Mining at the Grand Canyon

Yup, there was mining goin' on in the Canyon.  In 1890 one brave soul, Pete Berry, staked his claim to mine for copper 3,000 feet below the rim of Horseshoe Mesa.  He called it the Last Chance Mine, and he thrived there for seventeen years below what is now called Grandview Point.

The ore was so rich that it claimed a prize at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago because the ore was 70% pure copper.  Even so, again we go back to the cost of getting equipment in and ore out of the Arizona desert to be refined.  By 1901 Berry had sold out to new owners.  The price of copper plummeted in 1907, and even the new owners couldn't make a go of it.

But as early as 1893, Berry saw another "gold mine" - tourists!  At first he just offered crude lodging in a cabin, but the people were delighted for a place to stretch out after their 12-hour stagecoach ride from Flagstaff.  The next day they would get to ride a mule down into the canyon.  By 1897 he had built a two-story log hotel.  Business was so good that Berry even added another building later.

Even with the capricious, sometimes testy nature of the human being, mining tourists was probably a WHOLE lot easier than mining copper! However, progress can't be held back.  Eventually the Santa Fe Railroad folks also counted the tourists and said, "Ah-ha!"  They built a track to Grand Canyon Village eleven miles west of Grandview and the tourists saw no reason to hop a stage from there over to Grandview.  They stayed a the Village, and Grandview facilities fell into decline.  Today, there is very little left of the Grandview Hotel, but now tourists arrive by their own vehicles and DO make that eleven mile trip.  The trail built by those first intrepid miners is now used by thousands of hikers every year, so all is not lost! 



You might also be interest in mining in southeastern Arizona:

http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2013/11/mining-around-tombstone.html
and in northwestern Arizona:
http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2013/09/mining-in-mohave-desert.html

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