Grand Canyon’s inner-canyon trails have a long history dating back to Desert Archaic hunter-gatherers thousands of years ago through the present.  This class will sample each of the South Rim trails purposefully built by pioneer prospectors, miners, and tourism operators between 1880 and 1920.  We will work our way west to east from the Hermit Trail to the Tanner Trail near Desert View.

Lipan Point and the Tanner Trail offer some of the more expansive views of the Colorado River and Painted Desert to the east while revealing the prospecting and mining efforts of men like Seth Tanner, Franklin French, Ben Beamer, and George McCormick.  It also represents the southern leg of the infamous Horsethief Trail, a comical deer drive, and a mythical tale of lost gold in the canyon’s depths.

The New Hance Trail was built by the canyon’s most famous pioneer resident, John Hance, noted miner, storyteller, and the South Rim’s first tourism operator.  In combination with the following day’s trip down the Grandview Trail, these two hikes essentially tell a complete story of men and their families who first engaged in prospecting and mining then turned to tourism when they learned that the canyon was not as mineral rich as it first appeared. 

The South Kaibab and Hermit Trails have stories all their own, built and improved by the South Rim’s first corporate tourism operators at great expense strictly for tourist trips, and continue to be the most popular south rim trails almost 100 years later.

The overall teaching tools and objectives include varied and extensive views of Grand Canyon’s incredible patterns of erosion, which help illustrate the region’s two billion-year-old natural history, especially how the canyon affords so many diverse ecosystems to support life in a harsh land.  A geographic overview lays the foundation for why early humans made a life here, and why later European Americans envisioned wealth from the extraction of mineral ore, but ended up combining their trails and canyon savvy to further the newborn industry of southwestern tourism. 

The experience will also reveal how early pioneers branched off from the nation’s coast-to-coast arterial railroads, wagon roads, and automotive roads to develop a more complete transportation infrastructure in the Grand Canyon region, which allowed further development of remote hinterlands that continues to this day.  Another important lesson is how these men, women, and children acted as hardworking yet unknowing scouts for later corporations who would develop industrial tourism of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and why the National Park Service and other land management agencies stepped in to better preserve the land and its wildlife.

Hikes each day will vary in length but might be up to 5 miles. Just how we go each day will depend on the weather amongst other things. Regardless of distance travelled, the trails hold a wealth of information that Mike Anderson is eager to share with you!