HISTORY94 - The North Rim of the Grand Canyon

In July, Pat and I have a trip planned to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon - one of our favorite places to visit.   I have been remiss in the past in not doing my usual pre-trip research and history article of the places we visit; this blog will correct that.

After an introduction to the Grand Canyon, I will discuss the history of the development of the North Rim, including tourist accommodations; then the history of the connections of the North Rim to the South Rim; and end with the story of each of the major Canyon viewpoints on the North Rim.

I will list my principal sources at the end, but up front I can thank the National Park Service (NPS) for much of this data.

 

Introduction to Grand Canyon

The history of the Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona began about six million years ago when the Colorado River began slowly eroding the land beneath it forming the spectacularly steep Canyon that we know today.  The mile-deep Canyon is 278 miles long, with a width (rim to rim) of between 5 and 18 miles (average of 10 miles), and averages 7,500 feet in elevation, with a wide variety of ecosystems living all throughout the canyon.  The North Rim is 1,000 feet higher in elevation than the South Rim, giving it a colder, wetter climate. 

Humans have inhabited the area in and around the canyon since the last Ice Age.   Archaeologists have discovered ruins and artifacts from inhabitants dating back nearly 12,000 years.  Ancestral Pueblo people - followed by Paiute, Navajo, Zuni, and Hopi tribes - once inhabited the Grand Canyon.  Havasupai Native Americans have lived in and around the canyon for more than 800 years, and remain there today.

The Grand Canyon was first discovered by non-indigenous people in 1540, when a group of 13 Spanish soldiers visited the South Rim, led by García López de Cárdenas, dispatched from the expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, traveling northward from Mexico City in search of the Seven Cities of Cíbola.

In 1776, 236 years after the first South Rim visit, two Spanish Priests, Fathers Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, traveled through southern Utah and northern Arizona in search of a trade route from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Monterey, California.  They probably did not visit the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, but this was the first Spanish exploration in Arizona north of the Grand Canyon.  Their route became the “The Old Spanish Trail” and became a well-traveled path between New Mexico and California, drawing many travelers to the vicinity of the north side of the Grand Canyon.

Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives of the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers led the first survey expedition to the Grand Canyon area in 1857 and 1858.

More than a decade later, with help from the Smithsonian Institution, geologist John Wesley Powell led the first expedition to explore the region and document its scientific offerings.  On May 24, 1869, the group of nine men set out from Green River Station in Wyoming, down the Colorado River, and through the Grand Canyon.

The Powell expedition, and a second expedition two years later, systematically cataloged rock formations, plants, animals, and archaeological sites.  Photographs and illustrations from the Powell expeditions greatly popularized the canyonland region of the southwest United States, especially the Grand Canyon.  President Benjamin Harrison first protected the Grand Canyon in 1893 as a forest reserve.

An east-west rail line to the largest city in the area, Flagstaff, was completed in 1882 by the Santa Fe Railroad.  Stage coaches started to bring tourists from Flagstaff to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon the next year for $10.  In 1901, a spur of the Santa Fe Railroad, from Williams to Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim, was completed.  Tourists could descend into the Canyon on mules or horses.

Development of accommodations for tourists started on the South Rim in the 1880s.  The arrival of the railroad in 1901 and automobiles a few years later, and the dedication of the Grand Canyon as a National Park in 1919, spurred greatly increased tourism and development on the South Rim.

On the more remote North Rim, development started much later and proceeded at a slower pace.  No railroad access to the North Rim was ever built.  It wasn’t until 1926, that the first paved automobile road was built, providing access to the North Rim from Jacob Lake, Arizona (see map below).

Current map of the Grand Canyon area in Northwestern Arizona.  Road access to the North Rim from Jacob Lake is highlighted in red box.

 

Today, the Grand Canyon is one of the most identifiable and remarkable landscapes on Earth and the most internationally recognized symbol of nature in North America.  Grand Canyon National Park covers 1,904 square miles, and is one of the most popular National Parks in America with more than five million visitors each year. 

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon provides a different environmental and cultural experience for visitors.  Even today, the North Rim remains more remote than the South Rim.  Fewer tourists visit the north side of the Canyon, and there are fewer accommodations and facilities, giving many visitors a sense that they are getting more of a wilderness experience there than in the crush of sightseers along the South Rim.  The Grand Canyon Lodge resort complex consists of the Main Lodge building, with a spectacular Canyon-view dining room and terraces with similarly arresting views, but no guest rooms.  Guests are accommodated in 23 deluxe cabins, and 91 standard cabins.  Because the area often gets heavy snows in the winter, the NPS only opens the North Rim from May to October.

Development of the North Rim

Developing the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for scenic tourism was a difficult task because of its isolation from major population centers and transportation routes.

Uncle Dee Woolley’s Cabin.

The North Rim saw its share of Euro-American miners, ranchers, explorers, and entrepreneurs, though not nearly in the same numbers as on the South Rim.  Still, the actions of early Euro-Americans, such as Edwin Dilworth “Uncle Dee” Woolley and David Rust, influenced the development of the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park and have continued to shape the way modern visitors experience that side of the Canyon.

“Uncle Dee” was an entrepreneur who worked hard to bring tourism to the lands to the north of the Grand Canyon.  He and other investors formed the Grand Canyon Transportation Company in 1903.  They tried vigorously to convince nearby railroads to build spurs to the Grand Canyon, but none were interested in spending the money on a dead-end line to a remote, unpopulated area with little economic potential.

Rather than give up, Woolley continued to think of ways to bring tourists to the North Rim.  He hired his son-in-law David Rust to build a trail down to the Colorado River that could accommodate tourists.  The starting point they chose was near Blondie Jensen Spring at the head of an ancient Native American trail that followed Bright Angel Creek down into the Canyon.

Four years later, in 1907, Rust completed the trail, as well as the building today known as the Uncle Dee Woolley Cabin at its head.  Parts of this trail would later be incorporated into today’s North Kaibab Trail. 

The “Uncle Dee” Woolley Cabin has been an important landmark on the North Rim for nearly a century.  Director of the NPS Stephen T. Mather, second from the right, is shown visiting the cabin in 1920.

 

Once the trail was complete, the Grand Canyon Transportation Company began offering tours from Kanab, Utah, to Bright Angel Point, and from Bright Angel Point down into the Canyon.  Their business was limited to the summer months because cold and snowy winters were the norm due to the high elevation of the North Rim.  Rust would spend his winters teaching and sometimes working as a newspaperman, and in the summer would guide tourists and manage the Company.  The Company would transport tourists to their cabin at the trailhead in wagons over bumpy cattle paths.  From the cabin, Rust would lead them down the trail, and they would spend the night at Rust’s Camp on the north side of the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon.

In 1909, to drum up business, Woolley arranged for two automobiles to make a round trip from Salt Lake City to the North Rim and back.  At the time, there were no gas stations in the vicinity of the North Rim and roads were little more than rutted dirt paths.  Gas was shipped to the area by train and hauled by wagon to the car route, which later became Highway 89.  This stunt still failed to make the North Rim a major tourist destination, however.

Though they never sold their interests, neither Woolley nor Rust lived at the Canyon year-round.  In 1915 Rust finally decided to stop his summer tour guiding at the Canyon.

Aldus “Blondie” Jensen and his wife Melissa took up residence in the Woolley Cabin, and offered saddle trips up and down the path Rust had developed into the canyon along Bright Angel Creek.  They soon found themselves competing with Thomas and Elizabeth Wylie McKee’s concession at Bright Angel Point. Still, the Woolley Cabin remained a landmark for visitors traveling to the North Rim along the bumpy, rutted paths that brought them south from their Utah jumping-off points to the Grand Canyon in the 1910s and 1920s.

Wylie Way Camps.

William Wallace Wylie is credited with originating the “permanent camp” concept in America’s national parks, starting with Yellowstone National Park in the 1880s.  His idea was to have a camp with a central dining room and lodge, surrounded by individual tent cabins. The tents had wooden floors covered by rugs, wood-burning stoves, beds, and other furniture. Families dined together in large dining hall tents, and could also enjoy entertainment such as dancing, lectures, and sing-alongs at the campsite.

Though William Wylie sold his Wylie Permanent Camping Company business in 1905, members of his family stayed involved in running the Wylie Way camps.  In 1917, the Union Pacific Railroad asked Wylie to open camps at Zion National Park and at Bright Angel Point on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim.

The Railroad at the time was trying to develop a tourism industry to rival that of the Santa Fe railway, which had monopolized concessions on the South Rim.  At this time, the Grand Canyon was still under control of the Forest Service, and Wylie believed that he would soon receive a long-term contract from them, making him the premier concessionaire on the North Rim, much like the Fred Harvey Company on the South Rim.

William Wylie remained at Zion to oversee his facilities there, putting the new enterprise at the Grand Canyon in the hands of his daughter, Elizabeth Wylie McKee.  In 1919, the year Grand Canyon National Park was established, a primitive Wylie Way Camp was completed on the North Rim.

Elizabeth ran the camp with the help of her husband Thomas and son Robert, as well as a staff of local Mormon teenagers.  The camp was located about 100 yards northwest of the modern location of the Grand Canyon Lodge near Bright Angel Point.

In the early 1920s, the Wylie Way Camp consisted of a central dining tent and sleeping tents nestled in a shady grove of pines that could accommodate 25 people for a cost of $6 per day.  The camp ultimately served 120 daily guests.

They rented out saddle stock and camping gear to visitors who wished to explore the surrounding area. Thomas also would lead guests on trips to Point Sublime and Cape Royal.  The camp would usually open in mid-June and close the first of October.  Elizabeth handled most of the accounting and oversaw the kitchen, ordering food, and other necessities. In 1922, the Wylie Way Camp became more deeply enmeshed in Canyon life when NPS workers constructed a single-wire, magneto-handset system that allowed for quick communication between the rims.  The system linked the Wylie Way Camp on the North Rim to Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim.

Tourists at Wylie Way Camps could choose from a variety of entertainments, such as trail rides, dancing, or simply chatting by the campfire, like these visitors to Yellowstone in 1908.

 

Travelers at Wylie Camps spent the night in individual tents, but ate together in central dining tents such as this one.

From 1917 to 1927, this Wylie Way Camp became the main concession at the North Rim, competing with other early entrepreneurs such as Uncle Dee Woolley.  However, despite constant pressure from Elizabeth, the NPS would only give her annual contracts for her business.  This tenuous situation meant that she could not plan for and finance improvements to her camp, restricting the pace and extent of the development of tourism services on the North Rim.

In 1927, the NPS opened bidding to fund the first permanent concessionaire for the North Rim.  None of the small entrepreneurs could afford the improvements that the NPS required to award the contract, since the NPS had purposely designed it to attract the Union Pacific Railroad and its subsidiary the Utah Parks Company.  The Railroad won the bid for the 20-year contract, and Elizabeth Wylie McKee and the other small operators had little choice but to sell out to the Utah Parks Company.  The McKees continued to operate the Wylie Way Camp for the rest of the 1927 season as the Utah Parks Company created the Grand Canyon Lodge complex.  At the end of 1927, the Utah Parks Company bought up the Wylie Camp to operate as part of its North Rim facilities, moving it to the site of today’s campgrounds.

Grand Canyon Lodge.

No railroad line ever ran directly to the North Rim.  Instead, the Union Pacific established a train station 100 miles away at Cedar City, Utah, and from there offered motor coach tours that allowed passengers to conveniently visit three National Parks: Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Zion.

The Utah Parks Company invested millions of dollars on the North Rim, creating a tourist complex similar to but smaller than the South Rim’s Grand Canyon Village.  A key difference was the fact that most tourist facilities on the South Rim predated Grand Canyon’s designation as a National Park in 1919.  In the 1920s the NPS had control of the area and had to approve any construction plans.  By this time, the NPS had developed a unique style of architecture that required builders to use natural materials and to make structures look like they had been solidly constructed with old-fashioned hand tools.

Gilbert Stanley Underwood, the architect for the Grand Canyon Lodge, followed these NPS guidelines by using native stone and timber that matched the forested, rocky environment of the North Rim. Rather than a single large hotel, Underwood envisioned a centerpiece lodge surrounded by rustic cabins. The lodge’s exterior featured Kaibab limestone that seemed to rise out of the cliff at Bright Angel Point.  In some places, he designed the stonework to resemble natural rock outcroppings.  The upper verandah of the lodge faced south at the edge of the canyon, giving visitors a spectacular view.  It included a glass-enclosed interior lounge as well as exterior terraces with an observation tower and massive outdoor fireplace.

The deluxe cottages and standard cabins that surrounded the lodge all blended with the local environment as well. Underwood let the hilly landscape and forest itself dictate where he placed the cabins and meandering paths, instead of imposing a generic design.  Furthermore, deluxe cottages included rustic elements such as half-log siding, stone corner piers and foundations, and limestone chimneys.

A crew of 125 men worked through the harsh winter of 1927-28 to finish the project, earning 50 to 85 cents an hour. Along with the lodge and cabins, the complex featured modern utilities, postal and telegraph services, baths and showers, as well as a barber shop, soda fountain, and curio store.  To ensure the comfort of their guests, the Utah Parks Company built a state-of-the-art water and power system on the North Rim in 1927-29.

When the lodge opened in 1928, staff lined up at the door to welcome guests as they arrived in their motor coaches, and lined up again to sing a song as the visitors left.  This “sing-away” quickly became a tradition at Grand Canyon Lodge. Every evening, the staff would put on a talent show followed by a dance. The lodge also allocated a small space for the NPS to display an exhibit on the natural history of the Grand Canyon featuring examples of fossils, rocks, plants, and wildlife from the area.

 

The famous employee “sing-away” ceremony as visitors leave the original Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim in 1930.

On September 1, 1932, tragedy struck when a fire completely destroyed the four-year-old lodge. Fortunately, most of the surrounding cabins were spared, and visitors can still use them today.  Even though the country was in the grips of the Great Depression, the Utah Parks Company vowed to rebuild. They constructed a temporary lodge on the ashes of the old in 1933.  In the next two years, they built more cabins, a motor lodge beside the NPS campground, an employee dormitory, and a service station.

Rebuilding of the Grand Canyon Lodge itself began in 1936, and it opened in July of the next year.  The new building used what was left of the original stone foundation, walls, and chimneys, but was more resistant to fire and had steeper roofs that could handle heavier snow loads.  The architects insured that the lodge still blended in with its natural surroundings as much as possible, and even tried to enhance its rustic feel.  The new structure featured Kaibab limestone masonry with cement mortar, Ponderosa log siding, and wooden shingles on the roofs, though it relied on more stone and less wood than the previous design.  Inside, the interior space was more massive with high ceilings and exposed beams.  It included a recreation room, sun room, dining room, and “western saloon.”  The Company chose not to include an observation tower or museum space in this new building.

The lodge closed for most of World War II, though they still rented out a few cabins for the sharply curtailed number of visitors.

Over the course of the 20^th Century, as Americans became increasingly attached to the freedom that the personal automobile offered, passenger railroads around the country slid into decline.  At the North Rim, the Union Pacific signaled the end of an era when it ceased passenger operations in 1971.  In accordance with a stipulation in their concession contract, in 1972 the Utah Parks Company donated all their facilities to the NPS, which now leases the buildings to a concessionaire.  The lodge has changed very little since 1937, and architectural historians consider it the most intact historic rustic lodge complex remaining in the National Parks.  In 1987 it was deemed a National Historic Landmark, and is still considered to be in excellent condition.

Slide show of Grand Canyon Lodge and associated cabins today.  Click on image.

Rim to Rim Connections

The first European Americans to leave trails behind in the Grand Canyon consisted of early prospectors and later miners, who needed permanent trails to carry equipment, supplies, food, and ore in and out of the canyon.  These men and others slightly improved their prospecting trails to carry the canyon’s first tourists from rim to river and rim to rim.  Still later, the Santa Fe Railway, NPS, and thousands of backpackers improved and realigned older trails while building a few new ones to facilitate modern tourism.

Connecting the North Rim to the South Rim enabled more people to visit the North Rim and contributed to is growth as a tourist attraction.

In 1906, a “cable ferry” was completed to float both humans and horses across the Colorado River, a length of 500 feet, to connect David Rust’s trail from the North Rim to a trail from the South Rim.  The hope was, that travelers to and from Utah could use this crossing, and go up Bright Angel Canyon to the North Rim instead of all the miles to the ferry crossing at Lee’s Ferry up the Colorado River.   Hunters started making use of the cable to get to the North Rim from the South Rim.  For whatever reason, the cable ferry did not operate very long, probably because of safety concerns.

To get more tourists to the camp, in 1907, Woolley and Rust constructed a cable tram system across the Colorado River, allowing visits from the South Rim.  The cable tram line was about 400 feet long and about 40 feet above the water.  The tram was a 6 by 10 feet steel cage large enough for one mule or several people that would carry passengers across the river, but the passage was considered precarious. A gasoline engine replaced the crank system in 1909, but would break down often.  The cable tram was a key attraction in the Canyon, but there was not always an operator stationed there.   Most visitors from the South Rim weren’t daring enough to operate it themselves, so instead of visiting the North Rim, they would return to the South Rim.

This cable tram carried people across the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

 

Note:  In 1913, former President Theodore Roosevelt and his sons crossed from the South Rim to the North Rim, crossing the Colorado River in the cable tram.   Guided by two cattlemen, Roosevelt went on with a hunting party to the North Rim to hunt mountain lions for several weeks. 

The NPS built the first bridge in the Canyon across the Colorado River in 1921.  It was called the “swinging suspension bridge.”  Because the wooden bridge would swing, it could only handle one mule at a time and was only 13 feet above the highest recorded water level.  This suspension bridge proved to be too flexible to safely carry pedestrians across the river, as the number of visitors to the park was increasing.

The Black Suspension Bridge (also known as the Kaibab Trail Suspension Bridge) was completed in 1928, with a cross-river span of 440 feet. The bridge is part of today's South Kaibab Trail.  The Black Bridge would remain the only crossing of the river for hundreds of river miles until the Silver Bridge was built just downstream from it during the 1960s.

Silver Bridge in foreground; Black Bridge in background.

Today, there are only two bridges that provide crossings for hundreds of miles in either direction along the Colorado River corridor - the Black Bridge and the Silver Bridge. The Black Bridge is the main route for mule and hiker traffic between the South Kaibab Trail from the South Rim and the North Kaibab Trail from the North Rim.

The second crossing is the Silver Bridge, located a short distance downstream from the Black Bridge. The Silver Bridge connects the Bright Angel Trail to the North Rim.  Only hiker traffic may cross this suspension bridge.

 

Viewpoints

There are three Canyon viewpoints on the North Rim that are easily accessible by automobile, and that offer spectacular views of the Grand Canyon:  Bright Angel Point, Point Imperial, and Cape Royal.  See the map below.

Major viewpoints are identified with red stars on this map of the North Rim.

 

Bright Angel Point.

Bright Angel Point was remote and hard to reach for early Euro-American visitors, though this did not stop people from coming.  As I noted above, early entrepreneurs ran primitive tourism enterprises at or near Bright Angel Point around the turn of the 20^th Century.

Not until 1917 did a real road reach Bright Angel Point, and even then, it was rough and unpleasant.  Still, this point was the site of some of the most enduring development along the North Rim, since a fault in the rocks at this site allowed animals and humans to enter the Canyon along a sloping rock face instead of being blocked by the sheer walls that characterize most other areas. 

Bright Angel Point was a significant site for the Forest Service’s fight against forest fires.  The Forest Service controlled the area until it became a National Park in 1919.  They had established a fire tower there in the 1910s which they continued to man even after the site came under NPS control. 

After Grand Canyon National Park was created, Bright Angel Point became the center of development for the North Rim.  In parallel with the building of Grand Canyon Lodge, the NPS built a North Rim headquarters at Bright Angel Point, consisting of a ranger cabin, warehouse, barn, machine shed, duplex cottages, and other outbuildings.  They also developed a campground for visitors in 1926, though the next year this was moved to its present position to make way for the Grand Canyon Lodge, the main lodging and dining facility on the North Rim.  Today Bright Angel Point is the site of one of only three developed campgrounds at Grand Canyon National Park.

With the completion of the first Grand Canyon Lodge in 1928, Bright Angel Point became a main stopping point on the Union Pacific Railroad’s “Circle Tour” which also took visitors to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, Cedar Breaks, and Pipe Springs National Monuments, and other scenic sites in the region.  In 1928, the NPS began offering nature guide services at Bright Angel Point to explain the natural history of the Canyon and surrounding area to these visitors.

In 1930-31, the NPS reacted to growing tourist numbers at the North Rim by expanding its presence there, constructing employee quarters, a bunkhouse, mess hall, and other buildings. The North Entrance Road, completed at the same time, helped funnel visitors arriving at the North Rim by automobile to Bright Angel Point.

During World War II, tours to Bright Angel Point briefly stopped as war rationing and travel restrictions went into effect.  After the war, despite increases in tourism, the North Rim still never reached the number of visitors of the South Rim.  Because of its isolation, short tourist season due to the cold and snowy winter months, and limited space for construction at Bright Angel Point, the Union Pacific Railroad was hesitant to invest significant capital in the area.

In 1965, the annual visitation at Bright Angel Point reached approximately 130,000, but the reluctance of the concessionaire to invest money, and NPS concerns about overdeveloping the area, meant that plans to significantly expand facilities there never materialized.  Instead, in 1972 the concessionaire, Utah Parks Company, turned their facilities at the North Rim over to the government.  The NPS then contracted services out to TWA Services, Inc, which renovated the facilities at Bright Angel Point.  The facilities continued to pass through different owners, and today are run by Forever Resorts.

A short trail leads visitors from today’s Grand Canyon Lodge to a viewing area at Bright Angel Point. Looking east, hikers can see Roaring Springs Canyon, a major tributary to Bright Angel Creek and the source of Roaring Springs.  Deva, Brahma, and Zoroaster Temples are visible to the southeast.  To the west is The Transept, a large tributary canyon of the Grand Canyon.  The Colorado River, however, is hidden among the multicolored buttes and rock outcroppings that fill the Canyon’s depths.  Along the trail are displays of marine fossils that illustrate the evolution of the landscape and life through the millennia, as revealed in the exposed layers of the Canyon.

View from Bright Angel Point.

 

Point Imperial.

Point Imperial, formerly known as Skidoo Point, is one of the most visited spots on the North Rim, accessible by an 11-mile scenic drive northeast of the main settlement at Bright Angel Point.  At just over 8,800 feet in elevation, Point Imperial is the highest point on either rim.  It provides the northernmost view of the Grand Canyon from within the park.

Visitors to Point Imperial can look eastward toward the junction of the Colorado River and Little Colorado River and, beyond that, to the Painted Desert on the Navajo Reservation. Near this point, the narrow, winding walls of Marble Canyon open dramatically, transforming the Canyon into the gaping chasm with which most people are familiar.  Mount Hayden, a sharp pinnacle that rises from the Canyon’s floor, named for Arizona’s former U.S. Senator Carl Hayden, is also visible from this point.  Visitors can see layers of red and black Precambrian rocks not visible at other North Rim viewpoints.

Post-sunrise view from Point Imperial.

 

Point Imperial was a popular spot for early visitors to the North Rim, with several tour guides leading wagon trips and trail rides there.  In 1927, the NPS began constructing a new approach road to the rim, which included a 2.9-mile spur off the Cape Royal Road to Point Imperial that followed wagon tracks worn down by earlier visitors to the scenic overlook.

The road was reconstructed from 1959-1963, but built on top of the original road to avoid further environmental damage.  Crews also made improvements to the pullout at the point so that more visitors could park there to admire the view.

A four-mile round-trip trail leads hikers from the point through areas burned by the 2000 Outlet Fire, and ends at the park’s northern boundary, where it connects with the Nankoweap Trail and U.S. Forest Service roads.

Cape Royal.

Cape Royal is located on the southernmost tip of the Walhalla Plateau, which juts out like a peninsula into the Grand Canyon, forming the eastern edge of the Canyon’s North Rim.  From there, the comprehensive panoramic view stretches from Marble Canyon to the northeast across to the South Rim visitor area at Grand Canyon Village, southwest of Cape Royal.  Because it encompasses such spectacular vistas, this point was one of the earliest targets of tourism development on the North Rim.

One of the most important early entrepreneurs along the North Rim was Elizabeth Wylie McKee.  She and her family operated the main concession in the area from 1917 to 1927.  Along with providing food and lodging, they offered tours to Cape Royal and other viewpoints, led by her husband Thomas.

In the first several years after Grand Canyon Park was dedicated in 1919, few roads were built or improved; on the North Rim there were no paved roads (except for a three-mile section built by the Forest Service), only paths that had been worn down by cattle and wagon tours led by entrepreneurs such as Uncle Dee Woolley.

Not until the U.S. Bureau of Entomology began waging a war against insect infestation on the Walhalla Plateau in 1924 did the path to Cape Royal receive any attention, though even then it remained a crude road.  Two years later, engineers began surveying a 23-mile scenic road starting at Bright Angel Point and ending at Cape Royal, mostly overlapping the old wagon route and primitive roads constructed in previous years.  The road took nearly four years to complete at a cost of over half a million dollars, a lot of money in 1924, and connected to the North Entrance Road, making Cape Royal one of the more easily accessible points for visitors to the North Rim. 

To further attract motorists on tight budgets, the NPS developed a primitive campground at Cape Royal in 1931.  At this time and into the 1940s, Union Pacific Railroad’s subsidiary Utah Parks Company ran newly developed concessionaire facilities on the North Rim and offered guided auto sightseeing trips to Cape Royal.

Though the Company would have liked more development at Cape Royal and other sites, the Great Depression, combined with the NPS desire to cultivate a sense of pristine wilderness, restricted building schemes in this period. The Company had envisioned building visitor facilities at Cape Royal like Grand Canyon Lodge that would include standard and deluxe cabins, but like most other business plans hatched in 1929, it went the way of the stock market.

Though pressure and plans to build more facilities at Cape Royal continued to arise over the next several decades, it was never significantly developed.  Most of the development at the Grand Canyon took place on the South Rim, and NPS interpretive facilities at the North Rim remained confined to a small room within Grand Canyon Lodge.

From 1959-1963, workers reconstructed Cape Royal Road, taking care to maintain its original alignment to avoid further environmental damage.  Today the scenic 23-mile road from Grand Canyon Lodge to Cape Royal passes through a forest of spruce, ponderosa pine, and aspen on the Walhalla Plateau, as well as fields filled with colorful wildflowers, deer, and Kaibab squirrels. 

An easy round-trip trail at Cape Royal leads hikers on an approximately one-mile-long paved walk with interpretive signs that explain the natural history of the area and provide views of the Unkar Delta and the Colorado River.  The overlook at the end of the trail provides good views of Wotan’s Throne and Vishnu Temple.  Desert View Watchtower, Grandview Point, and Horseshoe Mesa on the South Rim are also visible from this point.

Sunrise view from Cape Royal.

 

One of the most well-known features visible near Cape Royal is Angel’s Window, a large natural arch that eroded out of one of the rock formations jutting into the canyon. It can be viewed by taking a half-mile spur from the main trail. 

Angel’s Window near Cape Royal.

 

Other Viewpoints.

There are a few other viewpoints on the North Rim.  Vista Encantada, Roosevelt Point, and Walhalla Overlook are located on the paved road between Point Imperial and Cape Royal.  Point Sublime is located at the end of an 18-mile forest road, requiring 4-wheel drive, to the west of Bright Angel Point.  Toroweap Overlook is located in a remote area on the North Rim, 55 miles west of Point Sublime, but must be accessed from the west on a 148-mile rough unpaved road.

 

There will never be a photograph of the Grand Canyon that can adequately describe its depth, breadth, and true beauty.
― Stefanie Payne

 

Here we are, Bob and Pat, contemplating the view from the North Rim’s Bright Angel Point - after trying hard to get that elusive perfect photograph.

 Sources

My principal sources include: “History of the Grand Canyon Area,” and “Grand Canyon North Rim Headquarters,” en.eikipedia.org; “North Rim - Grand Canyon National Park,” nps.gov; “North Rim - Nature, Culture, and History at the Grand Canyon,” grcahistory.org; “Grand Canyon Lodge History,” nps.gov; “Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim History,” ultrarunninghistory.com; “Grand Canyon,” history.com; plus, numerous other online sources.