EDITOR'S LETTER

Maybe Mr. Roosevelt should have waved a bigger stick. Or shouted when he gave his speech on the South Rim in 1903. “I want to ask you to ... keep this great wonder of nature as it now is,” he said. “I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel, or anything else to mar the wonderful grandeur.” Ironically, as he was saying those words, the Grandview Hotel was welcoming guests just a few miles to the east, as it had been since 1897. And two years later, not far from where the president was standing, El Tovar would open its doors to the public — about 50 feet from the rim. That's why he designated the Grand Canyon a national monument in 1908. T.R. was using a bigger stick to try to protect the place from even more construction. But it wasn't enough.

“I spent most of my time protecting the Canyon,” Dave Uberuaga, a friend and former superintendent, told me. I think the number he used was 90 percent. The greatest threat in his time, he said, was the Escalade project, a massive resort that would have included a tramway equipped with eight-person gondolas to shuttle tourists 1.4 miles to the Confluence, a sacred place where the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers meet. It wasn't the first plan to drill big holes in the side of the Canyon. The first came in the early 1960s. And our readers were overwhelmingly opposed.

“We have been getting your wonderful magazine for years,” Mrs. Paul E. Florsheim of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, wrote in our November 1961 issue, “and have enjoyed every issue of it. So, we are well informed on your attitude for nature preservation. Yesterday we read with absolute disgust in Parade that a mining company is planning on building a modern hotel in the Grand Canyon. I think it would ruin one of the most glorious places in the world, where even atheists must feel the presence of God.” The company, Western Gold & Uranium Inc., was a fixture on the South Rim. In addition to mining radioactive metal, it operated a small inn, a gift shop and some cottages near Powell Point. The “modern hotel” it was planning — something plucked from the skyline of Orbit City — would have spilled down the side of the Canyon like frosting on a piece of pound cake. It's what Theodore Roosevelt would have seen in a night terror.

In response to the flood of bad press, Richard Ince, the chairman of the New York-based company, sent us a long letter — 355 words. “In last month's beautiful issue of Arizona Highways ,” it begins, “I noted with interest the concern expressed by some readers over the possibility of a new hotel being built on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Lest your readers think that we are callous destroyers of nature, I would like to explain our position.”

He then makes the point that if the government would give his company what it wants — mining rights for another 35 years — it would scupper its plans for a new hotel. “However,” he said, “we are a public corporation, and we have a duty to our stockholders to protect and, if possible, enhance the value of their investment. If Uncle Sam will let us mine, we will mine. If he forces us to build a hotel, we will build a beautiful one.”

About a year later, in a followup to a letter from A.M. Doldmann of Ithaca, New York, our editor shared the news: “Conservationists and others interested in keeping Grand Canyon National Park unmarred in any way will be glad to know there will be no hotel hanging over the South Rim. Under the terms of Public Law 87-457, the company has the right to remove, for a period of twenty-five years, ore underlying park land adjacent to its claim. The company also has the right to operate its inn and related cottage and guest facilities through 1966. On termination of the company's mining operations, the claim will be cleared of developments and returned to its natural state.”

Like residue in a cast iron frying pan, the small inn was scraped away on schedule. And three years later, the mine was shut down, too — the loss of government subsidies made it a money pit. Its headframe, however, stayed in place for another four decades. Today, there's no sign of any of it. No radioactive waste, no inn, no cottages, no 18-story hotel spilling over the edge. Unlike the nearby village, where El Tovar and other nowhistoric structures stand in defiance of Mr. Roosevelt's warning, the pristine area around Powell Point is the lesson learned. The dividend that comes from protecting the grandeur. Here's to more of that.

Meantime, on behalf of everyone at Arizona Highways, I wish you all a safe and happy new year.