CEMETERY |
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The entrance to Pioneer Cemetery in Grand Canyon Village. Photo: Patricia Biggs |
The youthful bustle of Grand Canyon Village during the pioneer period apparently muffled thoughts of death and burial. All early Euro-American residents hailed from somewhere else, maintained homes in nearby gateway communities, or moved on before facing the grim reaper, and there was no local government to designate a common resting place. For whatever reason, in the years 1896-1928, canyon denizens often as not buried friends, strangers, and neighbors where they fell, if they buried them at all.
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Despite the unnerving number of skeletons found within and astride the canyon, their final stories evidenced only by broken bones or bullet holes, records reveal a few random internments. The Colorado River has claimed its share of victims since the late nineteenth century, but more often than not has refused to give up its dead. Several early drowning victims surfaced to be buried by companions or passersby, however, including Peter Hansbrough, one of three men who drowned while surveying Grand Canyon for a railway in 1889. |
The remains of the unidentified victims aboard the United Airlines DC-7 are buried in Grand Canyon Cemetery. The unidentified victims aboard the TWA Constellation were interred at Citizens Cemetery in Flagstaff, Arizona. Photo: Patricia Biggs |
The first grave in the cemetery was that of John Hance. Photo: Patricia Biggs |
In 1922 Rees Griffiths, working on what would become the South Kaibab Trail near the river, was killed by a boulder following a dynamite blast. Fellow workers and park rangers buried him in an alcove along the trail near Phantom Ranch. More than 80 years later, the gravesite is still well marked and tended informally by ranch residents. John Hance, one of the first South Rim residents, canyon prospector, miner, tourism operator, and teller of tall tales, died in Flagstaff in 1919. Friends buried him at a little visited area nearly a mile east of Grand Canyon village. Only six weeks following Hance’s internment, Congress created Grand Canyon National Park. The National Park Service immediately launched a program of civic improvements, and by the middle 1920s, had designated John Hance’s grave as the centerpiece for the village’s first cemetery. |
Some Canyon residents opted not to be buried in the cemetery. Charles Brant was one of the earliest managers of El Tovar Hotel and Fred Harvey Company operations at Grand Canyon Village. He and his wife Olga were prominent village residents, well liked and respected, so when they died in the early 1920s, they were buried according to their wishes on a hill overlooking the village rather than in the cemetery. Residents who adopted their dog, Razzle Dazzle, interred the prized Airedale in the family plot when he barked his last in 1928. |
The gravesite of Charles and Olga Brant, and Razzle Dazzle. Photo: Michael Anderson |
The war memorial inscription reads: "1917-1918 1941-1945 Photo: Patricia Biggs |
The cemetery is a restful, well-tended few acres, visited by residents and tourists alike, and still invites residents and others who have made significant contributions to the history of Grand Canyon National Park to rest in peace. Grand Canyon Cemetery today embraces the mortal remains of many canyon pioneers, park administrators, and village residents who have passed on in the past 80 years, including Emery Kolb, Pete Berry, Ralph Cameron, and Park Superintendent M.R. Tillotson. At least one gravesite, that of canyon pioneer William Wallace Bass, is only a monument placed beside his wife Ada, since his ashes were spread by airplane over Holy Grail Temple soon after his death in 1933. |
Early Canyon photographer Emery Kolb and his wife, Blanche, are buried at Grand Canyon. Their daughter, Edith, is interred nearby. Photo: Patricia Biggs |
The gravemarkers of William Wallace Bass (right), his wife, Ada (center) and their daughter, Edith. The Bass children were among the Euro-American children reared at the South Rim. Photo: Patricia Biggs |
Ralph Cameron (1863-1953) ran a toll gate at the Bright Angel Trail head from 1903 to 1924. He came to the Canyon from Maine, served as a delegate for the Arizona Territory from 1909-1912 and as a United States senator for Arizona from 1921 to 1927. His gravestone reads, "Arizona can never forget him." Photo: Patricia Biggs |
Graves of the Verkamp family fill a corner of the cemetery. John G. Verkamp, who owned the first curio shop at the Grand Canyon, died in 1944. In the background is Shrine of the Ages Chapel, which was built in large part because of the efforts during the 1960s of Jack Verkamp. Photo: Patricia Biggs |
written by michael f. anderson and patricia biggs |
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