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 east to west from the Tanner Trail near Desert View to the South Bass Trail at Pasture Wash.

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 Hermit Trail has a story all its own, built by the South Rim’s first corporate tourism operators, the Santa Fe Railway and Fred Harvey Company at great expense strictly for tourist trips, then abandoned only twenty years following its construction.  The sampler ends with a lengthier visit to Pasture Wash and the South Bass Trail, where we will camp and hike along the rim that few park visitors ever see, and venture down to the esplanade to climb Mt. Huethawali for some otherwise unattainable canyon views.

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.