Georgie White Clark (1911–1992) was a river-running guide in the Grand Canyon. She was the first woman to run the Grand Canyon as a commercial enterprise, and she introduced several innovations and adjustments to the way that guides ran the Colorado. In particular, she used large army-surplus rafts, often lashing together multiple rafts, to maintain stability in the large rapids. In 2001, the United States Board on Geographic Names renamed Mile 24 Rapid in her honor. Early years Born Bessie DeRoss in Oklahoma, she was raised in Denver, CO from the age of nine. She married Harold Clark while still in high school and had a daughter, Sommona Rose, at the age of 17. She moved to Chicago for several years, then to New York City with her husband, finding office work at Radio City Music Hall, and divorced him not long after a cross-country bicycle trip in 1936. She was briefly married to James White. The West and the Grand Canyon Georgie and her daughter were close companions after her divorce from Clark, engaging in outdoor activities such as mountain and rock climbing, skiing, skating, and bicycling. In 1944, her 15-year-old daughter was killed by a hit-and-run driver while bicycling. She took to hiking in the desert with a friend, Harry Aleson. They found in one another what author David Lavender calls a mutual sedation for the lonely, restless questing that was eating out their insides. Harry had recently fallen in love with the lower Colorado River through Grand Canyon, and invited White on a different sort of adventure, to demonstrate that in the event of a boating accident, it would be easier to float downstream than hike out. So in late June 1945, they made their way up river from Diamond Creek at mile 226, and plunged in the current, running at , and "swam" down to Lake Mead. Though wearing the bulky "Mae West" life jacket, they were still able to carry backpacks for watertight tins that contained first-aid supplies, food, cameras and film. They arrived exhausted three days later at Lake Mead. The eccentric pair wanted to prove beyond a doubt that river travel was a safe proposition, and provide good press for the emerging commercial rafting industry. So in June 1946, Aleson and White hiked down Parashant Wash, arriving at the Colorado River at mile 198. After recovering from their epic hike, where they nearly