Chapter SevenUpshots and Prognosis

Early residents and travelers certainly did not have uniformexperiences, but each culture’s pioneers must have felt arainbow of emotions invoked by discovery, the adventure ofnot knowing exactly where one is standing in relation tothe known world or what awaits around the next corner.After the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad arrived, real adventurebegan to give way to the brow-knitting business of incorpo-rating the canyon into the international economy, and expe-rience varied widely between those who came for profit andthose who came for their own personal discoveries. Pioneerentrepreneurs looked for both as they built the first roads,trails, camps, and hotels, and while they proved in the longrun to be scouts for world capitalism, they thought ofthemselves as individualists working hard for their ownbenefit in a spectacular place.They were well aware of theirlocation but experienced some of the original awe and mys-tery, fear and discovery that others felt because the canyonitself remained remote, unknown, and unvisited. Pioneeranecdotes, letters, and journals reveal these emotions as wellas a genuine love for the chasm’s splendor, distant views,

untamed river, grand geologic formations, intimate inner-canyon springs, and wildlife.

The first tourist operators relished the canyon evenmore perhaps, sharing their passion with the relaxed fewwho came by wagon and stage for their own adventures,stayed for a week or more in spartan accommodations, thenwrote soaring prose of episodes we can only imagine a cen-tury later. The canyon experience at that time contrastedsharply with everyday lives in turn-of-the-century easternand midwestern cities, where automobiles and trolleys, elec-tricity and telephones were fast civilizing former frontiers.Visitors to the canyon wore stuffy suits and exquisite dress-es but stayed in tents and cabins, enjoyed the outrageousstories of Bill Bass and John Hance, read poetry alonebeside uncluttered rims accentuated by pristine canyonviews and silence.They rode mules along scary inner-canyon paths to camp in the open anywhere they chose.Not a single law or regulation intruded on their experience,and they left reluctantly, knowing that they might neveragain be able to afford the time and cost to return.

What human beings feel about Grand Canyon has as much to do with how it has been managedas with the desire to preserve or exploit the scenic landscape for its economic potential.We surmise that American Indian peoples considered it a mysterious place, but it was also home, offer-ing resources for subsistence and trade. The explorer Garcia Lopez de Cárdenas may have sensed themystery when he visited the South Rim in but thought of the canyon primarily as a travel obstacleand wasteland,of no use to the Spanish empire and therefore left as a refuge to native inhabitants. Footloose trap-

pers probably shared some of these emotions while extracting a few pelts before moving along to more accessible

terrain. Purposeful federal explorers searching for travel routes, resources for eastern markets, and settlement possibilities

mostly agreed with Cárdenas’s judgement,but they arrived with a national agenda and therefore persevered around the obsta-

cle, their surveys resulting in a wagon road (and later a railroad) linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

After the turn of the century, self-sustaining entrepre-neurs who had proven the canyon a viable commoditywithin their narrow spheres of influence gave way to rail-road managers who sensed profit in monopoly and central-ization. Many employees of the Santa Fe Railroad and FredHarvey Company grew to love the canyon as much as theirpredecessors.Their customers, who arrived by rail andstayed at the luxurious El Tovar Hotel or the more frugalBright Angel Lodge, still marveled at awe-inspiring vistas.But the experience had changed.The point at which dis-covery yields to creature comfort is indefinite, but travelingto a well-advertised destination in a Pullman sleeper andenjoying civilized amenities like leak-proof roofs and inter-

national cuisine lies somewherebeyond that point.The Santa FeRailroad offered a wider rangeof guided trips, some into thecanyon by the same mules andhazardous trails earlier visitorshad used, others along still-primitive rim roads in horse-drawn buggies. Since nearly

everyone arrived by rail, managers could predict numbersand ensure that accommodations met with everyone’sapproval.They also replaced the dilapidated accommoda-tions of pioneer operators with visually pleasing architectureand brought a modicum of order to the South Rim.

Railroad managers provided more comfortable accom-modations and services for the greater numbers of touriststhey attracted, but also bared the seamier side of unregulat-ed capitalism in the sprawling “resort” village they hadspawned. One wonders if silence and unsullied canyonviews entirely overcame the sight and stench of pit toilets,garbage dumps, open-air incinerators, free-ranging live-stock, and mule barns that persisted from the nineteenth

century. The railroad brought the Fred Harvey Company,the Harvey Girls, European chefs, and low-wage laborersto cater to upscale clientele, but they required nearly all oftheir employees to live in shanties and derailed boxcars, atbest in tent cabins. Neither the Santa Fe Railroad nor theFred Harvey Company supplied any community services ordurable organization: no grocery stores, general merchan-dise stores, homes, churches,community centers, zoning, orlaw enforcement.These conditions were all manifestationsof attracting a lot of people to one place at one time, com-bined with disdain for investments that did not return prof-its and the inability of an other-directed, underfunded U.S.Forest Service to do anything about it.

The National Park Service reachedGrand Canyon at an auspicious time in itsown and the nation’s history. The UnitedStates had won a war on others’ battlefieldsand was poised to get down to businessbecoming the world ’s economic power.Industry was rich in innovations, among themthe assembly line, mass advertising, and bulkproduction of affordable automobiles for anexpanding middle class.The National ParkService hummed with the electricity of itsyouth. Its leaders embraced positivist idealsand fiercely advocated conservation whileremaining astute businessmen.They had con-current visions of the national parks as cultur-al icons, natural sanctuaries, and scenic com-modities, but found far more willing allies for

the latter among legislators, businessmen, and influentialcitizens. NPS administrators had just embarked on theirprogram of selling the parks to national and internationalconsumers, who had begun to discover Grand Canyon withthe railroads’ help. At the same time administrators sold theneed for improved access, accommodations, and otheramenities to a willing federal government.

It is difficult to imagine how a progressive federalagency infused with the idealism, energy, and the cleargoals of a startup enterprise in these political and economicatmospheres, yet lacking a clear ecological ethic, could haveacted differently or done better at Grand Canyon NationalPark. After a few years of belt-tightening and experimenta-tion, hand-picked managers with strong agency backingand near-unanimous popular support accomplished a greatdeal.They cleaned up the pioneer environment while build-ing attractive administrative facilities, re-engineering roadsand trails, organizing campgrounds, inventing educationalprograms, and eliminating private inholdings.They alsoovercame their economic partners’ initial arrogance, ensuredsome measure of architectural conformity and zoning, andcajoled them into making massive investments in commu-

an ad m i n i st rati ve hi st or y of gran d c a nyo n nat i onal pa r k

Figure 49.Superintendent Rob Arnberger, Grand Canyon

Association President Robert Koons,and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbittat the dedication ofRoosevelt Point,

North Rim,July 1996. Privatepartners like Grand Canyon

Association figure prominently instrategies to implement the 1995

General Management Plan.GRCA13887;NPS photo by Mike Quinn.

nity as well as tourist-related infrastructure.The park serv-ice accomplished this not by displacing the railroads whohad superseded pioneer operators, but by fashioning astrong public-private alliance to pursue a grander scheme ofexporting scenery to the entire world.

These civilizing efforts closed the gap on the experien-tial contrast between cities and parks, but were necessary toan arguable degree if pleasurable vacations were to beretained in the automotive era. A generation earlier, therailroad had effected a noticeable change in the manner inwhich tourists reached and experienced the park by afford-ing a quicker, more comfortable ride from Williams and bycatering to a known number of arrivals. Private vehicleseffected a far more profound, longer-lasting revolution byplacing decisions in the hands of individuals.The “sage-brushers” who came before World War II recaptured someof the adventure, certainly the freedom, of early explorers.They arrived by whatever road they chose, at any time,stayed beside the road or the rim, in camps if provided, orin lodges if the mood and pocketbook allowed.They couldeat in restaurants or buy packaged food, partake in guidedtours and interpretive talks or not, stay a month or move toanother park after a few hours at the rim. Although it wassoon evident that they would come in greater numbers thanever before and in the traditional summer season, exact vol-ume, dates, and times of arrival became wholly unpre-dictable and uncontrolled.

Visitor demographics changed radical ly by the mid-s, but the park was able to adapt within fifteen years byrebuilding all manner of roads and providing more cost-effective, full-service campgrounds, motor lodges, cabins,and other auto-related services. Pleasure must have beenmixed with annoyance during this period of adjustment.Motorists drove on incredibly dusty gravel roads before oilpalliatives then pavement returned vistas to their formersplendor in the mid-s. The amount of constructionundertaken in the s and early s has hardly beenexceeded since, and it created traffic problems and a steadydin until natural silence also returned in the mid-s.Power plant and locomotive smoke would not have goneunnoticed, and a five-fold increase in the number of visi-tors, most in vehicles of their own, could not have helped.Road signs, rules, and regulations inevitably appeared, andfor the first time restricted visitors’ actions for the sake oforder. Still, black-topped roads, new utilities, accommoda-tions of rustic architecture, and manicured landscapes cour-tesy of the CCC converged with diminished visitation dur-ing the depression to produce a few “golden years” whenthe park experience came closest to matching the illusoryNPS ideal. Knowledgeable and courteous rangers, activecommunity groups, cooperative efforts between administra-tors and concessioners, and world war prolonged the ideal

until when it all ended very abruptly.From an experiential point of view, the next fifty-five

years proved something of a worsening nightmare for near-ly all except those interested in making money from anendless stream of scenic consumers. NPS and concessionemployees still worked and lived with each other in a civil,even affable manner, and enjoyed marginally better livingconditions and community amenities than their predeces-sors, but the public-private partnership and relationshipwith visitors had otherwise changed. Nonresident but car-ing concession managers, who had once made it a point tovisit the park regularly and participate in communityaffairs, gave way to absentee boards of directors. NPS man-agers also changed, adhering to mandated relations withtheir former partners while withdrawing from intimatecontact with the visiting public in favor of more impersonaleducation and information, rules, regulations, and lawenforcement. NPS and private-sector efforts to attract andplease unlimited numbers of visitors coincided with thenation’s emergence as the world’s economic power, regionalpopulation growth, development, pollution, and technologi-cal innovations to reduce natural quiet, visual clarity, andsolitary experiences.This was especially noticeable to visi-tors who crowded Grand Canyon Village, Bright AngelPoint, and the scenic drives, points, and pullouts, but alsobecame evident to backcountry users who could no longerentirely escape overflights, motorized rafts, air pollution, orothers who fled the same intrusions as themselves.

Unfortunately, those who visit the park today cannotfeel long-ago experiences and are likely to compare onlycontemporary differences between their city homes and thepark environs—differences which are, in some places, nolonger all that startling. The worst scenario is realized inthe busiest weeks of the summer season by day users whospend their few hours at the park visiting Grand CanyonVillage. Most still arrive from the southern gateway townsand are not well informed of where they are going andwhat to expect.They leave Interstate at Flagstaff orWilliams and follow columns of vehicles leading inexorablyto the park’s south entrance. Along the way they pass a fewhotels, restaurants, private campgrounds, billboards, bud-ding residential developments, and “Bedrock City” (Valle)before encountering Tusayan—a quarter-mile gauntlet ofcommercial services beside an airport vibrant with thethump of helicopters and drone of airplanes.Those whointend to stay the night and have thought ahead likely asnot have reservations here. Everyone by the next dayqueues up at the entrance station before continuing to thefirst canyon overlook at Mather Point, where an open park-ing space may be found only if it is early or late in the day.

From this point, most people continue west toward thevillage, passing the spur to Yavapai Observation Station

c h a p te r se v e n u p s hots a nd p rogn o sis

then turning right into the visitor center across from theMather Business Zone where they pause, hoping to find avacant place to park.Those who are crafty or patient snareone.Those who are wise orient themselves here and allowshuttles to ferry them about the village and along WestRim Drive before returning and driving out the way theycame. Nearly all get back into their vehicles, however, andcontinue to the intersection with Village Loop Drive whereconfusion and irritation mount.The loop is counter-clock-wise, though few are aware of it, and some turn left to itssouth side, passing the old Fred Harvey industrial zonebefore reaching a dead end at Maswik Lodge. Motoristswho are not staying at the lodge or looking for a backcoun-try permit at the Maswik Transportation Center retracetheir path but may turn right at Center Road and immedi-ately leave the park by this shortcut. Many return to theoriginal intersection, however, and join those who choose todrive straight ahead beyond the railroad depot into the oldvillage proper.

Confusion along the northside of Village Loop stems fromthe fact that it is one-lane andone-way, with turnoffs into theEl Tovar Hotel,Thunderbird,Kachina, and Bright AngelLodges cloaked by a near-con-tinuous shield of parallel-parkedcars.Motorists are distracted byvehicles stopped in the middle

of the road, by tame deer browsing the roadside, or by inat-tentive pedestrians.Those who miss their turn must cir-cumnavigate the village before getting a second chance.Parking is very limited among these rimside facilities, andonce motorists make the correct turn they do not find aspace unless they’re extremely lucky. More often they sitand wait with others, park illegally, or lose patience and re-enter the loop hoping to find one farther down the road.

Most eventually stumble upon and settle for one of twomajor parking lots, the closest to the rim located west ofthe railroad depot, the most spacious adjacent to the trans-portation center.

Once out of their vehicles, visitors are drawn as theyhave been since from the shallow depression of BrightAngel Wash up to the rim overlooking the canyon.Thepaved walkway from Kolb Studio to Verkamps is often con-gested, but those who take the time can stroll amongjunipers and ponderosa along canyon-view paths to thewest as far as Hopi Point and east to Yavapai Point, captur-ing some semblance of solitude and quiet that has not yetbeen lost.There are four hotels, lodge cabins, a steak house,and two curio stores only fifty to a hundred feet back fromthe rim. Kolb Studio and Lookout Studio hang over theedge. But buildings seem more intrusive on the printedpage than they are in reality. Some are historic structures ofinteresting architecture, others were built of modern mate-rials but with aesthetic concern. It may be that the overall

feel of the historic district complements theexperience of the canyon itself, but whateverthe reason, visitors afoot are in a better frameof mind than they are in their vehicles. Andone can still turn northward at any point andgaze in astonishment down talus slopes andcliffs that parallel the Bright Angel Fault toIndian Garden and look across the canyon toBright Angel Canyon and the North Rim,perhaps in a few moments offsetting theaggravation they endured to get here.

This is just a glimpse of today’s worst vis-itor experience at peak season, the congestioninherent in attracting unlimited numbers ofvisitors, accommodating them in one place,

and satisfying the need for creature comforts that coincideswith summer vacations. It plagues, as it always has, only asmall fraction of the park environs during a three- to five-month period of each year, and can easily be avoided with alittle forethought. Most visitors today are day trippers,making the rounds of southwestern parks and monumentsand spending only a few hours at Grand Canyon’ edge tofeel the rush, take a few photographs, and move on.Theywould be better served and a whole lot happier if they camein the autumn, winter, or early spring, or if they restrictedtheir travel to entrance roads, East Rim Drive, and CapeRoyal Road, which have long availed the best views andwere arranged to avoid developed centers at both rims. Butthe search for overnight accommodations, or the simple factthat most do not know for sure where they are going, drawsthem into the vortex of Grand Canyon Village.

NPS planners since Daniel Hull and William Petershave directed most of their attention and appropriations to

an adm i n i st r ati ve h ist ory of gran d c a nyo n nat i onal pa r k

Figure 50. President Bill Clintonand Interior Secretary Bruce Babbittat Hopi Point to formerly announce

the designation ofParashantNational Monument,January 2000.

Presidential proclamations oftheParashant and Grand Staircase-

Escalante National Monuments areinitiatives toward environmental

protection ofrelatively unpopulatedareas in the Grand Canyon region.

GRCA 18376;NPS photo by Mike Quinn.

the village.Their principal concern at first was to invent anorderly town from the early chaos surrounding the railwaydepot, later redeveloping the Wylie Way Camp at BrightAngel Point and the central corridor then adding facilitiesat Desert View, in each case trying to create then meetconsumer demand with quality, low-cost services. Masterplanners through the early s occasionally ponderedfacilities at Bass Camp, Manakacha Point, Grandview,Cape Royal, and elsewhere, but concessioner inclinations,dire economic conditions, world war, and environmentalopinion helped stay the course of in-place expansion. NPSadministrators and concessioners alone developed the plansof the first fifty years, acceding to nearly everyone’s inclina-tions for more and modern services. At no time did parkmanagers consider limiting visitation or seriously alteringthe manner in which tourists arrived at or experienced thepark.

Management consensus ended by the s with crowdsreaching critical mass and with the passage of environmen-tal legislation. Regional population growth, escalating visi-tation, and consequent problems continued to degrade thepark experience.The National Park Service abdicatedwhatever environmental leadership role it may have held tomore aggressive environmental groups and scientists, butdid not entirely ignore these interests when it came time towrite their next generation master plan.The planningprocess itself invited the opinions of special interests andthe general public, and the blueprint emerging in

reflected, for the first time, some concern for park ecology.But concern was more for the myriad problems that over-population, overvisitation, and overdevelopment hadbrought about.Goals for the first time included spreadingdevelopment within adjacent public lands, slowing thegrowth of services within the park, and, most significantly,separating visitors from their vehicles with convenient andmandatory mass transit, pedestrian paths and districts,bicycle paths and rentals, and the resumption of rail service.No thought was given to holding the line on the number ofvisitors, however. The plan, in fact, called for managementzones, zonal carrying capacities, and redistribution to effi-ciently squeeze more people in.

The Master Plan and Village DevelopmentConcept Plan were written in hesitant language, expressinga desire to do something different but an uncertainty overthe ability to carry it out. By the early s, very little hadactually been done to curb past trends other than to build afew foot trails, add to the voluntary shuttle system, con-struct Maswik Transportation Center, and facilitate thereturn of Grand Canyon Railway. As visitation topped fourmillion, transportation and visitor numbers remained majorconcerns when NPS officials began the scoping process fora new plan in . Reflecting a new era of public input to

management planning, administrators held meetings inregional towns, considered the opinions of varied interests,and crafted five alternatives. Number One: Let existingfacilities serve, with the likely result of further deteriorationof the park experience and natural environment. NumberTwo: Allow demographic trends to persist then implement

a reservation system whendeemed absolutely necessary.Number Three: Resurrect the intent to implementregional solutions, separate dayusers from their vehicles, andshift more facilities of all typesto Tusayan. Number Four (themost aggressive ecological stance): Require construction ofall new facilities and relocation of many existing ones out-side the park while prohibiting all day-user vehicles fromthe South Rim. Number Five: Continue past policies ofunlimited access and accommodation and build in-parkfacilities to meet demand.After lengthy public review andconsiderable comment, administrators chose the third alter-native in .

The crux of the General Management Plan is aconcessioner-owned and -operated light-rail system thatwill carry day users from Tusayan to a new transportationcenter near Mather Point. Here, visitors may choose toview the canyon and return to Tusayan or continue on tothe business zone and Grand Canyon Village via anenhanced shuttle system, by bicycle, or on foot. As in the plan, new roads will allow campers direct access toMather Campground and Trailer Village; hotel guests maydrive to Maswik Transportation Center where they willpark and proceed by bus, bicycle, or afoot to Maswik Lodgeand hotels along the rim.The main goal is to remove pri-vate vehicles from the South Rim, from Hermits Rest toMather Point. Aside from addressing circulation, the planalso calls for a massive rehabilitation and construction pro-gram including employee housing in Grand Canyon

ch a p te r se v e n u p s hots a nd p rogn o sis

Figure 51. Parking at GrandCanyon Village is scattered and inad-equate, aggravating traffic congestionand visitors alike. The 1995 GMPaims to eliminate more than halfofthe current number ofmotor vehiclesby requiring day users to park inTusayan,seven miles south ofthepark,and ride a light-rail system tothe rim at Mather Point.GRCA18047;NPS photo by Mike Quinn.

Village, Desert View, Bright Angel Point, and south of thepark in Canyon Forest Village—the latter a substantial pri-vate development west of Tusayan that was recentlyapproved.

This management plan is the most ambitious adminis-trators have ever invented. It directly addresses—and mayresolve, if implemented effectively—the challenge that haslong been their first priority: improving most tourists’ visitsby returning to a less-congested environment in GrandCanyon Village. It will likely create other problems, howev-er. Foremost, it is another in an unbroken line of structuralapproaches to visitor and employee accommodation, akin toMission but fifteen to twenty times more costly if fullyrealized. While most construction is planned within“already disturbed areas,” and the number of such “devel-oped centers” (as they were once called) will not increase,the plan still adheres to the traditional dictum of building

more to satisfy more people.The same structural mindset ledthe National Park Service tosupport Canyon Forest Village,or its lesser alternative ofexpanding the town of Tusayan(rejected in June by the

U.S. Forest Service in favor of the larger development), inorder to redistribute some employee housing, communityservices, and commercial facilities a few miles south.Spreading the “wealth” of development in this manner willease if not end the pressure to build within park bound-aries, but it is no real solution.There will soon be fourmajor developed areas—Tusayan, Canyon Forest Village,Grand Canyon Village, and the Mather Business Zone—bunched within seven miles of the South Rim. Consideringhistoric urban development patterns, these may well cometogether in the next century to form a metropolitan “GrandCanyon City.”

An equally troubling aspect of the plan is its design tocram still more people into the park, as many as . millionper year by . That number is predicated on projecteduse at various points, calculating the length of time peoplespend along the rims (a few hours) with the assumptionthat if visitors arrive, circulate, and leave as planned, ,

people per day (, at any one time) might be accom-modated, as opposed to the present number of , perday (, at one time). Visitors, in other words, havebeen reduced to units within a computer simulation modelin which they are expected to circulate in a predictablemanner. That may work, but even so, planners expect thatthe inconvenience imposed by making people leave theirvehicles at Tusayan will cause more of them to avoid masstransit and the village. Instead,they will probably congestDesert View Drive on the South Rim and Bright AngelPoint on the North Rim, requiring closure of Desert View

Drive’s pullouts and spur roads to all butshuttle busses and accelerating the imple-mentation of a North Rim reservationsystem. Administrators admit that even ifthis plan is implemented, reservation sys-tems will still be required at both rims by when and if visitation exceeds .million. It therefore merely postpones amore difficult cure to the next generationof administrators, tourists, and business-men.

Such concerns may be academic sinceno Grand Canyon master plan has everbeen implemented in its original form.This one carries a $-million price tag,not including $ million required for the

private mass transit system. Recognizing that financingmight prove the plan’s downfall, the park created a three-person implementation team in that has spent most ofits time trying to match funds with GMP projects.Congress allotted funds for nearly the entire $ million tabfor Mission ; it is expected to contribute less than 5 per-cent to implement the current plan.The shortfall will bemade up by user and franchise fees, federal highway fundsthrough the Transportation Enhancement Act (TEA-),state highway appropriations, contributions from privatecorporations and non-profit organizations like GrandCanyon Association and Grand Canyon National ParkFoundation, citizens’ donations, grants, and a concessionerwilling to invest in the transit system. Implementation istherefore proceeding in a piecemeal fashion, an approachthat has not worked well in the past.

Administrators believe that financing will remain theprincipal obstacle to implementation, but there is reason tospeculate that opposition will arise from South Rim conces-

an adm i n i st r ati ve h ist ory of gran d c a nyo n nat i onal pa r k

Figure 52. Arizona GovenorFife Symington holds a press

conference along the SouthEntrance Road to protest the

park’s 1995 closure, withSuperintendent Rob Arnberger

(center, right) looking on.GRCA 15229;NPS photo

by David Haskell.

sioners. Everyone who derives profit within the park isconcerned about divorcing people from their vehicles andthe effect it will have on business, since the convenientautomobile also serves as a shopping cart. People afoot willlikely buy less, and a plan-induced consumer traffic patterncannot be predicted. AmFac has the most to lose.The parkexpects the company to invest more than $ million torefurbish, relocate, and build new facilities, but, as in

when the depression scuttled Fred Harvey Company plansand in the s when congressional and NPS policy shiftscaused the company to balk, AmFac may resist capitalimprovements.The plan calls for costly renovations of olddormitories to low-cost visitor rooms, removal of the still-serviceable Kachina and Thunderbird Lodges from the rim,and (at most) an additional rooms at Maswik Lodge,none of which sits well with the concessioner. Acrimoniouscontract negotiations do not help matters, and it is uncer-tain what a new corporation, if one can be found, mighthave in mind, given trends to reduce in-park services andescalating competition outside the park.

Economic and demographic uncertainties, inevitablelimitations in the near future, and recent historical trendstoward environmental protection beg the question of whythe National Park Service did not adopt a cheaper, lessstructural plan linked to a reservation system, facility down-sizing, and reduced visitation.The world’s users of recre-ational facilities have grown accustomed to limitations andhave accepted reservation systems for Grand Canyon back-packing and rafting adventures. Motorists would probablyprefer such a system to being forced to leave their vehiclesin Tusayan.The park service, although it has based its entireexistence on the principle of unlimited accommodation, hasrecently realized the necessity of some restrictions to savethe parks. A reservation system, necessary only in summermonths for the foreseeable future, would probably balancethe seasonal distribution of visitors, a goal long sought by

administrators. Many NPS personnel, at least those in closecontact with today’s harried visitors,are fed up with crowdcontrol and would enjoy a return to the more intimate, con-structive relationship that existed prior to World War II.Conservation and preservation groups would no doubt sup-port such a plan, or consider it a positive step in the rightdirection.

Part of the explanation for not implementing a reserva-tion system is found in the paling though persistent NPSculture of building to meet the demands of the world’s sce-nic consumers, consistent with democratic ideals of openaccess and the profit-making potential of in-park conces-sions. But most of the explanation lies in the increasingimportance of international tourists to the Southwest’s eco-nomic health, reflecting the extent to which the region hasbeen ensnared by the web of world capitalism. Businessmenin Arizona, Utah, and adjacent states simply do not want aceiling placed on the number of tourists who may visit theregion’s primary scenic attraction because it will reduce dol-lars dropped in gateway towns along the way. Congressmenrespond to both commercial and noncommercial specialinterests, but popular backing for fixed limits, though grow-ing, has not yet translated into the necessary political sup-port.

Sadly, even if such a plan is someday implemented, itwould only help sustain an island of natural sanity for awhile longer while placing greater pressure on adjacent pub-lic lands. Limits to visitation will not overcome externalthreats to Grand Canyon National Park occasioned byregional population growth, development, and pollution.Real answers do not lie in congressional decisions, the effi-cacy of one federal bureau, or environmental compromises.They lie somewhere beyond the present world systemwherein corporations are concerned only for capital accumu-lation, human wants rather than needs are considered para-mount, and nature is cherished only for its economic value.

ch a p te r se ve n u p s ho ts a nd pro gn osi s

Figure 53. Finishing touchesare applied to Canyon ViewInformation Plaza (CVIP),prior to dedication,October2000. CVIP will become theterminal point oftheTusayan-Mather Pointlight-rail service upon com-pletion ofthe rail line ca.2005.NPS photo by MikeQuinn.