Arriving in Green River, Wyoming in early September 1911, the Kolbs brought a relatively new invention with them - a movie camera. They were to take the first moving pictures of the river and canyons.

Ellsworth Kolb later recorded the town’s reception of their plan, “The whole of Green River City, it seemed, had learned of our project, and came to inspect, or advise or jeer at us. The kindest of them wished us well: the other sort told us “it would serve us right” but none of our callers had any encouragement. Many were the stories of disaster and death with which they entertained us.”

The Kolbs’ boats soon arrived on the Union Pacific railroad. With the arrival of James Fagin, a young man from San Francisco hired to help the brothers with their camp gear, the expedition launched on September 9,1911.

The brothers made it all the way to the Gulf of California without incident. They returned to their photo studio and lived at the Grand Canyon until they died in the 1970s.