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The
Grand
Canyon Hotel Company was incorporated in 1892 and charged with
building services along the stage route to the canyon.
On February 20, 1883,
President Benjamin Harrison established the
Grand
Canyon as a National Forest preserve which offered some protection
for the environment, though logging and mining were still allowed.
In 1896 the same man
who bought Hance's Grandview ranch opened Bright Angel Hotel in
Grand
Canyon Village.
Tourism greatly
increased in 1901 when a spur of the Santa Fe Railroad to
Grand
Canyon Village was completed from
Williams,
Arizona. The 64 mile trip cost $3.95. The development of formal tourist
facilities, especially at
Grand
Canyon Village, increased dramatically.
The first automobile
was driven to the
Grand
Canyon in 1902 when Oliver Lippincott from Los Angeles,
California, drove his car to the South Rim from
Flagstaff.
Lippincott, a guide, and two writers set out on the afternoon of
January 4th anticipating a seven-hour journey. Two days later, the
hungry and dehydrated party arrived at their destination; the
countryside was just too rough for the 10 horsepower auto.
In 1903, the Cameron
Hotel opened and its owner began to charge a toll to use the Bright
Angel Trail.
The Kolob Brothers,
Emery and Ellsworth, built a photographic studio on the South Rim at
the trailhead of Bright Angel Trail in 1904. Hikers and mule caravans
intent on descending down the canyon would stop at the Kolob Studio to
have their photos taken. The Kolob Brothers processed the prints
before their customers returned to the rim. Later the Kolob
Brothers would be the first to make a motion picture of a river trip
through the canyon.
The
Fred
Harvey Company developed the luxury El Tovar Hotel on the South
Rim in 1905. The hotel was named for Don Pedro de Tovar who
tradition says is the Spaniard who learned about the canyon from
Hopis and
told Coronado about it. Charles Whittlesey designed the arts and
crafts-styled rustic hotel complex, which was built with logs and
local stone at a cost of $250,000 for the hotel and another $50,000
for the stables. The El Tovar was owned by Santa Fe Railroad and
operated by its chief concessionaire, the
Fred
Harvey Company.
Other
Fred Harvey
establishments were also built in the canyon, including the
Hopi House in
1905, The Lookout in 1914, Hermits Rest in 1914, the Phantom Ranch in
1922, the Watchtower in 1932 and the Bright Angel Lodge in 1935.
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