The Man Who Owned the Trail

Bring a dollar, if you mean to ride down the Bright Angel. In nineteen oh three that was the rule at the head of the trail, over by the village, and the rule had a gate on it and a man's name. Ralph Cameron came to Flagstaff from Southport, Maine, in eighteen eighty-three. He'd be a prospector, a county sheriff and in time a United States Senator, and I can't find one thing he ever let go of willingly. In eighteen ninety-eight he had an understanding that the rails would end at the head of his trail, so he put thousands of dollars into that trail and began filing mining claims on ground with no mineral in it, from Hermit Basin clear out to Grandview Point. He wasn't after ore. He was after the rim. By early nineteen oh three he had the trail to himself and a hotel at the top of it. What he didn't have was the depot. His hired men had to meet every train, coax passengers down the tracks and carry their bags. His flyers asked if you meant to patronize "a greedy, grasping corporation." He cast himself as David, and the Santa Fe Railway as Goliath, and I'll give him this, for a while it was true. The railway sued, and kept on suing. A jury said the trail wasn't rightly his, so Pete Berry, who held the toll rights, let his friend go on running it. In nineteen oh nine the railway lost its final appeal. That same year government examiners walked his claims, found them barren, and had them thrown out. Most men would have called that the finish. But the railway's new Hermit Road crossed those dead claims, so he posted trespass notices on the railway, got injunctions and filed suits, until it paid him forty thousand dollars to quit. The park's administrative history doesn't say paid. It says extorting. That's a thing you'd expect from a greedy, grasping corporation. Somewhere along in there, David quit being David. He took the fight to the Senate. In nineteen twenty-four the Park Service tried to buy his old trail from the county, and he stirred up the voters until they turned it down flat. The ballots were barely counted when crews started a new trail from Yaki Point, and that's your South Kaibab. In January of nineteen twenty-five Stephen Mather took the money meant for a road along this rim, fifty-six thousand dollars, and put fifty-five thousand into that trail. The road under your tires sat and waited on Ralph Cameron. Carl Hayden trounced him in nineteen twenty-six, and Horace Albright said the Park Service partied. Twenty-odd years at that gate, and the send-off was somebody else's party. There's a town on this road with Ralph Cameron's name on it. I expect it pains him still, no gate, and anybody walking in free.