exploration of it than others had published before. The original typescript is at the New York Public Library. A few illustrations and pages containing illustrations have been removed from volume 2, chapters 1-11. These appear in narrative of the expedition, edited by Dwight Smith.

The collection includes a number of professional publications by Robert Brewster Stanton, articles on the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River, Stanton’s expedition, the Georgetown Loop, and James White’s expedition of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon in 1861. Publications related to the Stanton family’s recollections of President Abraham Lincoln and Robert Brewster Stanton’s reminiscences of his Miami University student days complete this portion of the collection.

Maps represented in the collection include sketches of maps of Bright Angel Creek, the DCC& PRR line, the Colorado River, and Shinumo Creek; a map of river cut in rock at the mouth of Escalante Creek, Glen Cañon [Canyon]; a map of the Colorado River region; and a map of the loop produced by the Colorado & Southern Railway. The collection also includes a drawing for the title page of “A Survey of the History of Exploration of the Colorado River,” by Dwight L. Smith, as published in The Westerners.

Negatives and transparencies of photographic prints of President and Mrs. Robert Livingston Stanton, together with those from Stanton’s Colorado River expedition, begin the audiovisual component of the collection. After presenting photographs of President and Mrs. Robert Livingston Stanton, Robert Brewster Stanton, and Anne Stanton Burchard, the collection provides reprints of images of the Georgetown Loop, including a copy of a photograph taken by Stanton.

Documents prepared by Anne Stanton Burchard provide information about the photographs Stanton and his photographer, Franklin Nims, took during the Colorado Expedition. According to notes from Mrs. Burchard, the negatives of the pictures that Stanton took in the Canyon were given to the United States Geological Survey in 1925. An album housing a complete set of the prints was given to the Manuscript Division of the New York Public Library in 1941. Many of the prints in this collection are mounted on sheets of paper, on which annotations appear.

To begin photographic documentation of Stanton’s Colorado River expedition, the collection presents several photographs of and biographical information for the expedition’s crew members. In addition to Stanton, Leo G. Brown, Arthur B. Twining, Langdon Gibson, J.S. Hogue, H.G. Ballard, Harry McDonald, expedition cook George Washington Gibson, and others, are pictured here.

Stanton’s snapshots of the expedition continue this portion of the collection. Scenic views, together with views of the crew repairing boats, lifting a boat over the head of a rapid in the Grand Canyon, resting at the lower end of the Grand Canyon, and stopping for lunch can be seen here. The expedition is further documented by numbered and annotated prints, capturing views of the Green River, Cataract Canyon, Glen Canyon, Marble Canyon, the Grand Canyon, and Fort Mohave.

Annotated photographs and illustrations collected for use in The River and the Canyon follow. Items in this portion of the collection include annotated groupings of images by volume and chapter, together with miscellaneous photographs of the Grand Canyon and other landmarks. A copy of a map of the Lower Colorado River from the Grand Wash Cliffs to the Los Vegas Wash showing the actual journey of James White from Pierce Ferry to Callville is also included here.

The collection concludes with microfilm copies of several pertinent documents, including the Denver, Colorado Cañon [Canyon] and Pacific Railroad’s articles of incorporation; the Colorado River expedition diaries of William H. Edwards and Franklin A. Nims; gold placer claim documents; and reports by Stanton on the Colorado River expedition and the proposed Gulf and Northwestern Railway. An audio tape of Dwight Smith’s July 7, 1977 Santa Barbara Westerners Series presentation on railroad and mining ventures on the Colorado River completes the collection.