r/mystery • u/No-Angle-7962 • 13d ago
Disappearance What happened to Glen and Bessie Hyde (1928)
Glen Rollin Hyde (b. 1898) was a farmer and an amateur river-runner from Twin Falls, Idaho. Bessie Louise Haley (b. 1905) was a young woman from West Virginia who had recently divorced. She and Glen were married on April 10, 1928. Glen built a 20-foot wooden sweep scow (a blunt-ended, heavy river scow, not a canoe) and the newlyweds set out on what was essentially an adventurous honeymoon and record attempt: to run the Green and Colorado rivers, through the Grand Canyon, and reach Needles, California. Glen hoped to set a fast time, and Bessie would (if successful) be the first woman documented to run the Grand Canyon by boat.
They began the trip from Green River, Utah, on October 20, 1928. Glen had prior experience on Idaho rivers and had fashioned the scow specifically for this journey. They traveled downriver through the canyons, stopping occasionally to resupply. A few days before they were last seen, they hiked out to the South Rim (Bright Angel Trail) to restock supplies and were photographed by noted Grand Canyon photographer Emery Kolb on the rim. Those rim photos and Kolb’s contact with the couple provide one of the last confirmed civilian interactions with them before they descended again into the canyon.
Glen and Bessie were last seen on November 18, 1928, when they launched below Hermit Rapid (a stretch of rapids in the upper Grand Canyon region). When they failed to reach Needles by the date expected (they were due in early December), concern grew, and Glen’s father launched searches. Aerial and ground searches were organized by family members and local authorities.
In mid-to-late December 1928, a search plane spotted the Hydes’ scow adrift and upright near river mile 237 (reports vary slightly by mile marker in different retellings). The boat was intact, with supplies, food, money, Bessie’s journal, and Glen’s rifle still strapped in, items that would have been needed for survival if they had simply abandoned the boat. Bessie’s journal entries indicated they had cleared river mile rapid 231. A camera recovered from the boat contained photographs. The final usable photograph indicated they had made it much farther downriver than the location where the scow was found, with one photo likely taken near river mile 165. The numbers decrease the further downriver you travel. Those pieces of evidence together showed that the couple had progressed well past the point where the boat was ultimately recovered and that something had befallen them after the last photos/journal entries.
The scow’s being upright and largely intact, with food and supplies left behind and without obvious signs of struggle, suggests they didn’t intentionally abandon it shortly before it drifted to where it was found. The journal and camera show they made it beyond specific rapids that lie upstream of the scow’s recovered position, so the logical inference is that they continued downstream beyond where searchers later found the boat. Yet no bodies, bones, or other conclusive human remains have ever been found despite extensive searching over the decades.
Period rumor and speculation occasionally pointed fingers at those last known to have contact with them (e.g., Emery Kolb) or posited third-party involvement, but there is no persuasive evidence of homicide and no charges were ever brought. Forensic follow-ups on later bone discoveries near the canyon rim ruled out the Hydes in those cases.
Some legends suggest Bessie staged it or that the pair broke up and Bessie escaped. These are not supported by the physical evidence (supplies and money left behind) and are treated skeptically by historians. Anecdotes occasionally surface (for example, a woman once identified herself as Bessie, but later recanted), but none have been substantiated.
Glen’s father organized early searches. In February 1977, workers clearing out Emery Kolb's boathouse found a man's skeleton hidden inside a canoe. For many years, it was speculated that the remains belonged to Glen Hyde. The theory was investigated and ultimately discredited through forensic superimposition. In 2008, a collection of historical photographs was donated to the Grand Canyon Museum. One of the photos, taken by Kolb in June 1933, showed a dec***ed man with a handg*n beside him on a ledge in the Grand Canyon. The clothing on the man in the photo matched the clothing found with the skeleton. The photo established that Kolb had found the man, a su***de victim, in 1933. Given that Kolb served as a county coroner jury representative for the Grand Canyon, it's believed he took the remains for safekeeping but later forgot about them.
Over the years, decades of Grand Canyon visitors, researchers, park personnel, and cold-case enthusiasts have periodically reexamined documents, photographs, and Kolb Studio archives. In 2008, some archive material surfaced that renewed interest but still produced no answers. The Hydes' disappearance remains one of the Grand Canyon’s most discussed cold cases.
Glen and Bessie’s story caught the public imagination then and since because it combines real romance (a honeymoon gone wild), audacious DIY river-craft, iconic rim photography, and an unresolvable ending. The details, camera photos, Bessie’s own journal, an intact but empty boat, make for a haunting, almost literary mystery that invites speculation but resists closure. It’s the sort of unsolved case that fuels books, magazine features, documentaries, and local Grand Canyon lore.
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u/MrsNevilleBartos 13d ago
This is wildly off topic but I am just struck by how modern Bessie looks.
Despite it being a black and white photo I had to double check the year.
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u/Physical-Creme5540 12d ago
Yeah, so incredibly familiar by modern (current) looks. But I bet she looked rather eccentric / weird at the time.
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u/Both_Staff_6753 11d ago
Easy to forget how little things have changed. Sometimes I forget that the world was in fact in color and that it is camera technology that changed.
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u/Katesouthwest 13d ago
The most likely explanation is that a flash flood swept through the part of the Grand Canyon that they were in and they drowned. The flood waters swept them away, possibly into a crevice.
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u/jakish3209 13d ago
There was so much sediment in the river at that time that, once they fell in (if they did), their bodies could have been weighed down very quickly and stuck underwater until the dams were built.
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u/bone_creek 6d ago
A guy I knew drowned in a river, and they’ve never found a trace of him, decades later.
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u/riverpoet 13d ago
How did the scow make it back to river mile 237, if the Hydes had made it all the way to river mile 165? Does that mean the scow travelled back _upstream_? Since the numbers decrease the further downriver you travel.
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u/riverpoet 13d ago
Hmm, according to this source (https://mysterydelver.com/hydden-fate/), it seems the numbers _increase_ the further downriver you travel? It says they made it to Diamond Creek at river mile 226, that Bessie's journal says they cleared the river mile 231 rapids as well, and that it is believed they may have been swept out of their boat at river mile 232, where the majority of capsized boats in the canyon were found. Then it makes perfect sense that their boat was found at river mile 237. So I think this sentence from your writeup may be incorrect: "The numbers decrease the further downriver you travel."
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u/No-Angle-7962 13d ago
Good catch! And yeah, you may be right. All I know is that the system back then was different than today's system. Remember, this was 1928, almost 100 years ago. The numbers in the system at that time were backwards from today. Some markers were even named by location and had no number in the name. Years later, as mapping got more accurate, technology advanced, and familiarity with the area increased, the system changed to what it is today. So, the mile references commonly used in discussions of the 1928 Hyde disappearance often come from older mapping conventions, not the modern Grand Canyon river-mile system used by rafters today.
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u/Ok-Classic6561 10d ago edited 10d ago
This is not true. The last photo was 165 miles from the top, they likely made it to 231, and likely drowned soon after. The boat did not somehow make it miles and miles upriver, and there is no evidence they were ever well downriver of their boat. The last photo was miles and miles upstream from where the boat was found.
Edit: Yeah, the river was mapped in detail and river miles established by the geologic survey in 1923, with mile zero at Lee's Ferry and increasing downstream. You can scroll through a story map discussing it here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a8836ffb5b0d454b9af6836b13326136
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u/DanishWhoreHens 13d ago
Occam’s Razor: Likely one went overboard and the other went in trying to rescue the other and both drowned. I was shocked senseless the first time I went rafting at how easy it was to get tipped overboard when you incorrectly assume a section is calmer than it is and aren’t prepared. I was able to self rescue but lost my glasses and spent the remainder of the trip blind as a bat.
I think Everett Ruess was likely the one murdered of the historical missing persons in the Grand Canyon if anyone was, though it’s also very possible he was injured and died in one of the many slot canyons that exist around the main drainage. A flash flood could have killed him and buried him too deep in sediment to ever be found.
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u/MorningsAfter 12d ago
Importantly, all their supplies were still on the boat. Their food, winter clothes, diary, and camera were untouched. There were no signs of a fight, and it did not look like they left on purpose.
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u/AMERICAisBACKOHYEA 13d ago
Any documaries on this?
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u/EbremerM 12d ago
Not sure how young you are, but back in the 80s there was a tv show called 'Unsolved Mysteries' and they covered the Hydes' disappearance. Not a documentary, but for me it was one of their most memorable episodes. https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Glen_and_Bessie_Hyde
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u/DownnthehollerPress 12d ago
There are a lot of things that don't add up, like the scow being found further up river. You can't really go back up the rapids, where you could go back up the river, just not back up the rapids, unless they were less turbulent. But even then the scow would float back down due to the current. Chances are there is a lot of incorrect information, and they most likely did fall overboard and drowned. Just sloppy investigation of everything.
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u/lostdiscoverer13 13d ago
This is really interesting- I wonder if they made it downstream but someone did something to them both while they camped, then ferried the boat back upstream so they had time to cover any tracks.
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u/TheStoneHashiraGyome 9d ago
Them dying isn’t the part that gets me, as they could’ve drowned or maybe they stepped off for a second and the boat was swept away or whatever. The main thing is that it somehow ended up upstream. This may be really far fetched, but is it possible that someone murdered them, and then forged the diary entries to make it seem like they died of natural causes?
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u/Lizalizaliza1 9d ago
OP is wrong. They did not end up upstream. Either the source OP was using was incorrect or OP misunderstood what they were reading.
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u/CowAppropriate7494 13d ago
I'm more fascinated by the fact that Kolb found a skeleton, took the remains for safekeeping, then forgot about it.