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.