Utah Historical Quarterly Volume XII

The kaibab and North Rim

KAIBAB AND NORTH RIM 189 We found the Parunuweap Canyon impassable, so we spent the day in the dark recesses of the Mukuntu­weap, speechless with wonderment, except for an occa­sional " awe" or an " absolutely wonderful." This pano­rama had a deeper, a more wonderful effect upon us than anything our eyes had ever b e h e l d . . .. Garfield, Wayne and Kane counties are sparsely settled, and until permanent roads are constructed into them, they will remain so. Washington and Iron coun­ties have great natural resources and wonderful possi­bilities which will blossom into realities only when the transportation problem has been solved. Each county can do little by itself in road building. It is a state prob­lem and must be worked out by our state officials. Times, however, were rapidly changing. The automobile was displacing the horse and the demand for good roads for auto traffic was being met by ever larger road appropriations by the state and the nation. However, the opening of the scenic areas of southern Utah and northern Arizona to the touring public is largely a story of highways. The Kaibab and North Rim North of the Colorado River and south of the Utah line lies that variegated country known as the Arizona Strip. To the west lie the Parashont and Trumbull Mountains. To the east, the Kai­bab Plateau, locally known as the Buckskin Mountains, rears its summit to 10,000 feet in a long level line that stretches southward to the north rim of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. In­formation concerning this region began to seep in from outposts during the early 60' s. There is little doubt that Whitmore and Mclntyre at Pipe Springs, L. W. Roundy at Kanab, and Peter Shurtz near Paria, all knew something about its general character­istics, for it could be observed from all three places. The expedition led by James Andrus in the spring of 1866 to rescue Peter Shurtz must have explored the region south of Paria. Roundy said the expedition started south from Paria to investigate an Indian smoke and was gone fourteen days ( February 23 to March 9), but no further record is available, except that Nate Ad­ams, who moved to Kanab in 1871, stated the expedition went over the Kaibab. Jacob Hamblin doubtless became well acquainted with the Kai­bab after he went to Kanab in 1867 to live among the Indians. John D. Lee took up a ranch at Scutumpah ( on the Andrus route of 1866) in 1869, explored the lower Paria, and located the site for a ferry at its mouth ( later Lee's Ferry). Lee and Hamblin must have ex­plored a good deal of the region together for they built a six room adobe house with sod roof at Jacob's Pool ( lake) in north Kaibab 190 UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY soon after. When they divided their property a little later, Lee took the ferry and Hamblin the pool and Kane Springs in House-rock Valley. In 1870, Brigham Young sent a portable steam sawmill to Ka­nab and Levi Stewart installed it near Scutumpah and the next year moved it to Big Springs on the Kaibab. Many years later, it was moved farther south to Castle or Rigg Springs. In 1872, Major Powell's party centered its work around the Kaibab. Part of the time, this party camped near the Levi Stewart ranch and sawmill. 01 At that time Eight- Mile Spring, Jacob's Well ( Pool or Lake), Oak Spring, Pine Spring, and Stewart's ranch were all being used as grazing headquarters. During that summer, Powell and a friend of his from Illinois, Professor Harvey C. De- Motte, explored the roof of the Kaibab and bestowed the name DeMotte Park upon the main valley ( sometimes called V T Park). In 1873, Thomas Moran, the well- known Western artist who had been commissioned by the Federal government to paint the Grand Canyon, made a trip by mule team from Salt Lake City to the Kai­bab, where Major Powell suggested the vantage from which he produced the canvas of the Grand Canyon now hanging in the Na­tional Capitol. The use of the Kaibab for grazing gradually increased. In 1877 the United Order of Orderville acquired most of the holdings on the northern Kaibab and controlled the range for about ten years, after which time lands and stock passed into private ownership. During the late 80' s, John W. Young ( son of the Mormon leader), representing the Mormon Church in England, conceived a grandiose scheme for interesting English aristocracy in the Kaibab as a private recreation area. He acquired the major holdings there and stocked it with cattle and horses. Dan Seegmiller of Kanab was placed in charge of operations. Young's scheme fell through, but he was not discouraged. He enlarged his plan for making the Kaibab a great hunting ground and center of tourist travel with ho­tels and lodges for the English nobility. Some interest was shown, and several British sportsmen decided to investigate. " Buffalo Bill" Cody was in England at the time with his wild west show, and was anxious to dispose of his animals there and recruit his stock in the United States. Young induced him to replenish in the Kaibab and to act as guide for the English repre­sentatives. Junius Wells went as Young's agent. The trip was made in the summer of 1891. Dan Seegmiller took wagons to Flaq-staff, Arizona on the railroad, to meet Buffalo Bill and the English­men. He had with him Bill Crosby, Nate and Orza Adams and Q J " / f v o . Eix% TppeV9D 2 ! a r y ° f A- H' Th° mpson•- Ut » h HistM KAIBAB AND NORTH RIM 191 Brig Young ( son of John W. Young). They returned via Lee's Ferryto Houserock Valley and the Kaibab. The party included Junius Wells, Buffalo Bill and his crack rifle- shot, John Baker and the Englishmen, Major McKinnon, Lord Ingram and Lord Milmey. They were entertained by the local cattlemen, including Anthony W. Ivins, E. D. Woolley, Ed Lamb, Jr., Walter Hamblin, Alex Cram, Ebenezer Brown and Al Hunt-: ington. The British agents, however, decided the Kaibab was too far away and too' hard to reach. The party went out through Kanab where the presence of English lords and Buffalo Bill proved almost too much for the inhabitants. The failure of the deal left John W. Young in difficulties. To clear the situation, the Kaibab Land and Cattle Company was or- S ianized and money borrowed from New York bankers. A little ater, Cannon, Grant and Company of Salt Lake City took over the mortgage and Anthony W. Ivins became field manager. By skill­ful husbandry, Ivins redeemed the mortgage and tax sale. In 1896 he moved to Mexico and the Kaibab holdings and property were sold to Murdock and Fotheringham of Beaver, who soon sold out to the B. F. Saunders cattle outfit. He in turn, later sold to the Grand Canyon Cattle Company ( E. J. Marshall Co.), still in con­trol at the time the Kaibab National Forest was established ( 1908). It had been set aside as a national forest reserve in 1893. Dan Seegmiller's close association with the Kaibab and North Rim impressed him with its outstanding importance as a national vacation- land, a view shared by many. He continued, as long as he lived, to advertise its merits. About 1896, three years before his death, he drove a white top buggy from Kanab to Milford, picked up a New York party and escorted it over the Kaibab to the North Rim and back. After his partner's death, E. D. Woolley be­gan taking parties into the Kaibab and North Rim. He was the most prominent man- of the Kanab region and logically the one to take the lead in its development from the north side of the Colorado River. Despite his zealous interest, difficulties of transportation, poor roads, distance from the railroad, slow method of travel, all con­spired to prevent significant development. Woolley finally con­ceived the idea of making a trail from the South Rim ( rail terminal) across the Grand Canyon via Bright Angel Creek. For this pur­pose, he organized the Grand Canyon Transportation Company. The members included himself, T. C. Hoyt, Thomas Chamberlain, Jim Emett, E. S. Clark, and later ( 1906) D. D. Rust. A permit was obtained from Arizona to construct a toll trail across the. can­yon. Governmental regulations forebade tolls, however, and they had to limit their revenue to charges for transportation and guide services. E. D. Woolley and Jim Emett began the trail in 1901. It proved 192 UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY an expensive undertaking and in 1908 Jesse Knight invested $ 5,000 to help it along. A cable car was installed for crossing the river. The car was suspended from the cable track by pulleys and pulled back and forth by a propeller cable wound on drums. This route proved to be an important inlet to the North Rim and Kaibab. The total traffic, however, was relatively small and remained so until better transportation facilities became available. One of the chief events of those days was an expedition engi­neered by E. D. Woolley in September, 1905, in which a party con­sisting of Senator Reed Smoot, T. C. Hoyt, E. D. Woolley, E. G. Woolley ( nephew), Graham McDonald, James Clove, Lewis T. Cannon and Congressman Joseph Howell traveled leisurely by team from Salt Lake City through the state, holding political rallies as they went. At Kanab ( September 26), schools were dismissed and a gala holiday declared. The expedition moved on to the Kai­bab and North Rim where the distinguished visitors enjoyed the scenery and hunted deer on Greenland Peninsula. The trip pro­vided conspicious advertising for the Grand Canyon. On November 28, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt estab­lished the Grand Canyon National Game Preserve and thereafter deer were protected and predatory animals hunted. Government hunters of the U. S. Biological survey were employed for that pur­pose from 1906 to 1923. During that period, more than eight hun­dred cougars, thirty wolves, nearly five thousand coyotes and more than five hundred bobcats were removed. One of the interesting characters among these hunters was " Uncle" Jim Owen, who with his hounds took about six hundred cougars from the Kaibab and one hundred and thirty from regions to the north and west. He had previously been a member of the Jesse James gang and when intoxicated was a man to be avoided. At El Tovar, one night, he took a dislike to the clerk, tried to shoot him, and filled the room so full of holes it cost the party $ 100 to settle the damages. D. D. Rust was a school teacher at Fredonia during the win­ter of 1905- 6. During the following summer, he joined the Grand Canyon Transportation Company and was employed for many years thereafter as a guide for tourist parties. Zane Grey, the fam­ous Western novelist, came in April, 1907, and Rust took him over to the North Rim to hunt mountain lions ( cougars). Zane was then a tenderfoot who slept with a six- shooter under his pillow, a practice he abandoned as he became hardened. He returned later in the season to hunt with Col. C. J. Jones ( Buffalo Jones), Grant Wallace, a journalist, and Jim Emett, local cattleman. On this hunt, Wallace captured alive the big king lion of Bright Angel Canyon. Incidentally, Zane Grey built his novel The Heritage of the Desert around Emett's trial at Flagstaff in April, 1907. Emett, KAIBAB AND NORTH RIM 193 whose headquarters were at Lee's Ferry, had been accused of rust­ling by the B. F. Saunders' outfit. On January 11, 1908, the President issued a proclamation creating the Grand Canyon National Monument and separating it from the Kaibab National Forest. During the summer of 1908, Rust took Nathan Galloway, a trapper from the Uintah Basin, from whom he had learned the Canadian method of shooting rap­ids, into the Markagunt Plateau to hunt grizzly bears. Buffalo Jones came back again in early August, 1909, with a party of Bostonians to hunt cougars with Jim Owen. After five days, Buffalo Jones bagged a live lion to take home with him. On that day, the hounds struck another cougar trail and led the party backward six or seven miles until the trail got cold. Then it was discovered that " Old Pot," the reliable hound, was missing. They retraced their trail and found him, with a " treed" cougar about a half mile in the opposite direction from where they had started. Buffalo Jones went up the tree with a rope and a stick. The lion saw Jones coming and started down the tree toward him. Jones backed down slowly and stopped. The cougar stopped, too, glared at the man and backed up on his limb. Jones crept slowly up again until he could reach the cougar with his stick and poked a noose over the lion's head. When the rope was pulled, the beast jumped the wrong way and crashed through the limbs chewing at the rope. On the ground the dogs pounced on him and Jones roped the hind legs while others manned the rope around the neck. They stretchecl him out, tied him alive on the back of a burro, and carried him across the Grand Canyon to the railroad. Motion pictures of this hunt were taken by Jones. It was in June, 1909, that the first automobiles were driven through the Kaibab to the North Rim. This was a stunt engineered by Edwin Gordon Woolley, Jr., of Salt Lake City. With his wife and brother- in- law, D. A. Affleck, he took two autos, a Locomobile and Thomas Flyer, and arrived at Kanab on the fifth day. Here they were joined by E. D. Woolley and Graham McDonald from Kane County. It took three days more to reach the North Rim at Bright Angel. At the time this was a real feat. Gasoline had been distributed in advance by team, ten gallons every thirty miles. They carried with them tools and equipment for car repairs and road making, as well as canvas for use in sand and extra water for over­heated engines. They had to remove high road centers, fill up washes, level off sideling dugways and cut timber falls out of the wagon roads. Indians came to> Kaibab from miles around to see their first " devil wagons," which they were loath to believe could run. At the end of the trip, it was found that nine new tires valued at $ 80 each had been worn out. These were exhibited by the U. S. Rubber Company to demonstrate the wonderful performance of their product. 194 UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY The advent of automobiles on the Kaibab and North Rim opened up new vistas of development. Woolley began to envis­ion the time when the construction of good roads would permit easy access to visitors and when the scenic features of the Grand Canyon and the deer herds of the Kaibab would attract attention and induce many to come. His vision was to be realized before many years had passed. Modern Development of Zion, Bryce and North Rim At the beginning of the second decade of the 20th century, a few individuals here and there in the state were beginning to grasp the potentialities of southern Utah as a scenic mecca. Through­out the United States, agitation for better roads gained ground as the automobile assumed a larger place in our national conscious­ness. The first transcontinental auto trip was made about 1900 and much difficulty was experienced in finding passable routes. The old pioneer wagon roads, disused since the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, had fallen into disrepair and were obliterated or washed by erosion in many of the desert and mountainous areas so that they were often forgotten and nearly impassable. After the first trip, however, other autoists quickly followed and there was a loud demand for logs and guide materials\ 4uring the next decade- a demand which leading Utah newspapers attempted to supply. The first quarter of the century may be characterized as transitional from wagon and train to automobile. Roads had to be redesigned on the basis of alignment instead of grade control and reconstructed into highways, destined to be­come not only supplemental feeders of railroads but also competi­tors. This movement led to the establishment in 1909 of the Utah State Road Commission, empowered to develop state roads and with the avowed intention to build a two million dollar highway through the entire state from Logan to St. George. It took several years for this program to reach southern Utah and by that time road building was beginning to be affected by modern methods of highway construction. Occasional trips into the scenic southland continued, some primarily for enjoyment, others for publicity or promotional pur­poses, all of which served to focus public attention more and more on the area. Public pressure was brought to bear not only on the road commission, but also on the governor and eventually on the Federal government. Governor William Spry of Utah ( 1908- 1916) made at least three trips into the region ( 1912, 1913, 1916). During Septem­ber, 1912, he visited the Dixie Fruit Festival at St. George then