The Ol’ Pioneer The Magazine of the Grand Canyon Historical Society

Volume 22 : Number 2 www.GrandCanyonHistory.org Spring 2011

In This Issue

Book Review ...... 3 The Infinities of Beauty and Terror ...... 4 Louis Schellback’s Log Books, Part 3 .....11 President’s Letter The Ol’ Pioneer The Magazine of the Grand Canyon Historical Society Calling All Grand Canyon Historians!! Volume 22 : Number 2 Spring 2011 Planning and coordination is well under way for the next Grand Canyon History Symposium scheduled for January 2012. We recently sent out a Call for u Papers asking Grand Canyon historians, researchers and writers to submit pro- The Historical Society was established posals to present at the symposium. If you have a Grand Canyon history topic in July 1984 as a non-profit corporation that you have researched (or know somebody working on an interesting topic), to develop and promote appreciation, we strongly encourage you to submit a proposal. The presenters at the last under-standing and education of the symposium were a nice mix of historians, river runners, hikers, writers, park earlier history of the inhabitants and employees and enthusiastic amateur historians - we expect to have a similar important events of the Grand Canyon. mix this year. So, please get the word out – the deadline for submitting propos- The Ol’ Pioneer is published by the als is June 15. Additional details about the symposium and how to submit a GRAND CANYON HISTORICAL proposal can be found on the GCHS website (http://www.grandcanyonhis- SOCIETY in conjunction with The tory.org/). Bulletin, an informational newsletter. And speaking of websites… in addition to our long-standing GCHS website, Both publications are a benefit of membership. Membership in the Society the society now also had its own Facebook page! It has only been public for a is open to any person interested in the few weeks and already has seen nearly 300 users. There are almost daily up- historical, educational, and charitable dates and postings regarding Grand Canyon history trivia, upcoming canyon purposes of the Society. Membership is events and online discussions on various canyon topics. Our current Facebook on an annual basis using the standard page administrators are Amy Horn, Helen Ranney, Karen Greig, Tom Martin calendar; and dues of $20 are payable on the 1st of January each year, and and myself, but anyone can view and post (even non-GCHS members). It is a mailed to the GCHS Treasurer, PO Box great way to keep up with GCHS and Grand Canyon events (as well as raise 31405 Flagstaff, AZ 86002. The Ol’ Pioneer visibility for the society). If you are already on Facebook, simply type ‘Grand magazine is copyrighted by the Grand Canyon Historical Society’ in the search box at the top of the Facebook screen. Canyon Historical Society, Inc. All rights Once you find our page, be sure to click the ‘Like’ button to ‘Friend’ us. Tell reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form your friends! without permission of the publisher. See you online! Editor: Mary Williams Submit photos and stories to the The Ol’ Pioneer Erik Berg editor of at: mary@ marywilliamsdesign.com or 4880 N GCHS President Weatherford Road, Flagstaff, AZ 86001. (928) 779-3377. Please submit written articles and photos electronically on CD or via email if possible. You may mail photos or slides for scanning if needed.

Submissions to The Bulletin should be sent to Karen Greig, [email protected]

GCHS Officers Erik Berg, President NOW! Find us on Facebook. John Azar, Vice President Keith Green, Treasurer Amy Horn, Secretary Kirsten Heins, Pioneer Award Cover: First important poet to see the Grand Canyon, and founder of Poetry magazine, Al Richmond, Awards Chair Harriet Monroe. Paul Schnur, Membership Committee John Azar, Outings Coordinator

Board of Directors Karen Greig Howard Asaki Kristin Heins John Azar Mona McCroskey The Ol’ Pioneer submission deadlines are going to be roughly the first of Janu- Erik Berg Carol Naille ary, April, July and October and we will publish either three or four issues a Jackie Brown Adair Peterson Keith Green Paul Schnur year, depending on content volume.

2 : Grand Canyon Historical Society www.GrandCanyonHistory.org Book Review: The Butterflies of Grand Canyon by Margaret Erhart by Nancy Greene a place we all love, we are launched into an all too fa- hose of us in the Grand Canyon miliar retelling of the fragility Historical Society spend of the human heart and how much of our time delving into easily it is to be led astray. nonfictionT accounts of those early Sometimes people do come to canyon pioneers. We spend time their senses, and other times trying to connect all the myriad pieces they never recover. Some- of history from all of the events we’ve times people who have been attended and books we’ve read. My so affected by their experi- advice is to give your brain a break ences and the Grand Canyon from all that hard historic data and landscape can walk away, but empirical research. Just sit back and remain forever altered. Mar- enjoy this delightful tale of historical garet’s literary prose is lush fiction about our favorite place. with images of the canyon, Ms. Erhart, local author and can- the monsoon season and the yon hiking guide, brings us back to electric shock sensations be- the South Rim in the 1950s. This is an tween some of the characters. era some of our members may actu- The dialogue is rich and helps ally remember. She weaves a mur- to move the story along. But der mystery into her story with the there are also those reflective help of the famous skeleton in Emery passages, as one character or Kolb’s garage, tucked away in a boat, another tries to mull over a suspended in the ceiling. Although particularly vexing conun- the principal characters are totally drum of life, with the canyon a creation of the author’s inventive as a backdrop. How many mind, other very real Grand Canyon of us have brought our own personages amble through the pag- looming personal angst to the can- in perspective. Prepare to enjoy this es. Lois Jotter, Elzada Clover, Louis yon rim—only to have that magnifi- historical novel/murder mystery/ro- Schellbach, H. C. Bryant, Ellsworth cent spectacle before us help to alter, mance—excellently crafted, well told Kolb (in his pajamas, no less) and shrink and sometimes totally dissi- and with a setting extraordinaire. of course, Emery and his skeleton pate our puny problems. The canyon When you have finished, your heart all play a part in this gentle murder is a great receptacle for human emo- will float as lightly as the butterflies mystery. With a familiar setting and tion, and helps to put our own lives of the Grand Canyon. These Infinities of Beauty and Terror: Poets and Writers Discover the Grand Canyon by Don Lago it in a lifetime of photographs, only to azines, newspapers, and advertising be shocked by the canyon’s real scale posters still relied on illustrators. The ven today, every person who and shapes and colors. Grand Canyon photographs that tour- comes to the Grand Canyon For the first tourists who stepped ists had seen were black-and-white discovers it anew. Every visitor off the first Santa Fe Railway trains at and of limited quality. The Santa Fe seesE the canyon with their own per- the Grand Canyon in 1901, there was Railway placed its promotional trust sonalities, perceptions, and beliefs. much more room for surprise. Pho- in artists, especially Thomas Moran, Many visitors come thinking they al- tography had not yet become a ubiq- yet Moran’s romanticized depictions ready know the canyon, having seen uitous part of the media; books, mag- of the canyon were so misleading, www.GrandCanyonHistory.org Grand Canyon Historical Society : 3 leaving out the canyon’s true colors etically, helping to define how we litzer Prize winners—who encoun- and geological strata, that many tour- should see a strange new landscape. tered the Grand Canyon were by far ists were left trying to recognize the In the age before academic hyper- the most philosophically ambitious real canyon. Tourists also struggled specialization, Powell and Dutton ab- about it. They saw the canyon as a with the refusal of the Grand Can- sorbed much of 19th century literary great puzzle about the ultimate na- yon and the entire Southwest to fit culture and they applied the best of ture of reality, demanding an answer. into the images of natural beauty in- it in their writings, while the worst They often saw the Grand Canyon as herited from Romanticism, images of of it—the Romantic fancies that saw a symbol of the whole cosmos. Was green fields and blue streams, Edenic landscapes as nothing but giant’s the cosmos a place of order, or chaos? flowers and trees, distant mountains, castles and fairy gardens—was ed- Was the canyon evidence for God, or maybe even a few broken Greek col- ited out by their geological eyes and for ancient and massive natural forc- umns. In its first years, El Tovar Ho- their life-and-death journeys over a es? Did the canyon point toward im- tel offered guests a book in which to rugged land and river. Powell and mortality, or decay? If nature was the record their reactions to the canyon, Dutton left their perceptions not just power behind the canyon, what was and their comments are filled with in eloquent books but upon the land the reality of nature? Was it generous the excitement of discovery, with itself, in the names they choose for or malevolent? For many Grand Can- puzzlement, and with conscientious landscape features. As the Ameri- yon poets, these questions weren’t efforts to grasp the meanings of the can people settled a vast continent abstractions, but powerful personal canyon. they needed to come up with many questions that drove their lives and Among the early visitors to the thousands of names for landscapes poetic work. These questions were es- Grand Canyon were some of Amer- and towns. In contrast with Native pecially alive in the early years of the ica’s leading poets, novelists, and Americans, whose landscape names 20th century, when science was dra- nature writers. They too were sur- held deep familiarity and spiritual matically changing the universe and prised by the canyon, often quite meanings, American names were challenging familiar religious frame- emotionally. They saw the canyon often superficial, honoring the first works. In 1901 one future Grand with naked minds, without the tem- pioneer to get there or die there, or a Canyon poet, Edgar Lee Masters, was plates provided by previous authors. politician or railroad president who’d the law partner of Clarence Darrow, They had to figure out the canyon never get there. John Wesley Powell’s who in the Scopes trial would plead for themselves. They came from dif- landscape names came mainly from the case of evolution. But for human ferent backgrounds as people and as this pioneer tradition, honoring his society, hopes for evolution led not authors, and they saw the canyon in crewmates, his wife, his political pa- to progress or utopia but to the mad, different ways, yet most of them saw trons, and expedition mishaps, and mechanized slaughter of World War the canyon as a realm of ultimates, of most of Powell’s other names were One, a deep shock to basic optimism the deepest workings of nature or of descriptive, such as Vermilion Cliffs. of western culture. Three Grand Can- God. They felt that the Grand Canyon Fortunately Clarence Dutton felt that yon poets would surrender to despair was challenging them to rise above the Grand Canyon held such deep and commit suicide. the usual concerns of personal life or grandeur that only religious names The nature writers—John Muir, American history. The canyon was could do it justice, and he started the John Burroughs, John C. Van Dyke, asking them canyon-deep questions tradition of naming canyon features and Mary Austin—had much more and offering them deep meanings for for religious shrines, such as Brahma confidence in nature, trusting its real- human life. Not all of their musings Temple. Dutton was influenced by the ity and benevolence. They were will- were brilliant or artistically success- long Romantic tradition of seeing in ing to see spiritual realities behind ful, but their musings were far more nature spiritual purposes, mythologi- nature, but they didn’t worry about it sophisticated than the popular po- cal images, and architectural shapes. nearly as much as did the poets. They etry of the time. The Grand Canyon Three types of writers came to the were mainly interested in figuring did succeed at stirring some serious Grand Canyon: poets, nature writers, out how the Grand Canyon fit into men and women into some serious and novelists, and each type had a nature’s scheme; how time, geologi- thought and some telling imagery. distinct experience of the canyon. cal forces, and erosion worked and While this article is about the ca- The first well-known writer to vis- looked; how a desert landscape could reer poets and writer who explored it the Grand Canyon, Charles Dudley still be beautiful; and how the canyon the Grand Canyon in the first quar- Warner in 1891, was a novelist. Yet compared with other natural won- ter of the 20th century, any history novelists, who deal in human dra- ders like Yosemite. of Grand Canyon poetry should ac- mas rather than in landscapes, were As different as these writers were, knowledge John Wesley Powell and the writers least drawn to the Grand they shared some common reactions Clarence Dutton. Powell and Dutton Canyon, and those who did come had to the canyon, especially a strong were the first explorers of the Grand the least to say about it. sense of surprise and puzzlement. Canyon not just physically but po- The poets—including three Pu- For one writer the surprise and puz-

4 : Grand Canyon Historical Society www.GrandCanyonHistory.org zlement might be metaphysical, for preparation for meeting and perceiv- of living and traveling in the Mojave another geological, for another aes- ing a strange, powerful, new reality. Desert, John C. Van Dyke published thetic. Some writers reveled in the Today visitors to the Grand Canyon The Desert in 1901, and Mary Austin shock of something very new to them have been trained to expect some- published Land of Little Rain in 1903. and to human culture. thing beautiful, and nature writers Van Dyke and Austin challenged But many writers felt frightened have been trained to see nature not as Americans to see and appreciate the by the canyon, frightened with physi- any threat to human identity, but as desert on its own terms; to stop see- cal annihilation. They shrank back as an innocent victim of human threats. ing it through the eyes of the English if the canyon were going to swallow Almost no writer expressed any Romantics; to stop seeing it and call- them, or as if they feared throwing conservationist concerns for the can- ing it ugly for what it lacked; to start themselves into it. John C. Van Dyke yon. John Muir admitted that he’d seeing that naked rock had its own devoted much of the first chapter of had misgivings about the railroad identity and beauty. Twenty years lat- his The Grand Canyon of the Colorado to reaching the rim, but when he finally er John C. Van Dyke and Mary Aus- this suicidal impulse: rode the train there he declared: “In tin wrote about the Grand Canyon. …the rock platforms down the presence of such stupendous scen- Austin complained: “But be careful below seem to heave, the buttes ery they are nothing. The locomotives whom you ask to point the place out sway; even the opposite Rim of and trains are mere beetles and cater- to you, lest you be answered by one the Canyon undulates slightly. pillars, and the noise they make is as of the silly names cut out of a mytho- The depth yawns to engulf you. little disturbance as the hooting of an logical dictionary and shaken in a hat Instinctively you shrink back. If owl in the lonely woods.”3 before they were applied to the Grand it were not for the presence of In the years the Grand Canyon was Cañon for the benefit of that amazing companions you might cry out. being discovered, Romanticism was number of Americans who can never Ah! the terror of it! still a dominant cultural force, and see anything unless it is supposed to And, worse than that, the mad most writers saw the canyon through look like something else.”4 John C. attraction of it, the dread temp- its eyes. Romanticism placed a strong Van Dyke felt that the Grand Canyon tation that lies within it! The emphasis on nature and saw it as a had been insulted: “…the parlor-car chasm repels and yet draws. realm more perfect than the human poet was abroad in the land and in What does it mean? Why before realm, and often as a spiritual realm. consequence the mock-heroic and the this most prodigious beauty of On its more serious side, Romanti- absurd have been put upon the map. the world does one feel tempted cism saw nature as a gospel written A series of numbers would have been to leap over the edge?1 in stone and forests, or as embodied less agonizing and quite as poetic.”5 spirit. On its aesthetic level, Romanti- Both Austin and Van Dyke said that Van Dyke claimed that “almost cism saw nature as the source of ul- Native American names would have everyone at the Canyon for the first timate beauty, maybe metaphysical been more appropriate. time knows this impulse.”2 This beauty. On its more superficial level, Yet even as many poets saw cas- might be an exaggeration, but Van Romanticism saw nature as the en- tles in the canyon, most of them were Dyke had a personal interest in this chanted playground of non-Christian struggling, sometimes painfully, with impulse: a dozen years previously, spirits, of giants, elves, fairies, and the transition between Romanticism John C. Van Dyke’s cousin, Henry Greek gods; mountains were their and modernism, not just in literary Van Dyke, a popular and confident- castles, forests their gardens. Such style, but philosophically. The pow- ly Christian poet, had published the enchantments had become such a erful cultural tradition that saw na- book The Grand Canyon and Other Po- strong literary convention that few ture as a realm of perfection, beauty, ems, in which he confessed that the Grand Canyon authors avoided it. A and spirit, was being challenged by canyon had brought on a sudden few authors noted that they had read the hard-to-evade power of science, fear of self-annihilation. John C. Van Clarence Dutton, so perhaps they which saw a universe of vast spaces Dyke suggested that such fear was were following Dutton’s lead in mix- and strange forces, with large roles actually a fear of our own darkest ing architectural and mythological for chance and chaos. impulses. Probably it also came from images in the canyon. Or perhaps the The first famous writer to visit the tiny human identities suddenly being Romantic temptation to see castles Grand Canyon was Charles Dudley invaded or overwhelmed by a vast, was a function of the human brain Warner, who today is best remem- inhuman, lifeless, mysterious reality. trying to find familiar patterns in a bered as the co-author, with Mark This reaction is much less common in new and confusing environment. Twain, of The Gilded Age, Twain’s writers today, and would probably be There were two writers who ob- first novel, which gave the name to dismissed as personal pathology. But jected to filling the Grand Canyon the post-Civil War era of expansion, the frequency of this reaction a centu- with Romantic castles, and they opulence, greed, and corruption. ry ago suggests it was a cultural phe- were the two writers who best knew Americans still had no doubt that nomenon, or rather a lack of cultural southwestern landscapes. After years the frontier was endless, that they www.GrandCanyonHistory.org Grand Canyon Historical Society : 5 would conquer it, and that it would perienced for a moment an inde- Garland was a friend of John Wesley make them rich. A typical episode in scribable terror of nature, a con- Powell and had written a poem in- the novel involves a company formed fusion of mind, a fear to be alone spired by Powell, “The Stricken Pio- to straighten and dredge a river and in such a presence. With all this neer,” about the American pioneer ex- build a canal, but the company pays grotesqueness and majesty of perience. As a writer Garland was out out so many bribes to congressmen form and radiance of color, cre- of his depths at the Grand Canyon, that it goes broke. When Warner saw ation seemed in a whirl. With our lacking Powell’s honest rapport with the Grand Canyon he saw a realm education in scenery of a totally the landscape. Garland described beyond river-straightening con- different kind, I suppose it would the sound of the nighttime Colorado quest, and far beyond the New Eng- need long acquaintance with this River as “like some imperious noc- land scenery where he lived. If Mark to familiarize one with it to the turnal animal—a dragon with a lion’s Twain, who was part of the small por- extent of perfect mental compre- throat.” As the moon rose, Garland tion of Americans who had roamed hension.6 turned it into a fake melodrama: “For the desert Southwest, had told War- an instant my blood thickened with ner how different it was from nor- Warner was familiar with the writ- fear. Was it some ghost of the river’s mal ideas of beauty, Warner was still ings of Clarence Dutton, who “tried dark caverns?”8 shocked by the Grand Canyon. War- by the use of Oriental nomenclature Willa Cather knew the Southwest ner’s surprise and puzzlement was to bring it within our comprehen- well, featured it in several novels, typical of many early canyon visitors: sion.” Warner too tried to tame the and gave good descriptions of Mesa Our party were straggling up canyon by finding human architectur- Verde and Walnut Canyon. Yet when the hill: two or three had reached al shapes in it, seeing temples, castles, it came to the Grand Canyon she the edge. I looked up. The duchess pagodas, and train wrecks: “There seemed to admit defeat. In The Song threw up her arms and screamed. is no end to such devices.” But the of the Lark, published in 1915, Cather We were not fifteen paces be- canyon “was a city of no man’s cre- described the notebook of someone hind, but we saw nothing. We ation nor of any man’s conception.” who had attempted to describe the took the few steps, Grand Canyon: “The and the whole mag- pages of that book were nificence broke upon like a battlefield; the la- us. No one could be boring author had fallen prepared for it. The back from metaphor to scene is one to strike metaphor, abandoning dumb with awe, or to position after position. unstring the nerves; He would have admit- one might stand in ted that the art of forging silent astonishment, metals was nothing to another would burst this treacherous business into tears. of recording impressions, There are some in which the material you experiences that can- were so full of vanished not be repeated— mysteriously under your one’s first view of striving hand.”9 Rome, one’s first Zane Grey and Owen view of Jerusalem. Wister, who created the But these emotions In the end Warner conceded that the genre of the western nov- are produced by association, by canyon was the realm of inhuman el in the same years that tourists were the sudden standing face to face geological forces, of “…immense first seeing the Grand Canyon, gave with the scenes most wrought antiquity, hardly anywhere else on Americans a strong reinforcement of into our whole life and education earth so overwhelming as here. It has their tendency to see western land- by tradition and religion. This been here in all its lonely grandeur scapes as a mere theater of the na- was without association, as it was and transcendent beauty, exactly as tional story, of the heroic conquest of without parallel. It was a shock it is, for what to us is an eternity, un- wilderness, Indians, and wealth. Still, so novel that the mind, dazed, known, unseen by human eye.”7 both writers occasionally saw that quite failed to comprehend it… In 1902 Hamlin Garland, who had western landscapes might offer some- Wandering a little away from become famous for the prairie stories thing more. In Wister’s introduction the group and out of sight, and of Main Traveled Roads, traveled to the to Ellsworth Kolb’s 1914 book about turning suddenly to the scene bottom of the Grand Canyon and wit- the Kolb’s Colorado River trip, Wister from another point of view, I ex- nessed a sunset and moonrise there. concluded: “This canyon seems like

6 : Grand Canyon Historical Society www.GrandCanyonHistory.org an avenue conducting to the secret of fade in a Chicago winter, so her par- published in The Atlantic Monthly in the universe and the presence of the ents sent her off to Phoenix, Arizona. 1899, and the second two in her au- 10 gods.” Then again, the fact that the Her “illness gave me the West—a gift tobiography four decades later. The Kolbs were more interested in adven- of incalculable value.”11 contrast between the 1899 account ture and film-making than in finding From her convalescent chair Mon- and the autobiography measures the ‘the gods” may point out the dangers roe spent hours every day watching changes of literary style that Monroe of Romantic rhetoric. the desert mountains changing col- helped instigate in the world of poet- The first important poet to see the ors. As she recovered, Monroe took ry. The 1899 account is full of Roman- Grand Canyon was Harriet Monroe long horse rides into the desert. Like tic rhetoric and imagery and spiritual in 1899. Actually, Monroe was less Mary Austin and John C. Van Dyke, messages: important for her own poetry, which Monroe adjusted her definitions of Prophets and poets had wan- was limited and conventional, than natural beauty: dered here before they were born for founding Poetry magazine in Chi- The desert, lying silver in the to tell their mighty tales—Isaiah cago in 1912. Through Poetry Har- sunlight, had a weird and hoary and Aeschylus and Dante, the gi- riet Monroe became the midwife of beauty of its own, very unlike ants who dared the utmost. Here modern poetry, the mentor of Yeats, the beauty of green fields and at last the souls of great architects Eliot, Pound, Stevens, and many oth- thick forests but quite as potent. must find their dreams fulfilled; ers who transformed poetry. Monroe It seemed the most ancient thing must recognize the primal inspi- and Poetry broke the long dominance on earth. It suggested immen- ration which, after long ages, had of Victorian poetry, which consisted sities of time. One measured it achieved Assyrian palaces, the of well-ordered rhymes, logical argu- not by years but by geological temples and pyramids of Egypt, ments, moral instruction, charming ages…At first [the saguaro cacti] the fortresses and towered cathe- images, and noble but exaggerated seemed monstrous, foolish…as if drals of mediaeval Europe. For sentimentality. Today literary his- a tombstone should flower. But the inscrutable Prince of builders torians regard the decades between gradually I felt convinced of en- had reared these imperishable 14 Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and 1912 tering another world, accepting monuments… as a stagnant era in American poetry, unfamiliar laws. Here were not leaving little of lasting value. Ameri- companionable trees and shrubs, In Monroe’s autobiography, such can poets were writing as if Whitman but the afterglow of an ancient Romantic habits have largely disap- had never lived; they venerated New earth…Humanity had no rights peared. But Monroe insists that the England aristocrats like Longfellow, in this enormous desolation; I in- main experience she described in who sought their inspirations in Eu- truded upon its profound myste- 1899 wasn’t rhetorical but powerfully rope, certainly not in the landscapes rious beauty.12 real and life-changing. With her new of the American west. Poetry maga- but unsteady desert-trained eyes, zine opened a flood of new styles, Monroe now looked back on Euro- Monroe was deeply shocked by the free verse, serious subject matters, pean culture, where she’d seen schol- Grand Canyon’s vast inhuman spac- and a poetry not of didacticism but ars “devoting their lives to the analy- es: “I leaped to an emotion too big of images and symbols. Harriet Mon- sis of Giorgione’s color and Donatel- for me, a blinding flash of beauty and 15 roe’s circle of poets knew that she lo’s silver line” as terribly superficial terror, a lift to the sublime.” She felt loved the Grand Canyon, and this compared with the colors and lines like an intruder in a realm where hu- encouraged several of them to send of the Arizona desert, where “Na- man life wasn’t even allowed. In her her poems about the canyon, poems ture is not conciliatory and charm- 1899 article she wrote: that bore all the marks of modernist ing: she is terrible and magnificent… Everywhere the proof of my experiments in style. upon whose fundamental immensity unfitness abased and dazed my It was only by accident that Har- and antiquity our boasted civilization will…The strain of existence be- riet Monroe discovered the Grand blooms like the flower of a day.”13 came too tense against these in- Canyon. Monroe was raised in a It was this sense of trespassing finities of beauty and terror. My prominent family in Chicago and was upon a vast, ancient, inhuman nature narrow ledge of rock was a pris- taught all the conventions of Europe- that defined Monroe’s experience of on. I fought against the desperate an culture. She won Chicago fame for the Grand Canyon. temptation to fling myself down writing the official Ode for Chicago’s Monroe nearly left Arizona with- into that soft abyss, and thus re- 1893 Columbian Exposition. In the out seeing the canyon, but at the last deem the affront which the ea- custom of the time for affluent young minute she received a $30 check from ger beating of my heart offered Americans, she spent a year and a a publisher, and this afforded her a to its inviolable solitude. Death half in a grand tour of Europe. On stage coach trip to Grandview. Mon- itself would not be too rash an returning home she came down with roe gave us three descriptions of her apology for my invasion—death severe pneumonia, which refused to Grand Canyon experience, the first in those happy spaces, pillowed www.GrandCanyonHistory.org Grand Canyon Historical Society : 7 on purple immensities of air. So poems about the Grand Canyon, but acknowledged in her 1899 article. keen was this impulse, so slight neither is nearly as interesting as her Two of Monroe’s star poets, Carl at that moment became the fleshy personal account. Sandburg and Edgar Lee Masters, tie, that I might almost have In her praise of the Grand Can- were Illinois boys with a keen interest yielded but for a sudden word yon, Monroe was comparing it with in American history. Both Sandburg in my ear—the trill of an oriole the greatest landscapes of the Ameri- and Masters wrote Grand Canyon from the pine close above me. can west, for she traveled, hiked, poems, and Sandburg acknowledged The brave little song was a mes- and camped widely. John Muir re- the Illinois connection: “…then came sage personal and intimate, a cruited Monroe to testify before the Powell, Hance, the Santa Fe, the boys miracle of sympathy or proph- U. S. Congress on behalf of saving the shooting the rapids, and Fred Har- ecy. And I cast myself on that Hetch Hetchy Valley, where she had vey with El Tovar.”18 tiny speck of life as on the heart hiked with the Sierra Club. In preparing to launch Poetry mag- of a friend—a friend who would Monroe’s journeys to the west and azine, Harriet Monroe spent months save me from intolerable loneli- the Grand Canyon were made easier reading the works of contemporary ness, from utter extinction and by the Chicago-based Santa Fe Rail- American and British poets, and she despair. He seemed to welcome way, which built the tourist facilities made a list of modernist-inclined po- me to the infinite…I made him on the South Rim, and which gave ets she would invite to submit work the confidant of my unworthi- to Poetry. One of the poets on her ness; asked him for the secret, list was George Sterling, who was since, being winged, he was at one of the best-known American home even here. He gave me poets of the time. Sterling proba- healing and solace; restored bly knew of Monroe’s enthusiasm me to the gentle amenities of for the Grand Canyon, for one of our little world; enabled me to the poems he submitted was “At retreat through the woods, as the Grand Canyon,” which Mon- I had come, instead of taking roe published in the third issue of the swift road to liberty.16 Poetry. George Sterling was both a In spite of this moment of forerunner and a victim of the existential dread, or perhaps be- modernist revolution in poetry. cause of it, Monroe became de- When in 1903 he published his first voted to the Grand Canyon. In book, The Testimony of the Suns, her autobiography she wrote: he was hailed as an avant-garde From that first look to the poet. He was shedding Victorian latest of many visits the Can- sentimentality for realism; he was yon has been my house of a bohemian rebelling against con- dreams. I have lived there for ventionality; he was exploring the weeks at a time, quietly and new realities revealed by science. intimately, with episodes of Yet in style, Sterling’s poetry re- more adventurous explora- mained stuck in the 19th century. tion. I have camped on the Only three years after publishing mesa halfway down and Sterling’s Grand Canyon poem, waked to a mountain lion’s Harriet Monroe wrote a review roar…Above all, one of my of Sterling’s body of work, dis- visits was during a rare season missing him as an anachronism, of heavy rains; and I stood, by full of “shameless rhetoric,” “the good luck, at one of the great Monroe free railway passes. The worst excesses of the Tennyso- viewpoints while a thunderstorm Santa Fe Railway also became one of nian tradition,” and “the frippery of trailed its grey robes up and the financial patrons of Poetry maga- a bygone fashion.”19 Sterling knew down the vast abyss…For two zine, and it included Monroe’s 1899 he was being left behind. When he hours I watched the great dra- article in its 1906 book Grand Canyon saw his Grand Canyon poem and ma—the most sublime spectacle of Arizona. The railway didn’t seem two other poems printed beside the I ever expect to see.17 worried by Monroe’s suggestion that cutting-edge poets in Poetry, Ster- the canyon could prompt suicidal im- ling wrote to Monroe: “When I saw This sublimity didn’t require any pulses. them next to Yeats I regretted more Greek gods or Alpine castles, only the Illinois was also the home base of than ever that they were not my best reality of nature. Monroe wrote two John Wesley Powell, whom Monroe work…Well, next time I hope to do

8 : Grand Canyon Historical Society www.GrandCanyonHistory.org better…”20 Yet Sterling could never sive, ancient, violent forces, amid to America only because of the out- adapt to modernism, and today his which human lives were negligible. break of World War One. poetry is forgotten. Sterling’s poem “At the Grand Can- Yet Fletcher’s first inspiration as a Sterling himself is remembered as yon” contains the traditional Ro- poet came from the landscapes of the the founder and the hub of the Car- mantic fancy of seeing a landscape Southwest. While a literature student mel, California, arts colony. Sterling as the home of gods, but for Sterling at Harvard, Fletcher took a train trip moved to Carmel in 1905, seeing it these gods aren’t noble Greek gods or from his home in Arkansas to south- as his own Walden Pond for simple charming giants or fairies, but war- ern California, and he was enthralled living and natural beauty. When the ring gods, geo-Darwinian gods. In his by the desert. “A huge splintered mass San Francisco earthquake of 1906 astronomical poetry Sterling often of- of rocks stands on an endless plain,” rendered most of the city’s bohemian fered a bleak, nihilistic vision, only to he wrote in his journal, “…some vast community homeless, many writ- end a poem on a softer, more upbeat nightmare of a castle (a good idea for ers and artists headed for Carmel. note. Perhaps Sterling was trying to a poem.)”22 Two years later, hoping Sterling became close friends with placate readers who weren’t ready to to reconnect with his Southwestern Ambrose Bierce and Jack London, follow him into despair. In his Grand muse, he joined a Harvard archaeo- who shared his naturalistic and often Canyon poem too, Sterling ends by logical expedition to Colorado, where dark worldview, and London turned turning a bleak universe into a good he saw how “Once the great ocean Sterling into a character in his novel excuse for human pleasures: rolled over/ these mesas.”23 Martin Eden. Prophetically, London It seems as though a deep-hued In Europe, Fletcher published his has the Sterling character commit sui- sunset falls first poetry book,The Book of Nature, a cide. In 1907 a friend of Sterling com- Forever on these Cyclopean standard Romantic tour of the castle- mitted suicide in Sterling’s house, walls, like landscapes of Europe. Yet Fletch- and Sterling became obsessed with These battlements where Titan er was stirred by the modernist revo- the idea of suicide. In 1926 Sterling hosts have warred, lution in the arts—Fletcher was in the was in a drunken stupor when he fi- And hewn the world with devas- audience for the legendary premiere nally killed himself with cyanide. His tating sword, of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring— friend Upton Sinclair declared that And shook with trumpets the and he changed his style. Sterling had been killed by “the nebu- eternal halls When Fletcher returned to Amer- lar hypothesis.” Where Seraphim lay hid by ica in 1915 he went through Chicago The “nebular hypothesis” was the bloody palls and introduced himself to Harriet landscape of Sterling’s The Testimony And only Hell and Silence were Monroe, and then he headed for the of the Suns. As a boy Sterling became adored. Southwest, including the Grand interested in astronomy; his wealthy Lo! the abyss wherein the wings Canyon. He wrote a series of poems father had his own observatory build- of Death he called the “Arizona Poems,” and ing. As astronomers in the 1880s and Might beat unchallenged, and his when he went back through Chicago 1890s revealed an ever larger, older, fatal breath he handed them to Monroe. Fletcher and stranger universe, Sterling was Fume up in pestilence. Beneath was broke, and Monroe put him up both enthralled and appalled. The the sky for a few days. Monroe published universe was full of stars that had Is no such testimony unto grief. the “Arizona Poems” the next year their own lifecycle, far beyond the Here Terror walks with Beauty and awarded Fletcher Poetry’s an- scale of human lives. Stars were born ere she die. nual Guarantor’s Prize, worth $100. out of nebulae, lived many millions Oh! hasten to me, Love, for life is Twenty years later Fletcher found it of years, and then collapsed or blew brief!21 easy to talk Monroe into devoting a up and unraveled back into nebu- whole issue of Poetry to southwestern lae. Sterling pictured the universe as The same issue of Poetry that in- authors. a “war” of stars, stars colliding in a cluded George Sterling’s Grand Can- Fletcher’s poem “The Grand Can- Darwinian jungle of stars. Amid such yon poem also introduced a 27-year- yon of the Colorado” begins—much massive destruction, human hopes old poet, John Gould Fletcher, who like Monroe’s Atlantic Monthly ar- for a universe of love and immortal- would win the Pulitzer Prize for poet- ticle of sixteen years before—with ity were pathetic vanities. And yet, ry a quarter of a century later. Fletch- the experience of emerging from a out of dead-star nebulae new suns er was living in Europe, where Ezra pine forest and beholding an unreal and new planets and new life would Pound recognized his talent and sent canyon landscape. Twice Fletcher arise. Fletcher’s poems to Harriet Monroe. says that the canyon is “not of this When George Sterling looked into Like many in a generation of expatri- earth.” This seems a failure of geo- the Grand Canyon he saw it with ate writers and artists, Fletcher felt logical imagination, for of course same eyes with which he saw the that Europe was the only place for a nowhere else reveals the earth more testimony of the suns. He saw mas- serious poet to be, and he came back completely. Fletcher sees the canyon www.GrandCanyonHistory.org Grand Canyon Historical Society : 9 as a realm of stability. The cliffs are “strong-built,” “durable,” “forever completed,” “unscarred, unaltered/ the work stands finished,” “molded and fashioned forever in durable ageless stone,” and “It is finished.” Again, this is a curious thing to say about the world’s greatest display of erosion-in-action. Fletcher’s desire to find stability in the canyon probably arose from the chronic instability of his own life. Fletcher was emotionally volatile and suffered from depression and suicidal impulses, all of which took a large toll on his relationships. At the time he wrote his Grand Can- yon poem, Fletcher was broke, home- and botany, but she seldom wrote (New York: AMS Press, 1969) p 421. less, and horrified by the slaughter in about nature for its own sake; more 5 John C. Van Dyke, op cit., p15. European trenches. often she used nature as a backdrop 6 Charles Dudley Warner, Our Italy (New The Grand Canyon’s seeming York: Harper & Brothers, 1891) p 177-200. for her emotional life. Teasdale didn’t 7 Ibid. eternity was so appealing to Fletcher see the Grand Canyon until 1920. Her 8 Hamlin Garland, “The Grand Canyon at that he imagined it as his final resting biographer, William Drake, reports: Night,” from The Grand Canyon of Arizona (Chi- place: cago: The Santa Fe Railway, 1906) p 61-62. “She stopped for a day at the Grand 9 Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark (New One single thing I would ask for, Canyon, where she had to rest for an York: Penguin Books, 1999) p 103. Burn my body here. 10 Ellsworth Kolb, Through the Grand Can- afternoon because the spectacle over- yon from Wyoming to Mexico (New York: Mac- Kindle the pyre 25 whelmed her.” To Harriet Monroe, millan, 1914) p ix. Upon this jutting point; Teasdale wrote: “It makes me feel 11 Harriet Monroe, A Poet’s Life: Seventy Dry aromatic juniper, that immortality must Be, after all, Years in a Changing World (New York: Macmil- Lean flame, blue smoke, lan, 1938) p 164. since the ages have worked for such 12 Ibid, p 165-166. Ashes and dust. harmonious splendor there.”26 Teas- 13 Ibid, p 166. The winds would drift the ash dale found the same reassurance in 14 Harriet Monroe, The Atlantic Monthly, Outwards across the canyon, December 1899. the night sky, more there than in the 15 Harriet Monroe, A Poet’s Life. To the rose-purple rim of the des- Bible. Like John Gould Fletcher and 16 Harriet Monroe, The Atlantic Monthly, ert many other poets, the disaster of December 1899. Beyond the red-barred towers.24 17 Harriet Monroe, A Poet’s Life, p 168. World War One left Teasdale shaken 18 Carl Sandburg, “Many Hats,” The Com- and yearning for a higher stability. plete Poems of Carl Sandburg (New York: Har- It was not to be. In 1950, at age Teasdale didn’t write a poem about court Brace Jovanovich, 1970) p 432. sixty-four, Fletcher finally gave in to 19 Harriet Monroe, “The Poetry of George the Grand Canyon, but she did use Sterling,” Poetry, March, 1916, p 308-9. the images of self-annihilation in his the stars as symbols of the grand if 20 Quoted in Harriet Monroe, A Poet’s Life. poetry. He walked into an Arkansas mysterious design of the cosmos: “If 21 George Sterling, “At the Grand Canyon,” lake and drowned himself. He wasn’t Sonnets to Craig (New York: Viking Press, 1928). ever I started a religion,” she wrote 22 Quoted in Ben F. Johnson III, Fierce Soli- cremated, but buried in a Little Rock Monroe in 1926, “it would be star- tude: A Life of John Gould Fletcher (Fayetteville: cemetery near his parents. worship.”27 University of Arkansas Press, 1994) p 21. A few months after launching Po- 23 Ibid, p 29. But the stability of the canyon and 24 John Gould Fletcher, “The Grand Canyon etry magazine, Harriet Monroe met the stars didn’t bring stability to Sara of the Colorado,” Breakers and Granite (New the young Sara Teasdale and invited Teasdale—she too ended her own life. York: Macmillan, 1921). p 95. her to visit Monroe in Chicago. Five 25 William Drake, Sara Teasdale: Woman and Poet (New York: Harper and Row, 1979) p 195. years later Teasdale won the first Pu- [To be continued… in the next issue 26 Ibid, p 204. litzer Prize awarded for poetry. Teas- of The Ol’ Pioneer] 27 Ibid, p 222. dale had discovered the Southwest in 1908, when a female philosophy pro- (Endnotes) fessor at the University of Arizona, 1 John C. Van Dyke, The Grand Canyon of the Colorado (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, who admired Teasdale’s first book, 1927) p 1-2. hosted her for over two months. 2 Ibid. p 4. Teasdale would write about “those 3 John Muir, “The Grand Canyon of the Colorado” Century Illustrated Monthly Maga- vehement stars” of Tucson, and she zine, Nov. 1902, p 107-16. had strong interests in astronomy 4 Mary Austin, Land of Journey’s Ending

10 : Grand Canyon Historical Society www.GrandCanyonHistory.org Park Naturalist Louis Schellbach’s Log Books

By Traci Wyrick eral clean up, because of the debris When questions were asked for, he left by troops in the form of cigarette took the floor and tried to preach to The following are the last diary butts, candy wrappers, etc. Talk in- the group—much to their annoyance entries I’ve selected from 1943. I’ve side, too cool on the parapet. Supt. and disgust. I did not argue, telling also listed several more names my Bryant returned. To movies in the he was at liberty to believe anything Grandfather referenced from that evening. he desired and that I was presenting year, and added corrections and/ v geology and not religion. The group or new information from the Winter Saturday Oct. 9, 1943 shut him up. Most annoying— 2010 issue of Ol PIONEER. On duty early at Yavapai for gen- v v eral clean up, because of the debris Thursday Oct. 7, 1943 left by troops in the form of cigarette People mentioned in last half of 1943: On duty at Yavapai. Signed butts, candy wrappers, etc. Talk in- Ernie Ensor: A jack-of-all-trades monthly report and letter to McDou- side, too cool on the parapet. Supt. who was liked by all. He helped gall, given to typist to write on Tues- Bryant returned. To movies in the Schellbach in washing windows day. evening. and waxing floors at Yavapai At Yavapai cleaned and washed v Observation Station and improved all the big windows. Only 12 persons Sunday Oct. 10, 1943 the smooth operation of the visited the station in a.m. Some 700 Rain during night. (11:00 p.m. Interpretive Division from the nuts troops due in late this afternoon to MST) On duty at Yavapai. No day and bolts standpoint. stay until Saturday or Sunday. Four off this week just past. Special lecture to five special lectures are arranged 2:45 p.m. to State Teachers College, Ed Cummings: Head Mule Skinner for them tomorrow. Flag. Group of naval cadets public for Fred Harvey company. His Sky full of thunderheads and a speaking class, Dr. Allen. wife, Ida, ran the soda fountain light sprinkle of rain about 1:30 p.m. Reg. talk 3:30 p.m. to visitors. Din- at Babbitt’s. Ed was an amateur (war time). ner with family at El Tovar. naturalist, and kept an eye out v v for finding new things he figured Friday Oct. 8, 1943 Thursday Oct. 14 , 1943 Schellbach would like to know A.M. duty at Yavapai, arranging Many of the troops hiked down about. seating in preparation for 9:00 a.m. into the Canyon this day. Presented M.R. Tillotson: Regional Director. He lecture to members of the armed forc- a lecture to a group of troops at 9:30 and Schellbach were good friends, es. 700 arrived last night, with their a.m. On duty at Yavapai. even though they didn’t always trucks, jeeps and guns. It is an artil- At noon the two princes’ arrived agree on things. lery outfit. Presented four lectures at Yavapai with their retinue, Supt. Ethyl : Schellbach’s wife. this day 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 1:00 Bryant, Asst. Supt. Davis and Chief Mrs. Cotter: wife of Post Office clerk p.m., 3:30 p.m.. Total attendance 770. Ranger Bill. They were Saudi Arabia’s ? Sold 55 landscapes to troops and Foreign Minister, Prince Feisal and Miss Gene Cummings: hired one box of rocks. This was to be my his brother, Prince Khalid, several at- through the GCNHA to help with day off, but because of the troops, tendants, they were being escorted by the library. the absence of Supt. H.C.B., had to a member of the State Dept. Miss Helen Lawton: Workshop carry on. Sunday is to be my day off In the p.m. a tea was given them visitor at Yavapai. by Mrs. Bryant and Ethyl (Mrs. S.) Col. White: a superintendant ? v helped and poured tea and coffee. Payne: a carpenter ? Saturday Oct. 9, 1943 Numbers of troops visited Yavapai Dean Daisy: helped clean exhibit On duty early at Yavapai for gen- throughout the day. cases at Yavapai, lived close to eral clean up, because of the debris v Schellbach, possibly a ranger ? left by troops in the form of cigarette Wednesday Oct. 27, 1943 Dr. Paul Lotz: ? butts, candy wrappers, etc. Talk in- Opened Yavapai, gave general John Cooke: worked at the disposal side, too cool on the parapet. Supt. clean up and then to Hdq. for staff plant ? Bryant returned. To movies in the meeting until 12:05 p.m. Ed Laws: Ranger evening. P.M. stocked Yavapai with paper Porquett: person associated with v towel and History Bulletins. Phantom Ranch Saturday Oct. 9, 1943 At 3:30 p.m. lecture, there was Jonnie: Steno On duty early at Yavapai for gen- a fundamentalist in the audience. Les Kennedy: Ranger www.GrandCanyonHistory.org Grand Canyon Historical Society : 11 Grand Canyon Historical Society PRSRT STD PO Box 31405 U.S. POSTAGE Flagstaff, AZ 86003 PAID FLAGSTAFF, AZ PERMIT 333

Carl P. Russell: Chief Naturalist at Chicago headquarters Spread the Word — Join the Grand Canyon Historical Society! Roy Fancher: mechanic Carrells, Clark? : engineer Membership in the Grand Canyon Historical Society has its benefits: Mrs. Spencer: ? possibly associated • Annual subscription to the tri-annual magazine The Ol’ Pioneer. with a man named Spencer at the • Annual subscription to the quarterly newsletter The Bulletin. Hopi House. • Discount on all GCHS publications. Burns: Museum Chief • Free admission to all GCHS programs and outings, including an annual Sam King: Ranger picnic on the edge of the Canyon. Barbara Eppler: Steno at • Participation in the annual GCHS membership meeting and the elec- headquarters tion of Board Members. Inez Haring: biologist, specializing in Membership is $20 per year ($25 outside U.S.). To become a member print mosses and lichens out the online application at grandcanyonhistory.org or write down your Dowling: ? name, address, phone number and email address and send it with your Bert Lauzon: Ranger and son-in-law check to the Grand Canyon Historical Society at PO Box 31405, Flagstaff, of William Wallace Bass. Bert was AZ 86003. the father of Hubert Lauzon and grandfather of Robert and Patrick Lauzon likely from a family out of Kanab. Spelling corrections: Corrections and/or additions: Rose Collum is Collom. Hugh Waesche: a geologist and Mrs. Frank Ostler is Osler. professor at VA Ploytechnic Inst. In Ranger Harthon Bill is Harlin. Balcksburg, VA. Frank Kitteridge: Acting Look for the beginning of 1944’s superintendant of GCNP from Jan diary selections in upcoming issues of 24, 1940 to June 30, 1941 The Ol’ Pioneer. Judd: a common Mormon name,