In 1869, Major John Wesley Powell and a team of rag-tag mountain men became the first to explore the Canyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers, on their journey from Wyoming to Nevada by boat. Two years later, Powell returned to better measure, qualify, and quantify the often hasty observations he made on his first voyage. River running had not evolved into the art form it is today, and molehill rapids often had mountainous results. Such it was half-way through Desolation Canyon on the Green River, at what is today considered a relatively minor riffle. Powell’s men lined the boats laboriously down the rocky shore, slipping on the rocks, stumbling in the swift current, and getting thoroughly soaked. Frederick Dellenbaugh, seventeen at the time, wrote:

…when we had finished that we were tired, hungry, wet, and cold, so under a cottonwood tree on the right we stopped for needed refreshment, and while it was preparing most of us hung our clothes on the branches of a fallen tree to dry. The rapid foaming and fuming presented so vigorous an appearance and made so much noise we thought it ought to be named, and it was called Fretwater Falls.

Frank Bishop described the scene at their mid-day camp:

What a picture sitting here under a huge cottonwood; Clem sitting on a massive root is pounding the pile of driftwood and singing “Put Me In My Little Bed,” Steward just below him with his hat and shirt on writing up his diary. Mr. Beaman a little to his left is sitting in undress uniform. Fred is sitting on a pine log just above me drying his pants on a tree; Jack in the same occupation, only turning before the fire like a spitted chicken. Andy is cooking dinner and I am reclining on the sand and driftwood writing, while the more substantial part of my dress is hanging on a dead tree keeping the company of two or three others of the same sort. Clem seems to think it capital fun to knock sand into my face while I am writing. It may be to him, but I fail to see the point of his gaudy amusement. Dinner is called and there is a general rush and rally on the biscuits and coffee. Beaman has gone up to take a picture of ‘Fretwater Falls,’ the name we gave to the last rapid.

At the risk of being overly repetitive, two more renditions, each unique and charming, are herewith presented. Here is John F. Steward’s account:

So far each crew had managed its own boat, but number 4 we found to be a fall of about 6 feet, with rocks besetting the channel. This required the entire force. By means of a hundred foot line at the bow and another at the stern, and with 2 men in the boats to prevent them from dashing against the rocks, we made the passage without unpacking, but not without much labor. We all got wet from top to toe, and ran 4¼ miles before stopping for dinner, on the right bank beneath some cottonwood trees. Distortion of the cottonwood trees is a characteristic feature here. The heavy winds of the canyons seem to twist their trunk, when young, into shapes that they retain through life. Ash-leafed maples and willows are the only other kinds along the river; but we find upon the walls, which are not very abrupt, cedars, scrub pines and firs. The last 3 are not to be seen upon other than north slopes. Dinner is being prepared, and here we are in a group, presenting a scene more grotesque than beautiful. We have just come out of the water, and it has been the motive of each to divest himself of his dampened linens and hang them upon the fallen tree upon which I am sitting. Fred is an exception, sitting here singing “Put me in my little bed,” and keeping time with a stick with which he is beating the sand, but stopping occasionally to chuckle over Bishop’s Methodist oaths. The latter, sitting in his nether garments, with shirt flaps spread to the sun, receives the sand that Fred is kicking up with his stick. Jack, with shirt and pants yet in place, is spread loosely upon the warm sand, and, to allow the sun to have an equal drying effect all around, shifts occasionally from side to side. The Professor is just below looking for a passage through the falls, and Jones, always ready with a mouthful of advice, is pointing out his “best plan.” Andy, always anxious to supply the wants of the inner man, with hands in dough, is patiently waiting for the old Dutch oven to heat, in the meantime stoutly declaring it was not true that he laughed when Clem was thrown so violently into the water. The view of the falls from the dinner station is as a sea of foam and suggests the idea of calling it “Fret Water Falls.’

Major Powell’s cousin Clem had this to say. (The Major himself had skipped this section of the voyage to attend to his wife’s health in Salt Lake City.)

Twas a hard one to get through, current swift and fall of 3 or 4 feet and filled with rocks. We let down each boat separately, wading hip deep to guide her and the others holding on to the rocks, while every now and then the boat would give a sudden jerk and some poor fellow at the rope would be floundering in the water and laughed at by his comrades; but his turn to laugh would soon come. Spent about an hour and a half in getting over it and dropping down a short distance; landed for dinner on a sand bank under a huge cottonwood tree on the right-hand side. The portages we have made this morning we have called “kicking portages,” a new way a couple of us fellows have of going to the boat and kicking her off the rocks. While Andy is getting dinner we are in “un-dress uniform,” drying out, with pantaloons, Ec., on the surrounding limbs. After dinner Beaman took a view of “Fret Water Falls,” as we have called them.

The word fretwater appears to have been coined on the spot–it has no historical presence prior to that. Brad often read the above passages to his passengers on Desolation river trips, and came to enjoy the the word Fretwater enough that in 1998 he named his publishing empire after it. The name stuck and attached itself to the boatshop a decade later.

Powell’s men could have saved a day of toil, trouble, and abuse, by just floating down the middle of this insignificant riffle. Fretwater seems to exemplify fretting and stewing over something entirely trivial, as we so often do in life. We’d all be better off damning the torpedos and flying right down the middle, full speed ahead. It’s an object lesson we take to heart at the boatshop–rather than worry obsessively about all the “what ifs” while accomplishing nothing, we prefer to just try it and find out.