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Havasupai
The trail began as a Havasupai path to year-round water
The upper part of the trail was built by the Havasupai people to reach the year-round water of Garden Creek. They settled seasonally in the area, which is now called Havasupai Gardens. From the rim at Grand Canyon Village the trail now descends 4,380 feet to the Colorado River.
4,380feet of descent from the rim to the Colorado River
1890
A future senator improved the trail and charged a toll
Ralph H. Cameron, later a United States senator, settled on the rim in 1890 and began improving the old Havasupai trail. He extended it all the way to the Colorado River and named it the Bright Angel Trail, at first often called Cameron's Trail. He charged a toll to use it, with extra fees for drinking water.
Rival trails
A railway and the Park Service built trails to get around the toll
To compete with Cameron, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway improved the Hermit Trail in 1911. In 1924 the newly created National Park Service began the South Kaibab Trail near Yaki Point as another way around his tolls. After a long series of legal battles, the Bright Angel Trail was turned over to the Park Service in 1928.
The Kolbs
Two brothers photographed the mule riders from a tent
Ellsworth Kolb came to the canyon in 1901 to work as a bellboy at the Bright Angel Hotel, and his brother Emery joined him the next year. They photographed visitors on the mule rides down the trail and sold them the pictures, at first developing them in a tent. A few years later they built a studio on the rim, with its foundation blasted from the rock, just below rim level.
1928
The last Havasupai were forced out of the canyon in 1928
In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the Havasupai to leave the area to make way for a park. The last of them did not leave until 1928, forced out by the National Park Service. In 2022 the name Havasupai Gardens was approved, at the request of the tribe, who regarded the old name as a painful reminder of past injustices.
Day 1, afternoon
It comes after Yavapai Geology Museum. Then Hopi Point.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Bright Angel Trail, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.