Archives West Finding Aid

Amos Burg (1901-1986) was born in Portland, Or., to Amos Burg, Sr., and Minerva Ann James Burg (Annie Laurie Burg). Burg, Sr. (1863-1938), immigrated from Norway in 1877 to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he worked in the laundry business and married Minerva Ann James in 1889. They and their infant son, Charles, moved to Portland in 1890, and the senior Burg became part owner of the City Laundry. In Portland, the couple had seven more children, including Amos, Jr. The Burgs' longtime family home at 1706 N.E. Dekum Avenue was still standing as of 2004.

Upon graduation from grammar school in June 1917, Burg persuaded his parents to let him go to sea as bell boy on the passenger ship, Rose City, Portland to San Francisco and Los Angeles. At the end of the summer, he returned to Portland to start high school but the call of the sea was so strong that he returned to sea, where during many voyages in the next several years, he continued his education using the Encyclopaedia Britannica. This whetted his appetite for more learning, so between voyages, he completed a college preparatory course at the Oregon Institute of Technology and then enrolled in science, photography, and journalism courses at the University of Oregon (Eugene) and Oregon State College (now Oregon State University, Corvallis) between adventures (1926-1929), although he never earned a degree. He helped to finance his education and adventures by using his sea voyages as an opportunity to earn some money importing Oriental rug, silks, and pearls.

Burg was heralded for making the first complete canoe voyage on the Columbia River from its headwaters in Columbia Lake, B.C., to the Pacific Oct. 20, 1924-Jan. 7, 1925. The newspapers followed his adventure, and this voyage started his lecture career, as he became a sought-after speaker in Portland and elsewhere in western Oregon. By 1930, he was becoming a successsful lecturer on the national circuit with tales of his adventures, illustrated with his own films and slides, accompanied by narration in his self-depracating witty style. Burg followed up his Columbia River triumph in the summer of 1925 with a canoe voyage from the headwaters of the Snake River at Jackson Lake, Wyo., through Hells Canyon, and down the Columbia River to its mouth. At the Cascades of the Columbia (site of the Bonneville Dam in 2004), Fox Movietone and International Newsreel cameramen persuaded Burg to run the cascades in his canoe, which resulted in International newsreel headlines, "Amos Burg first man to attempt passage of swirling Columbia waters in frail craft." Well into the 1930s, Burg continued to make periodic canoe trips on the Columbia, Snake, Yukon and Northwest Territories rivers, culminating in his 1938 trip to film Buzz Holmstrom's re-creation of his 1937 one-man trip down the Green and Colorado rivers. Burg took the first inflatable rubber raft down the Colorado on this trip, and his film, Conquering the Colorado won an Academy Award nomination for short subjects in 1939.

Burg extended his travels around the world aboard the yacht, Camargo, 1931-1932, and followed up in 1933-1934 with a trip in a small boat around Cape Horn. Filmmaking for ERPI and Encyclopaedia Britannica subsequently took him throughout the western United States, Central and South America, Alaska, Europe, and Asia.

In the early 1950s, Burg settled down in Alaska, working forst for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and then establishing himself with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 1955-1974. He established the department's Information and Education Section and made many films as part of his work. He also made the Alaska Centennial film, Juneau, Alaska's Capital City. He continued to make many river trips well after his retirement. He died in Alaska in 1985, and his ashes have since been scattered on many of the rivers he voyaged.