This episode first aired in April 2024.
'Westwater Lost and Found: Expanded Edition' is the continuing story of Westwater — a relatively short, deep canyon near the Utah-Colorado state line that has become one of the most popular river-running destinations in the Southwest — and its lasting significance to the study of the Upper Colorado River.
Thousands of recreational river runners have pushed this backwater place into the foreground of modern popular culture in the West. Westwater represents one common sequence in western history: the late opening of unexplored territories, the sporadic and ultimately often unsuccessful attempts to develop them, their renewed obscurity when development doesn’t succeed, their attraction to a marginal society of dreamers and schemers, and the modern rediscovery of them due to new cultural motives, especially outdoor recreation, which has brought many people into thousands of remote corners of the West.
Mike Milligan began his river career in 1978, working for Western River Expeditions. He has boated the Colorado River from Loma, Colorado, to Lake Mead, including Ruby Canyon, Westwater Canyon, Cataract, and Grand. He has also run most of the Green River, the San Juan River, and the Snake River.
