“Goodby, Katie!” (for the 2nd time…)

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I had heard about Katie Lee almost from the first moment I moved to Jerome in 1983… the stories were vast and varied to say the least! The first time I had the honor of stepping into her home was when her long time friend, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, came to town to visit her. Ramblin’ Jack had been a folk hero of mine for years so I asked Katie if I might attend the little get together she was hosting and she said “Sure!”. It was an evening I will never forget. Ranblin’ Jack sat in Katie’s front room to … Continue reading →

Katie & Joey’s Last Ride on The San Juan

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[I asked Jody Drake, a long time and close friend of Katie’s, to share her experience of spreading Katie & Joey’s ashes… what follows are the words and photos from the adventure.] “The first week in May brought warm weather accompanied by a cool breeze to the small town of Bluff Utah. Katie always called it the perfect time of year, as I drove into the Recapture Lodge my mind was filled with joyous memories of the times I had spent there with her and Joey. I had asked Katie numerous times “what do you want me to do with … Continue reading →

Katie Lee, Our Lady of Glen Canyon

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Brett Martin May 24, 2018 Before her death last November, Katie Lee spent half a century working to restore Glen Canyon, a lost place that was even more astounding than Grand Canyon Katie Lee was a notoriously blunt woman. I had been in her living room, in Jerome, Arizona, for just ten minutes last summer before we covered sex and death. I had noticed a model sitting on a shelf—a small white dory with the name Mexican Hat Expeditions painted on its side. It was a replica of the crafts on which, half a century ago, Lee first forayed through … Continue reading →

Katie Lee: I Will Return

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Katie Lee October 23, 1919 – November 1, 2017 It is with a saddened heart that we share the news that our beloved Katie Lee passed away in her sleep this morning in her home in Jerome, Arizona. Below is a personal memorial written this morning by her dear friend, Diane Rapaport. Katie Lee: I Will Return Copyright 2017 Diane Sward Rapaport My close friend Katie Lee died peacefully in her home in Jerome on November 1, 2017. She was 98 years old. I am immensely sad. Katie lit a wildfire in her heart about the loss of Glen Canyon … Continue reading →

Bringing a long-lost artifact back to the Hopi

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Iconic Western author Katie Lee journeys with a tribe’s spiritual talisman. Katie Lee Essay Sept. 5, 2015 It all began on a mild September day in 1968 when I stopped to visit my old friend Slim Williams, then living in his house trailer at Fry Canyon, Utah. He’d never owned a telephone in all the years I’d known him. I’d show up and we’d go hiking or jeeping, looking for old trails, hunting up mine roads, or just relaxing in the trailer. Slim was a man-of-all-trades who had come west from Missouri, probably in his twenties—a miner, assayer, boatman, hunter, … Continue reading →

Afterword from Glen Canyon Betrayed

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Forty Years Later “…we must preserve it—not for the beauty, biology or God and country, but so we can always know the place we dream of being, the place we cannot belong. The place for our yearning.”                  Chuck Bowden, author Inferno How many times in forty years have I heard these words, “Wouldn’t you rather have Glen Canyon safe under water where nobody could get to it?” and thought… Maybe so. Only one of a ton of them would appreciate the fluted canyons, amphitheatres, temples, cathedrasl, cataracts, potholes, ruins and granaries; much less, where they were, or treasure the magic … Continue reading →

Cline Library Interview

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My Parents I had great parents, really. I was very, very lucky. I had a dad who was like a kid, always. Taught me how to stay outdoors and taught me how to shoot and hunt when I was old enough. Took me on picnics–my mother and dad did that, of course. My dad was the athletic type, and my mother was the artistic type. So I was influenced from both sides there. My mother was a singer and a teacher of music, before she married my dad. When I look back on it, I think, “Wow, how lucky can … Continue reading →

Interview with The Kitchen Sisters

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The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) produce the NPR series Hidden Kitchens, which explores how communities come together through food. As California residents, they’ve been “watching every year the encroachment and development of the west.” In their two-part radio documentary “Cry Me a River,” produced with Martha Ham, they visit the West we lost through the stories of three river guides who try – and fail – to stop the damming of their rivers and interviewed Katie Lee. Ken and Katie Lee and Mark DuBois are such great characters. What drew you to them? Nikki Silva: I think … Continue reading →

Maude, Billy & Mr.’ D’ – Western Folk Opera

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Way back in the mid-fifties, I read a story in the Saturday Evening Post titled, “The Rider on the Pale Stallion”, written by Helen Eustis, an author well regarded back then in the heyday of folk music and folk tales. Her story simply cried aloud for music and rhyme, so I began making it into a Folk Opera, writing lyrics and music, using the author’s words in-between the songs to keep the story intact. While I was performing at the Blue Angel in New York, and had almost finished the music, I looked her up. I played it on my … Continue reading →

The Story of the Arizona Killer Song

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I’d just returned from a gig at Telluride MountainFilm Festival in 2008—where they showed a documentary DVD of my activism; trying to save our Colorado River and restore Glen Canyon—to be zapped back into my past with a force that has left me dazed. Out of the blue I get an email from a guy named Bill who is a PhD student in rhetoric and a composition teacher at Carnegie-Mellon University. He tells me he saw this movie 3:10 to Yuma and they played a verse from a song called “The Arizona Killer.” When he did a web search about … Continue reading →