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 McIntyre 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 Lake in north Kaibab soon after. When they divided their property a little later, Lee took the ferry and Hamblin the pool and Kane Springs in Houserock 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.[92] At that time Eight-Mile Spring, Jacob’s Well, 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. DeMotte, 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 Flagstaff, Arizona, on the railroad, to meet Buffalo Bill and the Englishmen. He had with him Bill Crosby, Nate and Orza Adams and Brig Young (son of John W. Young). They returned via Lee’s Ferry to Houserock Valley and the Kaibab.
“Buffalo Bill” and cowboys at Kaibab, left to right. Ed Lamb, Nate Adams, George Adams, Orza Adams, Wm. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), Walter Hamblin, Eb Brown. They helped him replenish his depleted stock. Courtesy Walter Hamblin.
Buffalo Bill, the Englishmen and local American christening McKinnon Point on North Rim in the fall of 1882. Their names on a paper tucked away in a tin can were found (about 1928) by a Park Ranger. Courtesy Walter Hamblin.
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 Huntington. 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 organized and money borrowed from New York bankers. A little later, 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 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 conspicuous 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, 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 stretched 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 US. Rubber Company to demonstrate the wonderful performance of their product.
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.