term for the prehistoric people of the Colorado Plateau region. The Hopi, their descendants, prefer that this term not be used, as it is a derogatory Navajo term, meaning “enemy ancestor.”)
A second group of people, the Cerbat/Pai, migrated from the Mojave Desert to the Grand Canyon region close to the time of the collapse of the Puebloan culture and settled the plateau country and fertile tributary valleys to the south of the Colorado River. The only Native Americans in the Grand Canyon region today are descendants of these people: the Havasupai tribe inhabiting Havasu Canyon to the west (downstream) of the corridor trails and the Hualapai tribe living on a reservation west of Grand Canyon National Park. While the tribes now live farther west, the Havasupai once farmed Indian Garden on the Bright Angel Trail.
The Southern Paiute also inhabited the Grand Canyon region for approximately six centuries until the arrival of white men, predominantly living on the north side of the Colorado River. The Paiute were not farmers; they lived solely on what they hunted and gathered.
PUEBLO AT BRIGHT ANGEL CREEK
The ruins of a pueblo are visible at the mouth of Bright Angel Creek, between the Bright Angel Creek Campground and the mule bridge. The kiva was built when the site was first occupied, around A.D. 1050, while the living area dates to A.D. 1100. By A.D. 1140 this site, like most habitations along the Colorado River, was abandoned because of increasing drought. Major John Wesley Powell recorded this site during his first descent of the Colorado River.
PIONEERS
The first view of the Grand Canyon by a nonnative person was in 1540 by a Spanish party led by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. They were unimpressed with the difficult landscape, and Native Americans continued to be the only inhabitants of the area for many years. Only in 1826 did a party of fur trappers reach the rim; they were likewise disappointed by the steep, deep, contorted canyon and large river—and didn’t recruit others to the location.
Explorers and settlers were first drawn to the area in larger numbers after Major John Wesley Powell explored the length of the Grand Canyon by boat in 1869 and 1871. He too discovered that the country was rough and dangerous, but viewed the difficulties as an adventure and the Grand Canyon as a place of scientific interest, rather than somewhere to avoid. Indeed, just two years after his first, rather disastrous trip, he returned to descend the river a second time and continue his scientific explorations. Following the 1871 excursion he began to promote the Grand Canyon as a tourist venue. However, it was initially the possibility of mineral riches that drew people, with hundreds arriving at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in 1872 for a short-lived gold rush. No mineral riches were found in the vicinity of Bright Angel and South Kaibab trails, but many prospects and a few larger mines exist within the park, including the prominent Orphan Mine, a copper and then uranium mine that can be viewed at Powell Point, as well as a large copper vein along the Grandview Trail. A few small mine shafts exist along the Bright Angel Trail, both near the top of Devils Corkscrew and partway down Pipe Creek.
MAJOR JOHN WESLEY POWELL
Because of his two pioneering descents down the Colorado River in 1869 and 1871, John Wesley Powell’s name is synonymous with the Grand Canyon region. When he boarded the Emma Dean, a boat he had named after his wife, he was not new to river exploration. Already in 1856, at age 22, he had rowed a length of the Mississippi River, followed by the Ohio River the next year.
Powell grew up in the Midwest on a succession of farms, as his parents moved about. His strong interest in natural history emerged in 1857 while taking a botany course at Oberlin College in Ohio. In subsequent years he made extensive botanical and zoological collections across the Midwest, before changing his focus to geology. With the onset of the Civil War, he enrolled immediately in the Union Army and had risen to the rank of captain when he lost an arm at the Battle of Shiloh. After the Civil War he accepted a geology professorship at Wesleyan University. He was recognized as being an outstanding scientist—in particular one who had high standards and was very resourceful and endlessly inquisitive. This position allowed him to spend the summer of 1867 making scientific collections in what is now Colorado. In 1869 he returned west with the goal of exploring the virtually unmapped Green and Colorado rivers.
On May 24, 1869, his party of ten men departed Green River, Wyoming (not Green River, Utah), with ten months of provisions; six men exited at the mouth of the Colorado River, near the confluence with the Virgin River more than three months later. They were nearly out of supplies, because of losses each time boats capsized. (One man left just days into the expedition, unnerved by the adventure. The other three exited the Grand Canyon near Separation Rapid, just two days before the end of the canyon and were likely killed by either Indians or Mormons as they made their way back to civilization.)
With the knowledge gained on this first expedition, he returned in 1871 with a new crew. Less drama pervaded this descent of the Colorado River, allowing important natural history collections to be made and much geologic information to be recorded.
The well-known Powell continued to make important scientific and “societal” contributions in the western U.S. He was involved in the creation of the U.S. Geological Survey, established to administer surveys like those he carried out in the Grand Canyon, and served as its second director from 1881 to 1894. He advocated against dividing the southwestern U.S. into the standard 160-acre homesteads, realizing that this approach was inappropriate for the region; much larger blocks of lands and boundaries along water divides were required. He realized as well that water was a limited resource that must be shared downstream. Also, unlike many others in this era, he greatly respected for the Native American tribes in the Southwest, studying their cultures and languages and petitioning the U.S. government to care better for them.
Tour guides and tourists soon displaced most of the miners. John Hance was the first true settler on the South Rim, arriving in 1883. A drifter drawn to the Grand Canyon’s possible mineral riches, he quickly realized mining was not an efficient way to earn money and began guiding tourists to the Colorado River the following year. In subsequent years, the tourism business expanded rapidly, as more and more prospectors arrived on the South Rim and many realized that tourism was a more reliable source of income.
Among the miner-turned-tour-guides are Ralph Cameron, his brother Niles Cameron, and partner Pete Berry. In 1890 they obtained a mining claim at Indian Garden from the previous claimants. They quickly expanded the Havasupai route along the Bright Angel Fault into a trail, the predecessor of the contemporary Bright Angel Trail, and charged tourists a dollar to descend the trail. They soon constructed a tent camp at Indian Garden and Cameron’s hotel on the rim followed in 1903. (See section on trail history and construction, for more information.)
The tourism business required more than tour guides, and many settlers found profitable niches. Among them, Ellsworth Kolb and his brother Emery began a South Rim photography business in 1902, building a studio, today’s Kolb Studio, near the start of the Bright Angel Trail. They photographed parties descending the trail and then rushed to Indian Garden—the closest source of freshwater—to develop the photographs so that people could purchase prints on their return later than day.
Tourism was helped along by the fact that the Santa Fe Railway had completed tracks across northern Arizona in 1883, stopping in Williams just 65 miles from the South Rim and thereby providing relatively easy access for visitors from across the U.S. Before long, plans were in progress to build a spur line to the South Rim. William O’Neill, an early South Rim entrepreneur, organized funding and began to construct the route in 1897, laying tracks due south to meet the Santa Fe Railway’s tracks in Williams. Following his death in 1898, the Santa Fe Railway purchased the tracks and constructed the last 10 miles of track to the canyon. Opened in 1901, it ferried visitors in comfort—especially once the railway company and concession partner, the Fred Harvey Company, constructed elegant hotels and restaurants on the canyon rim. The construction of the new
