Grand Canyon National Park: The Desert View Road

The Grand Canyon Visitor Center is the west start of this 55-mile drive along the South Rim and out to Cameron. Lots 1 through 4 surround the plaza, restrooms stand on either side of the building, and the free shuttle…

Stay on Highway sixty-four for now.

South Entrance Road brings the westbound drive to the visitor center lots, with more parking at Market Plaza about a mile on when those fill. Mather Point and the shuttle terminal are both within easy reach of the lot…

Private cars stop at this junction unless they carry a park accessibility permit. Yaki Point and the South Kaibab Trailhead are reached by the eastbound Orange shuttle, on foot, or by bicycle. The road's shape is the…

Ralph Cameron arrives in Flagstaff from Maine in 1883 and spends the next decades treating the canyon's busiest trail as his own. Boone follows a long war of mining claims, toll gates and lawsuits against a railway, a…

A small unsigned pullout on the north side of Desert View Drive, Thor's Overlook has eight parking spaces and no services. NPS records carry it under two names, Thor's Overlook and Thor's Hammer. The stop works as a o…

Grandview Point stands at about 7,400 feet, a short spur off Desert View Drive, with parking, vault toilets and no drinking water. Long before the park existed it was a working place. Pete Berry's copper claim on Hors…

John Hance comes to the canyon as a miner and stays as its most entertaining liar. Boone retells the yarns that visitors carried home from his table, then turns to the quieter question of what became of the old guide…

Ponderosa pine closes around the road on this stretch, well back from the rim. It is lightning country, squirrel country and elk country, and the driving calls for care at dusk and in winter, when crews spread cinders…

Moran Point sits at 7,160 feet on a short spur off Desert View Drive, with 22 parking spaces. NPS singles it out for geology, because the canyon's three main rock groups are all clearly visible from one spot. The tilt…

William Randolph Hearst holds a piece of the South Rim, and the Park Service wants it. Boone follows a grudge that starts with a stubborn hotel man and runs for decades, through Congress and the federal courts, to a p…

Tusayan Pueblo is a small Ancestral Pueblo village about 3 miles west of Desert View, occupied about 800 years ago. A flat 0.1-mile self-guiding loop passes low wall remains from several rooms and a round kiva, and th…

Lipan Point and Navajo Point share this stretch of the rim. Lipan offers a rare look at the tilted Supergroup, while Navajo, at 7,461 feet, tops every other South Rim overlook. Lipan's road has been closed for rehabil…

Desert View is the east end of the rim drive, at 7,438 feet, and it sells the South Rim's only in-park fuel, from self-service pumps open around the clock. Mary Colter's Watchtower stands about 70 feet tall. The upper…

In December 1924 a promoter sets out to drive thousands of mule deer across the Grand Canyon like cattle, with a famous novelist and a Hollywood director along to watch. Boone tells how the plan meets the deer, and wh…

Highway 64 leaves the park on this stretch and runs on through the Navajo Nation. Navajo Nation law applies on tribal land, and from March to November the Nation keeps daylight saving time, so its clock can run an hou…

A claim high in the canyon wall sits nearly forgotten for decades, until someone takes a harder look at the black rock underfoot. Boone tells the story of the Orphan Mine, its unlikely owner, and a plan for the rim th…

Between Desert View and Cameron the road loses about 3,200 feet, passing out of pine forest and into open desert country. The Painted Desert spreads across the eastern horizon. The highway dates to 1936, when it was p…

An abandoned 1934 steel deck truss stands south of today's highway, barricaded and closed to all traffic, a survivor of the first road between Cameron and the canyon. Its sandstone wing walls were built to match Deser…

This overlook on Highway 64 belongs to a Navajo Nation Tribal Park, and national park passes are not accepted. A small per-person entry fee applies, and the tribal park lists hours in Mountain Standard Time, which can…

For decades the crossing at Cameron hangs on a single suspension bridge built in 1911, and everything on this side of the river depends on it. Boone tells what that crossing means to the people who use it, and what ha…

Cameron grew up at a crossing of the Little Colorado, and three bridges still mark the spot. The community carries the name of a Coconino County sheriff turned politician. Its Trading Post has a dining room, a market…

Coming up, at the roundabout, take Highway eighty-nine north, toward Page.

Stay on Highway eighty-nine for about a mile.

The Cameron Trading Post closes the eastbound drive, on the left of northbound Highway 89. Its dining room, market and garden make a comfortable last stop, and the road continues south toward Flagstaff or north toward…

Cameron Trading Post is the east start of this 55-mile drive, on Highway 89 about 1.65 miles north of the Highway 64 roundabout. Its dining room and market make it a practical place to stock up before the climb to the…