One summer afternoon in 1928, better than a thousand people packed shoulder to shoulder along this very rim, hats off, leaning out over the drop to watch a man go over South Falls in a homemade boat. His name was Al Faussett, a Washington logger and daredevil who built his own craft and ran seven waterfalls in three years, and this 177-foot plunge was the tallest he'd ever dared. This tale stands right where his canvas boat balanced on the lip, packed with inner tubes against the blow, and follows what happened when the plan to flush him over clean went sideways. It's a story of nerve, a crowd's held breath, and a twist about where all the gate money went that you won't find on any signpost. Stand at the rail and let it pull you in.
Now hold on, friend — don't go snapping your photo and shuffling off just yet. Name's Ranger Boone Merrick, and I've got a tale that belongs to this rim you're standing on. Right here. Not down the trail, not back at the lodge — here, where the lip of the creek goes glassy and smooth and then just lets go into all that nothing.
You're looking at South Falls. A hundred and seventy-seven feet, one clean drop, straight down to that pool you can hear pounding away far below. Listen to it a second. Feel that cool air climbing up off the water and onto your face. That sound has been the same for ten thousand years. But one summer afternoon, it had to share the air with something else — the roar of better than a thousand people, packed shoulder to shoulder right along this railing, hats off, leaning out over the drop to see a man Risk his life.
It was the summer of nineteen twenty-eight. The man's name was Al Faussett, a logger out of the Snohomish country up in Washington, born in eighteen seventy-nine. He wasn't a young man anymore. He was a daredevil — folks back then called him the Evil Knievel of his day, only there wasn't any Evil Knievel yet to compare him to. From nineteen twenty-six to twenty-nine, Al went over seven different waterfalls in boats he built with his own two hands. South Falls was the tallest he'd tried yet. The crown of them all.
He came at it like a man who'd thought it through. A Portland canvas-tent outfit named Hirsch-Weiss stitched him a boat — about twelve feet of canvas stretched over a wood frame — and Al packed the inside of it with thirty-six inflated inner tubes, the kind out of automobile tires, to take the blow. His plan was simple enough on paper. Build a little ramp out over the lip, right about where your boots are. Dam the creek up above. When the moment came, his men would bust that dam open and a wall of water would flush him over clean and carry him out past the rocks.
And here's the turn, friend. Near nothing worked the way they swore it would. The dam gave him hardly a shove — barely a trickle where there should've been a flood. So two of his men laid their hands on that loaded canvas boat and shoved it over the edge by main strength. Think on that a moment. A grown man, sealed up in a boat full of rubber, getting pushed off the lip of this falls by hand because the water wouldn't take him. The guide cable they'd strung down the face tore loose partway down. And that little boat fell the last long stretch all on its own — near two hundred feet, in less than three seconds — and slammed into the pool below on its side.
The crowd went dead quiet. Then they ran for the bank.
They pulled Al out broke up bad. Two sprained ankles. A fractured right hand. Several ribs stove in. And hurts down deep inside a man you can't see and can't set. They carried him off to the hospital over in Silverton, and it took him months to mend. But the worst of it wasn't the bones. The story goes that all of Al's big Oregon payday — the gate money from every soul who paid to watch, and the side-bets too — walked clean out of this canyon in the pocket of his own manager. The man was never seen again. Not the money either. Al had gone over the tallest falls he'd ever faced, lived through it by the grace of God and thirty-six inner tubes, and woke up in a hospital bed with broken ribs and empty hands.
Now I trade in tales, not testimony, so take that part how you like. But Al, he lived. Twenty more years, near enough — passed in nineteen forty-eight. And some folks say if you stand on this rim on a warm summer afternoon, in the quiet, with the falls going steady, you can still feel that crowd. The held breath of a thousand people. The cheer that came after, when they saw the boat move.
I've stood right here many a time and watched the water go over that lip, smooth as glass, just the way it did for him. And I'll tell you true — I can't look at it now without seeing a canvas boat balanced up there on the edge, with a thousand faces leaning in, waiting.
