Jerry Pankow

Snags and Sawyers: 2000 Miles Down the Arkansas River Jerry Pankow

Three young men. Two cedar canoes. Two untamed rivers. A journey over 2000 miles. No one had done it. Could they? Follow Johnny, Dick, and Jerry from Pueblo, Colorado to New Orleans, Louisiana as they face flood and drought, snakes and sunburn, snags and sawyers on their epic trip down the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans in 1949. Based on diary entries, letters, and newspaper articles from 1949, theirs is a story of the greatest generation in the years after the war, when the America was full of promise and nothing seemed impossible.