Frederick S. Dellenbaugh was born in McConnelsville, Ohio, in 1853. His expedition down the Colorado River at age seventeen was where he discovered his lifework as an American explorer. An artist and a writer, Dellenbaugh traveled to Iceland, Norway, the West Indies, the American West, Alaska, and even Siberia. His home base was in New York City, where he founded the Explorers Club in 1904. In the winter of 1935, at the age of eighty-one, Dellenbaugh died of pneumonia after a walk through the snow to an Explorers meeting in New York City.