Disappearance of Glen and Bessie Hyde

Glen Rollin Hyde, a farmer from Twin Falls, Idaho, born December 9, 1898, and Bessie Louise Haley, a divorcee from Parkersburg, West Virginia, born December 29, 1905, met in 1927 aboard a passenger ship traveling to Los Angeles. They married on April 10, 1928, the day after Bessie's divorce from her first husband became final. Glen had prior river-running experience, having traveled Idaho's Salmon and Snake Rivers in 1926 with an experienced river runner known as "Cap" Guleke. Bessie was comparatively new to the activity.

In October 1928, the couple traveled to Green River, Utah, where Glen built a twenty-foot wooden sweep scow, a boat style typical of Idaho river runners of the era. On October 20, 1928, they set out down the Green and Colorado Rivers as a honeymoon trip. Glen intended to set a speed record for transiting the Grand Canyon and to place Bessie in the record books as the first documented woman to run the canyon.

The Hydes were last seen on Sunday, November 18, 1928, boating downriver below Hermit Rapid. A few days earlier, they had hiked out via Bright Angel Trail to resupply and were photographed at the South Rim by photographer Emery Kolb before returning to the river. Some Colorado River historians, including Otis R. Marston, note that a man rode with them from Phantom Ranch to Hermit Rapid for one day and may have been the last person to see them alive; this account appears in the Ken Burns PBS documentary series "National Parks: America's Best Idea" and in Marston's book.

A search effort, initiated by Glen's father Rollin even before the couple was officially considered overdue at Needles, California, on December 6, 1928, located their scow adrift near river mile 237 on December 19. The boat was upright, intact, and still carrying its supplies. A camera recovered from the boat by Emery and Ellsworth Kolb contained a final photograph believed taken near river mile 165 around November 27. Evidence suggested the couple reached as far as river mile 226 at Diamond Creek, where they likely camped; Bessie's journal noted they had cleared 231 Mile Rapid. Marston theorized the couple were swept from the boat when it struck submerged rocks near river mile 232, a location he described as having damaged, snared, or capsized more boats than any other spot in the canyon. No trace of the Hydes has ever been found.

Over the decades, unverified rumors emerged, including a 1971 claim by an elderly rafting passenger who said she was Bessie Hyde and had killed her husband; she later recanted, and her account did not match Glen Hyde's known behavior. Speculation also arose after rafter Georgie Clark's 1992 death that she might have been Bessie Hyde, based on documents and a pistol found among her belongings, but no conclusive link was established, and Clark's early life is otherwise well documented. Skeletal remains found in 1933 on Emery Kolb's property, with a bullet in the skull, briefly drew suspicion toward Kolb, but University of Arizona forensic analysis determined the remains belonged to a man no older than 22 who died no earlier than 1932, ruling out Glen Hyde. In 2008, the remains were identified as those of an unrelated 1933 suicide victim.