Chapter Three
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CIrhapteronic Golden T Yhreeears - The s at Grand Canyon National Park witnessed a seamless progression of building pro- grams begun in the mid-s.The two decades were linked as well by persistence with earlier efforts to enhance visitors’experiences and protect the landscape through educational programs,bound- ary extensions, and the elimination of private and state inholdings. The continuity seems odd at first glance, as it accompanied the deepest economic depression the nation has yet endured. This cyclical malady of world capitalism might have resulted in reduced federal spending, a return to traditional extraction of resources, or a nonstructural approach to park management. Instead, it triggered federal subsidies in the form of emergency building funds and a ready supply of desperate low-wage laborers.Under Miner Tillotson,one of the better park superintendents by NPS standards,a mature administration took full and efficient advantage of national economic woes to complete structural improvements that,given World War and subsequent financial scrimping, might never have been built. In contrast to the misery of national unemployment,homelessness,dust bowls,and bread lines,financial circumstances com- bined with a visitational respite to produce a few golden years at many of the West’s national parks,including Grand Canyon. From an administrative perspective, staffing and base fund- $, annually. Normal road and trail funds diminished, ing remained at late-s levels through , as if there causing several new projects to be delayed, but deficits were had been no stock market crash and deepening financial offset by modest emergency funds of the Hoover collapse. Permanent employees in consisted of the Administration that allowed those projects already in superintendent, an assistant superintendent, chief ranger, progress to continue unabated. assistant chief ranger, six rangers, two permanent natural- The park fared even better after mid-, as work-relief ists, and half a dozen clerks. Tillotson hired eleven seasonal and emergency funding programs of the Roosevelt rangers and naturalists, as well as day-wage laborers as vari- Administration supplied all the workers that managers ous projects required. By , at the depression’s depths could reasonably employ and all the money they could and immediately before the onset of New Deal programs, spend for the remainder of the decade. Tillotson wrote in permanent staff numbered between forty-two and forty- that four, a slight increase over , consisting of the superin- tendent, assistant superintendent, chief ranger, two assistant from a purely mercenary point ofview the park chief rangers, and six rangers among the “protection” ranks, [will] gain more in the form ofphysical improve - two naturalists, a clerical staff of six, and sixteen workers ments by the National Recovery Act than would within the engineering department. While visitation have transpired for a number ofyears—in some declined each year from , in to , in , instances not at all—under a normalr endt of easing administrative demands, base appropriations park affairs. remained at late s amounts, ranging from $, to His insight proved correct. While NPS base appropriations only got bigger in and . Capital outlays by the servicewide rose from $. million in to $ million in Utah Parks Company in - that had been gambled on , Congress injected another $ million during the the immediate promise of North Rim tourism could not same years into emergency relief projects within the parks have been made at a worse time.The $, loss of the and monuments. Of the handful of work-relief agencies Grand Canyon Lodge to fire in September only sharp- created to spend this money, the Public Works ened their financial problems. Recognizing the importance Administration (PWA) of their private partners, administrators responded quickly and Civilian by acceding to the postponement or cancellation of planned Conservation Corps capital investments and taking a more flexible posture con- (CCC) figured most cerning rates, the extent of services, and hours of prominently at Grand operation. Canyon. Beyond immediate assistance, the nation’s comptroller general ruled in April that the NPS could renegotiate Figure 13.Park rangers R. concession agreements before their expiration. At Grand Redburn and George Collins in front ofthe new adminis- Canyon, administrators chose to relieve financial burdens of tration building (today’s the Fred Harvey Company by executing a new twenty-year ranger operations),September 1931.Collins was an avid, contract, effective January , that required payment of capable photographer who recorded many ofthe con- . percent of profitsafter allowing percent for capital struction projects taking place in the early 1930s. investment. Contractually, nothing could be done for the GRCA 64. Utah Parks Company whose agreement already stipulated a franchise fee based on profits and included the capital Administrators considered PWA workers, who labored for investment clause. Still, the company’s pact allowed private contractors on dozens of projects like the East losses to be carried forward, and the difficult depression Approach Road and West Rim Drive, to be bonuses since years ensured that it would never pay franchise fees. they did not require park service management.The quasi- Verkamp’s store remained profitable through the s and military CCC, on the other hand, relied on NPS managers began to pay a percentage of earnings when John Verkamp to select camp sites within the park, supply equipment and signed his first ten-year contract in January . Emery transportation, assign rangers, engineers, and landscape Kolb, who appeared unaffected by the depression, contin- architects for technical planning and supervision, and per- ued to pay percent of gross receipts for the remainder of form associated clerical duties in order to benefit from the the decade. Babbitt Brothers Trading Company wrote let- workers and funds. The first two contingents arrived on ters to NPS managers and Arizona’s congressmen com- May , when Company under command of Capt. plaining of financial hardship in hopes of securing a new L.C. Dill settled in at a former contractor’s camp near contract based on profitability, but could convince no one Avenue A (Apache Street), and Company under Capt. to renegotiate since their income statements remained in W.O.Poindexter occupied the former Cape Royal Road the black. construction camp at Neal Spring. From mid- Figure 14.Uniformed per- until the last enlistee left in mid-, six perma- sonnel,ca.1934.Left to right,top:Dale S.King, nent camps labeled NP-A- through NP-A- were Arthur L.Brown,Joseph established at Grand Canyon National Park. On Bryan, Ranger Lund, Elliot Betts,Ranger Sturgill. any given day for nearly a decade, two to three Middle:Louis Schellbach, companies numbering - young men sallied James P. Brooks,Miner R. Tillotson,Edwin D. McKee, forth from these camps to undertake construction, Perry Brown.Bottom: Ranger Hawkins, Russell maintenance, conservation, and educational pro- Grater, Ranger Disher, jects of every sort other than management and Hubert R. Lauzon,Albert Turner. GRCA 1077. major road construction. The park’s concessioners fared worse than their administrative partners in light of customer downturns and Concessioners’ financial difficulties and plummeting vis- an understandable trend among visitors to economize. itation played decisive roles in arresting early plans to Smaller operators offering low-cost goods and services with decentralize Grand Canyon’s facilities and services. In minimal investments lost volume but remained slightly park managers agreed to a five-year, $. million Santa Fe profitable. However, with rail travel down 30 percent in Railroad building program that would have replaced the El , the Fred Harvey Company posted “big losses” that Tovar and Bright Angel Hotels with a grand hotel in the an adm i n i strati ve history of grand ca nyon nati onal pa r k Creek included two -horsepower turbines that delivered three-phase, sixty-cycle current at , volts three quarters of a mile up to the pump house below the springs. Here it was stepped up to , volts for transmission, then stepped down to and volts for administrative and concessioner use. Construction required a ,-foot-long temporary tramway to supply materials and machinery to the base of Roaring Springs, and a ,-foot-long, red- wood-stave penstock down to the power plant. The Utah Parks Company’s effort probably inspired the Santa Fe Railroad to get on with a resolution to the more serious water problem at Grand Canyon Village. same location and added a Appropriating the ample springs at Indian Garden for rim- Figure 15.October 1936 side use had been considered since , but the railroad view ofthe North Rim camp “subsidiary” hotel at Desert for Civilian Conservation View, a “development” within thought it economically unfeasible until alarming trends in Corps Company 818,which water consumption and experience gained from the worked on road, trail,and Havasu Canyon, and lesser landscape projects at the rim facilities at Bass Camp.At the Roaring Springs system prompted construction to begin in during summers and on the . Completed in August , the new system consisted Colorado River, Clear Creek, same time, the Utah Parks of a pumping plant with two sets of two turbine pumps, and North KaibabTr ails, Company seriously considered and at Phantom Ranch dur- a hotel complex at Cape Royal together capable of delivering eighty-five