John M. Holzworth

              JOHN M. HOLZWORTH
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EXPLORER NATURALIST AUTHOR LECTURER



AUTHOR OF:
THE RIVER OF NO RETURN THE TWIN GRIZZLIES OF ADMIRALTY THE WILD GRIZZLIES OF ALASKA THE BLUE BOOK OF DOGS 


DO YOU KNOW …




That 
THE RIVER OF NO RETURN
 stopped the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805.


That a beautiful eighteen year old Indian girl guided Lewis and Clark to the Pacific.


That the longest and deepest box canyon in the world is in the Salmon River.


That a voyage down 
THE RIVER OF NO RETURN
 is known as the widest boat ride in America.


That the last Indian War was fought in the Salmon River mountains.


That Idaho in Shoshone language means 
The sun is coming down the mountain.


That the great bears of Alaska are the largest carnivorous animals in the world.


That baseball games are played at midnight in sub-arctic Alaska.


That cabbages grow as large as butter tubs, and wild strawberries as large as walnuts.


That Uncle Sam paid seven millions for Alaska and fifteen hundred millions has come from it since.


That in a few isolated areas Alaskan mosquitoes are almost as big as bumble bees.


That southeastern Alaska at sea level is warmer than Washington, D. C.





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BIOGRAPHY AND BACKGROUND



Ask John M. Holzworth WHAT he is and he will tell you, 
A lawyer by training, an explorer by choice.
 The combination of the two strains has resulted in a big, rugged, and active man who has forever been doing unusual deeds in out-of-the-way places on this hemisphere—a man who has gotten a tremendous kick out of life.  Yet thanks to these two sides to the man, his illustrated lectures are a distinct contribution to natural science besides being sure-fire entertainment.  Personal contact with him is a hearty stimulus to people of routine lives.



Explorer, soldier, naturalist, author, lecturer, conservationist, and lawyer—all these titles do not make up John Holzworth until you add Fighter.  From youth on up he has been struggling against odds for certain ideals.  Born on a farm in the West, he ran away to New York at the age of fifteen to get his first job in construction of the subway.  He worked his way through college receiving degrees from Columbia University and New York University Law School—both honors on the same day.  In 1912, he became a member of the prominent Wall Street law firm of Delafield, Thorne, and Rogers.  He served in the World War as captain of artillery.  In 1925 he became Assistant District Attorney of Westchester County, New York, and was very active in prosecuting noted criminals and fighting political bosses.  For several years he was a member of the Public Defender Committee of the New York Bar Association, advocating the Public Defender for penniless defendants charged with crime.



John Holzworth is one of the country's leading naturalists and conservationists, and is now President of the National Association of Wild Life Conservationists.  During summer vacations over twenty-five years ago he began hunting big game in the mountains of Idaho and Montana, and succeeding years in Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon, Alaska and even sub-arctic regions.  In 1919 he began a series of expeditions for the U. S. Biological Survey and the National Museum in Washington, collecting specimens of large game mammals such as Rocky Mountain sheep, caribou, and grizzly bear for study series and museum groups.  On these expeditions to the North he pioneered in the taking of motion pictures of American big game mammals.  Moreover, he discovered several new species of animals.  In the Natural History Museum in New York City is the world's largest species of grizzly named after him—Ursus holzworthi.



He led the movement for more adequate wild life sanctuaries in Alaska and the northwest.  As Chairman of the Alaskan Committee of the New York Zoological Society he has constantly worked for more effective game regulations in Alaska.  He has appeared before various Congressional Committees to advocate cancellation of vast paper pulp concessions which would destroy beautiful scenery and wild life species in National timber reserves in Alaska.  Holzworth confesses that his first hunting exploits brought him many a thrill as his gun brought down deer, bear, or mountain sheep.  But, it was not long before he almost completely abandoned his gun for a motion picture camera.  The increased skill and courage needed for photography in the wilds, appealed to his sense of sportsmanship.  Today, he is one of the leaders of a small army—band of a few men who are attempting to save the remnants of our once plentiful wild life resources and the primitive forests necessary to the survival of wild life.




Opinions About Mr. Holzworth's
Books and Lectures

From the Preface of 
The River of No Return
 by Owen Wister, author of THE VIRGINIAN … Mr. Holzworth knows … his wilderness. … This narrative (of adventure) will make every reader who has done the like in other days and other wildernesses that are wild no more—heave a nostalgic sigh and any reader who craves to do the like will read it hungrily.



From the Preface of 
The Wild Grizzlies of Alaska
 by Dr. William T. Hornaday, former director of the New York Zoological Park … Mr. Holzworth has had amazingly interesting contacts with the Alaskan Brown bear and the Grizzly.  He has given us the most wonderful bear lore and bear pictures that ever came out of Alaska. … His book is delightfully written and as fresh as a mountain breeze.



From the proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, by Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Scientist and first chief of the United States Biological Survey.  John M. Holzworth … has succeeded in taking a remarkable series of photographs and moving pictures of the big Alaska bears.



Stewart Edward White, author and traveler. … A most extraordinary and interesting book. … The pictures are beyond all praise.




From the New York Times. … Mr. Holzworth's illustrated lecture on Alaska and the far North, its magnificent scenery and great mammal life, was easily the outstanding event at the Annual Meeting of the New York Zoological Society last night at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.



Other lecture appearances before the following:




New Jersey Audubon Society—American Soc. of Mammalogists—Boone and Crockett Club—Wilderness Club of Philadelphia—University of Virginia—Adventurers' Club of New York—Camp Fire Club of America—American Game Conference—New York State Ass'n of Women's Clubs—Westchester County Bar Ass'n—New Jersey State Game Ass'n—Saint Nicholas Society of New York.




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LECTURE SUBJECTS OF JOHN M. HOLZWORTH



ALASKA AND THE MIDNIGHT SUN



A dramatic story with motion pictures of our far distant arctic territory.  You meet the great Alaskan bears face to face and see them teaching their cubs discipline.  You watch them catch glistening silver salmon in glacial streams teaming with fish.  You see great Alaskan mountain goats, their white beards blowing in the winds that go whistling across the snow fields.  We lock down on giant valleys, on deep, dark bays, winding through precipitous rock walls that spring from the mirror of water to the fields of snow high above.  Mr. Holzworth draws a colorful background of Alaska with tales about noted characters of early days, stories of hard-pressed men gambling daily with death in their mad rush for gold.  We see breath-taking panoramas of towering mountains, their lower slopes clothed in dense forests.  We see mighty glaciers, and the rushing, tumbling rivers of that great wilderness country.  We see that country of grandeur which is fast becoming the mecca of all world travelers.




THE RIVER OF NO RETURN



The wildest boat ride in America!  Hang on to your seats and thrill to this whirling trip through the longest and deepest canyon in the world.  Adventurers who have gone through the famous canyon of the Colorado have said their boats would not last ten miles in this ordeal of white water.  Mr. Holzworth's queer craft goes pitching through savage, frothy rapids, shooting past precipitous, black walls of rock and jagged boulders—a terrific struggle of man pitting his daring and lightning-fast action against the tremendous energy of a merciless gorge-bound torrent.  The Salmon has claimed the lives of many brave men, a tumbling stream down which a few have successfully past, but up which no man has ever come.  John Holzworth was the first to navigate this famous River and Canyon nearly a quarter of a century ago.  His motion pictures of this death defying journey are stark drama—absolutely authentic.  For eye-filling beauty, he gives you the first movies ever taken of grizzly bears, wild mountain sheep and goats, filmed against a gorgeous drop curtain of this great river and its canyon and towering mountains.




SACAJAWEA



A fascinating, dramatic story of the Indian Princess, captive, slave and finally counselor and guide of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of a century and a third ago, which brought to fulfillment Jefferson's dream of a great empire to the westward.  The tale of this maiden's heroism, guidance, counsel and peacemaking among warring tribes that saved the expedition from failure, is more glamorous and gripping than the most thrilling fiction.  
TIME
 would have selected her as 
The Woman of the Century.
  The story of her later life among Indian tribes and frontier posts as counselor and guide until her death at the age of one hundred years is equally fascinating.  Mr. Holzworth traveled over the mountain wilderness through which Sacajawea so unerringly guided Lewis and Clark to the Pacific.  He secured hitherto unpublished facts from aged Indians who had known Sacajawea and had seen Lewis and Clark in their famous passage and voyage.  This lecture is illustrated with motion and still pictures of the mountain wilderness that was traversed, and of later day events and places in Sacajawea's life.