In 1941, the Park Service acquired the Hearst property through condemnation proceedings, against the vigorous opposition of Hearst lawyers.
With the hotels and other property structures deteriorating steadily after the Berrys retired and departed in 1919, Hearst finally dismantled the decrepit Grandview Hotel in 1928-29, selling some of its log beams for use in Mary Colter’s Desert View Watchtower then being built on the rim to the east. The Fred Harvey Company had evolved into that monopoly concessionaire and Hearst was a fly in the ointment. Park managers worried about controlling haphazard tourist development so early park policy sought to concentrate private tourist facilities in the hands of a single concessionaire that would operate under a strictly regulated franchise. This troubled the National Park Service, which took over management of the Grand Canyon in 1919. But for years afterward continued to dream of developing a tourist resort on the property. As soon as he purchased the property, he closed the two hotels. He kept the property primarily as a family retreat, having no need to profit from it. Hearst never posed any threat to the Santa Fe Railroad, though. The Berrys became caretakers of the Hearst property until 1919, delighted that a rich and powerful business mogul had snatched opportunity from the railroad company that drove them out of business. Hearst also bought all 200 acres of the Canyon Copper Company properties including the Grandview Hotel.
The Santa Fe Railroad offered to buy the property, but the Berrys refused to sell out to their nemesis and instead sold their homestead and hotel to the California newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in 1913. Cline Library, Northern Arizona University. In 1925, the National Park Service began clearing a new road to Grandview as part of the East Rim Drive that today runs between Grand Canyon Village and Desert View Watchtower. Pete and Martha Berry conveyed travelers to their hotel at Grandview Point in wagons along a dusty, bumpy road. With hotel revenue declining, the Berrys subdivided their property and put up lots for sale hoping to create another town to compete with the Grand Canyon Village. Pete and Martha Berry’s hotel business suffered as a result, but they did not give up without a fight.
This entry into the tourism business by one of the wealthiest corporations in America drew customers away from the more rustic locally-owned facilities. In 1905, the Santa Fe built the extravagant El Tovar Hotel on the rim a stone’s throw from its train depot, managed by the railroad’s tourism business partner the Fred Harvey Company. By then, tourism had taken over as the main economic engine at the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately for the Canyon Copper Company, copper prices declined and the mines closed in 1907. The new company property included the Grandview Hotel, so the Berrys moved to their nearby homestead and built the three-story Summit Hotel. When the Santa Fe line arrived in 1901, Pete Berry offered free stage transportation to the Grandview Hotel from the railway depot, equivalent to today’s free hotel shuttle from the airport.Įxpecting a brighter future in tourism (and less physical risk), the Berrys sold their rights in the mining operation to a Chicago investor in 1902 who formed the Canyon Copper Company. Hoping to cash in on the growing tourist trade, the Santa Fe Railroad built a rail line up from Williams, AZ, terminating at a depot in the heart of what became known as the Grand Canyon Village. Their two-story ponderosa pine lodge featured Indian arts and crafts, a mark of Southwest authenticity that influenced visitors’ sense of place. Somewhat wistfully, Pete and Martha Berry boasted theirs was “the only first class hotel at the Grand Canyon” (Anderson 1998: 70). Cameron invested his tourism energies farther west on the rim, constructing Cameron’s Hotel and Camps near the head of Bright Angel Trail at the Grand Canyon Village. Berry put his efforts into Grandview Point where he and his wife Martha used the profits from their mine to build the rambling rustic Grandview Hotel between 18. Nature tourism was also developing in the 1890s, and both Berry and Cameron diversified their incomes by launching visitor services.