One Best Hike: Grand Canyon. Elizabeth Wenk
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and architectural designs that caused the buildings to effectively merge with the landscape. Her buildings are beautiful exemplars of the style known as National Park Service rustic. At Phantom Ranch, for example, the cabins are built (mostly) of local rock, colored to blend with the surroundings, and spaced at irregular intervals.
TRAIL HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION
The Bright Angel Trail is a historic Indian trail used by people for millennia to access the inner canyon and the Colorado River. By the 1870s miners were entering the Grand Canyon and descending this same route. Ralph Cameron and his brother Niles acquired mining claims along the Bright Angel Trail in 1890. They quickly realized that the money was not in mining, but instead in tourism. They therefore took advantage of a law that allowed the “builders of a trail” to collect a toll for its use. In 1890 and 1891 they improved the Havasupai trail to Indian Garden and in 1898 completed a new trail down to the Colorado River. From 1903 until the 1920s they charged each person a dollar to descend the Bright Angel Toll Road (also called the Cameron Trail). These fees were introduced to keep money flowing their way once competing South Rim accommodations were constructed and disrupted their previous near-monopoly on housing Grand Canyon Village visitors.
The Santa Fe Railway and Fred Harvey Company, which ran the concessions associated with the railroad (and had built Phantom Ranch), the National Park Service, and other government agencies wished to invalidate Ralph Cameron’s mining claims and take control of the trail that departed from the rapidly expanding Grand Canyon Village. Moreover, Ralph Cameron took poor care of “his” trail and the Indian Garden Campground. In 1913 the U.S. Forest Service sued Ralph Cameron over his unused claims, which led to a 1920 U.S. Supreme Court decision that dissolved his claims and turned the trail over to Coconino County. However, Cameron succeeded in continuing to collect tolls. He was also active in local politics and in 1924 convinced the citizens of Coconino County to vote against selling the Bright Angel Trail to the National Park Service.
To avoid requiring tourists to support the Cameron brothers, as soon as the Grand Canyon became a national park in 1919, the park service began arranging for the construction of an alternative route, which would become the South Kaibab Trail. They moved forward quickly following the November 1924 election and by December 1 of that year had $50,000 for the project, had ordered construction materials, and had amassed two 20-worker teams. One team would begin at the Colorado River and the other at Yaki Point. They had hoped to complete the trail by May, but it took until mid-June for the two teams to meet up because of the difficulty in blasting into solid rock and winter storms that delayed work. The final cost for the project was $73,000. The trail was dedicated on June 15, 1925. Except for the section of the trail below the Tipoff, the South Kaibab Trail did not follow an existing route.
The new trail was named for the Kaibab Plateau, a name suggested by J. R. Eakin, the first superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park. National Park Service Director Stephen Mather selected this name over other possibilities: Yaki Trail, indicating its descent from near Yaki Point and Phantom Trail, an option promoted by the Fred Harvey Company since the trail descends directly to their Phantom Ranch.
The National Park Service finally took control of the Bright Angel Trail in 1928, when Coconino County traded it in return for the park service funding a new road from Williams to Grand Canyon Village. The park service then reconstructed the Bright Angel Trail between 1929 and 1938; they decreased the grade of the trail, including the section above the 3-Mile Resthouse (1930–1931) and through the Devils Corkscrew (1929), built a trail alongside the wash upstream of Indian Garden (1930), routed the trail through the Tapeats Narrows (1929), and built a trail alongside Pipe Creek (1938). The trail had previously dropped down the Bright Angel Fault at nearly three times the grade it is today, simply followed the Garden Creek wash, diverted east of Garden Creek on the Tonto Platform, dropped down the Salt Creek Drainage (the seep you cross toward the top of Devils Corkscrew), and continued nearly straight down to Pipe Creek. The old, much steeper switchbacks can still be seen as you descend the Devils Corkscrew to Pipe Creek.
In addition to acquiring and retrofitting these important corridor trails, the park service lost no time in building a bridge across the Colorado River that was accessible to stock. In 1921 they completed a wooden suspension bridge to replace Rust’s cable car. Unfortunately this bridge was susceptible to great contortions, even flipping over, and in 1928 a sturdier bridge, the current Kaibab Suspension Bridge (or “black” or “mule” bridge), was constructed. The eight 550-foot-long main suspension cables were each carried to the bottom of the canyon by a team of 42 Havasupai Indians.
The River Trail, the 1.7-mile trail along the Colorado River between the Bright Angel Trail and the Kaibab Suspension Bridge, was built between 1933 and 1936 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, under park service supervision. Long sections were blasted into vertical rock, providing hikers with airy views into the river. Until its construction, hikers descending the Bright Angel Trail and wishing to cross to the north side of the river, would leave the Bright Angel Trail just beyond Indian Garden and cross over on the trail that followed the Tonto Platform to the South Kaibab Trail. The last of the corridor trail network, the Silver Bridge was constructed in the 1960s as part of the transcanyon water system.
Natural History
In many locations, people interested in natural history, which includes all information about the natural world, focus their attention on the plants and animals, and think of the geology as a backdrop. In the Grand Canyon the geologic features strike even the most ardent biologists. Not only is the geology visually grabbing, but also it is quickly apparent what a strong influence the geology, from rock type to topographic features, has on where plants and animals live. Consider for instance that different rock layers decompose to form soils with different nutrients and textures, affecting water-holding capacity and water availability, and therefore plant cover.
Even more apparent to a casual hiker, consider how variable the topography can be. For instance, some rock layers erode easily forming slopes, while others are cliffs, each creating unique habitats required and tolerated by different species. Where a north-facing cliff and gentler topography meet is a small patch of real estate that remains shadier and cooler, allowing a unique collection of species to establish. Rock formations with alternating layers of sandstone and shale, may create small platforms of soil underlain by fractured rock—if a tree takes root, it might find moister soil deep down. A wash that carries water occasionally will host different species than the dry terraces to either side. This variation in physical features creates patchiness in resources and in turn leads to a surprising diversity in plants and animals. As you explore the inner canyon, consider the interactions between the physical and biological worlds.
GEOLOGY
Quite simply, the Grand Canyon is unbelievable because of its geologic features. As you stand at a vista point and peer into and across the canyon, you are marveling at the geology: staring at the exceptionally wide and deep canyon and the nearly horizontal layers of colorful rock. Generations of talented geologists have sought to understand what combination of geologic events created this landscape. Individuals with different geologic specialties have contemplated different aspects of the picture, weaving together their conclusions with the data collected by others to present a coherent story of the Grand Canyon’s geologic history. However, the sleuthing continues—evidence to decipher some pieces of the story is simply missing. The story of the Grand Canyon presented today, in this book and at vistas throughout the park, may stand the test of time or may be quite different if you revisit the park in a generation.
Questions will probably leap to mind as you gaze at the canyon. You may wonder why such a deep canyon exists and how it formed. Or you may contemplate why there are so many different layers or rock, how they got there, and why some are flat, but others steep?
To answer these clusters of questions, and others, I describe the tectonic regimes to which the Grand Canyon area was subjected from 1.8 billion years ago until today, as the tectonic surroundings dictate many of the geologic processes that are recorded. These descriptions include information about the environments that led to the creation of the three main rock