Charles Kelly was born February 3, 1889, in a roaring lumber camp in Cedar Springs, Michigan. As a boy of seven he learned to set type in a small print shop which his father used to turn out religious tracts. He attended college in Indiana for a short time, but when money ran out he began wandering as a tramp printer in the West and Far West. He served in the army during World War I, during which time he met and corresponded with Harriette Greener. In February 1919, he and Harriette married and settled in Utah. For the next twenty years Kelly continued to earn his living as a linotype operator and printer, eventually becoming a partner in the Western Printing Company. In the meantime, he became interesting in local history, as a result of a trip to the Great Salt Lake Desert in 1929. Although he continued in the printing business, his passion was to research and write about the stories of the old West. He was particularly interested in the Utah-Arizona-Nevada region. His publications included Salt Desert Trails (1929), Holy Murder (1934, the story of Porter Rockwell), Old Greenwood (1936, the story of Caleb Greenwood), Miles Goodyear (1937), and Outlaw Trail (1938, a history of Butch Cassidy). Kelly also edited the Journals of John D. Lee, 1846-1847 and 1859 (1938) and wrote numerous articles. He died on April 19, 1971.

Kelly was extremely bold in many aspects of his life- in outdoor adventures, in attitude, and in politics. He took the first automobile across the Salt Lake Desert on the Donner trail, and he floated Glen Canyon several times in the years when it was not generally known. As the first custodian of Capitol Reef National Monument, he compiled an immense body of interpretive information. Extremely anti-religious, he lived squarely in the middle of Mormon country and dared the Mormons to do something about it. He was also one of the founding fathers of the Utah Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

For more information about Kelly see, A. Russel Mortensen, "In Memoriam," Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (Spring 1971): 199-200 and Gary Topping, "Charles Kelly's Glen Canyon Ventures and Adventures," Utah Historical Quarterly 55 (Spring 1987): 120-136.