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    Grand Canyon National Park
    Grand Canyon National Park
    Grand Canyon National Park
    Ebook232 pages35 minutes

    Grand Canyon National Park

    By Thomas Alan Ratz

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    About this ebook

    Arizona is proud to have one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World the Grand Canyon. With the arrival of the Santa Fe and Union Pacific Railroad in the early 20th century, the development of the canyon began in earnest. The railroads, along with the Santa Fe s business partner, the Fred Harvey Company, greatly promoted the Grand Canyon as a tourist destination through books, pamphlets, and magazine advertisements. On February 26, 1919, Congress established the Grand Canyon National Park, and the federal government became a promoter of the Grand Canyon, too. But perhaps the best promoters of the Grand Canyon were the people who wrote home on picture postcards telling their friends and families about the amazing canyon. A number of the postcards published about the park can be found within the pages of this book.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateNov 23, 2009
    ISBN9781439624579
    Grand Canyon National Park
    Author

    Thomas Alan Ratz

    Thomas Alan Ratz has been a resident of Grand Canyon National Park for 29 years. He has collected hundreds of pieces of memorabilia, books, photographs, postcards, and menus. He has a great fondness for the history of the El Tovar Hotel and was a presenter at the hotel�s centenary celebration in 2006. This volume includes more than 225 historic postcards from his personal collection.

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      Book preview

      Grand Canyon National Park - Thomas Alan Ratz

      collection.

      INTRODUCTION

      Greetings from the Grand Canyon.

      This simple message is often written on picture postcards by vacationers to the Grand Canyon and mailed off to family and friends. However, there is some history to these ubiquitous mailings, particularly in relation to Grand Canyon National Park.

      First off, postcards find their genesis in the private business mailing cards of 1861. In the United States, the picture postcard started when, authorized by an act of Congress in 1898, privately published postcards could be sent using standard rates, 1¢ in the United States and its island possessions, Cuba, Canada, and Mexico, and 2¢ elsewhere.

      Since their creation, postcards have been an inexpensive method of sending messages home. They were also used as a note sent ahead to let the recipient know of the visitor’s impending arrival. More often, the postcard was a low-cost souvenir of the vacationers’ trip collected from all the places they had stopped to see. When finally home, the postcards were assembled in albums and brought out to show visiting family members. The postcard was also the perfect advertising tool. It would be purchased from the business shown on the card, and then the purchaser would pay to send this image out to a receptive, and perhaps future, client.

      Secondly, the completion of several transcontinental railroads in the early 20th century made it possible for anyone with the money to travel across the country. Adventurer writers like George Wharton James and Charles F. Lummis came to the Grand Canyon, writing stories that appeared in Eastern newspapers. These stories created a romantic interest in seeing the Grand Canyon and the once Wild West. Seeing the business sense in advertising rail travel to the Grand Canyon on its trains, the Santa Fe Railway helped develop tourist facilities on the South Rim of the canyon. A longtime business partner of the railroad, the Fred Harvey Company, operated the hotels for the Santa Fe Railway. The Fred Harvey Company was completely responsible for the food service, overnight accommodations, and some of the publication of booklets, brochures, and postcards for the train traveler.

      The Fred Harvey Company offered postcards for sale in the shops along the Santa Fe Railway. The images on the cards ranged from the tall buildings, fine homes, and parks of the cities the railroad passed through to rural scenes with celery fields, cotton-baling operations, and the scenic views of the passing landscape. Train travel across the United States could take several days. Travelers would write a short message on a postcard and drop it in a mailbox at one of the meal stops.

      Postcards of the Grand Canyon were being produced by the late 1890s by several publishers and were sold in the first tourist hotels at the canyon. These hotels, the Grandview and the Bright Angel, each had post offices where visitors could send their correspondence home. With the arrival of the Santa Fe Railway at the Grand Canyon and the building of El Tovar Hotel in 1905, visitation greatly increased. The number of postcard images also grew.

      The Fred Harvey Company had postcards published of its new hotel. Justly proud of El Tovar Hotel, the company had a great number of views produced of it, both of the exterior and the interior. The company also produced many postcards of other buildings at the Grand Canyon. The Hopi House, the Bright Angel Lodge, and the Lookout all had a series of postcards. The early images of these Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter designs are rich with the details of how the buildings first appeared.

      Other businesses in the Grand Canyon Village also created postcards. The Kolb brothers made images of the canyon and the mule riders into postcards for sale in their studio. John G. Verkamp published a series of distinctive cards of the canyon that have a hand-colored look.

      The Santa Fe Railway constructed more than structures at the Grand Canyon. It also built the Hermit Road as a means to avoid the tolls on the other canyon trails. Postcards were produced of the views all along this roadway and into the canyon along the trail to the river. Hermit’s Rest was photographed from every angle, and these became picture postcards, too.

      The Bright Angel Trail has long been the favored way to see the Grand Canyon from below the rim. Postcards of people riding mules and of the different sections of this trail were popular for tourists to send home, and many of these cards have short, handwritten descriptions of the rider’s trip.

      The establishment of the area as a national park in 1919 brought some order to the development that was taking place at the Grand Canyon. The building of better roads to the east of the village allowed visitors access to that part of the canyon. Services such as museums and interpretive displays where added to this part of the canyon to enhance the tourist experience. The building of the Watchtower in 1933 at the east entrance created one of the most iconic postcard images for the Grand Canyon.

      The development of the North Rim of the canyon took longer because of its remoteness and the topography. The park service established the roads to the viewpoints on the North Rim and oversaw the tourist services built by the Union Pacific Railroad. The postcard images of the original and rebuilt Grand Canyon Lodge show the great effort the railroad put into its North Rim operation.

      The great Colorado River has played an enormous part in the forming the Grand Canyon. The depth of the canyon has been determined by the erosion and cutting action of the river, but seen from the rim, the river looks small and belies the power it has. The river and its course were of great interest to the early explorers. Today the waters of the Colorado are

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