The Opening of Deer Creek and
History of the Thunder River Trail

The second Powell expedition down the Colorado River ended at the mouth of Kanab Creek on October 16th, 1871. The crew members stowed their boats with the idea of wintering over in Kanab and returning to complete the trip down through the Grand Canyon the coming spring. One of the crew was E. O. Beaman, a photographer.
Beaman (1874) wrote the following about the new years festivities in Kanab.
January 1, 1872. The New Year came in like a roaring lion, with storm and cold. In the evening a ball was given, and both storm and cold were soon forgotten in the excitement of the dance. Just as the festivities were at their height, Major Powell joined the party, adding dignity and jollity to the occasion. The major and his companions had just returned from a trip down Kanab Wash. They had followed the wash until it entered the Buckskin Mountains, at which point a deep cañon is formed, which enters the Colorado River at the Marble Canyon. The object of this trip was to open a route by which supplies might be sent to the boats on their downward trip the coming summer; and, as the wash had been hitherto unexplored, and one of the party, who considered himself an expert, claimed to have discovered gold in paying quantities within the distance of the eight miles they had traversed, the new-comers became at once the stars of the evening.

In a footnote, Beaman added:
It was not long after this supposed discovery that all Utah became excited about the Colorado placer-diggings, and at least five hundred miners must have visited the Colorado River, by way of Kanab Cañon, in the spring of 1872.

Beaman severed his ties with the Powell expedition, and went off on his own to photograph and otherwise reconnoiter the canyon country. One early exploit in the spring of 1872 was to return to the mouth of Kanab Canyon to visit the gold placer diggings. Access was gained by taking a route along what is now Forest Service road 22 across the flats southeast of Fredonia to Snake Gulch north of Big Springs, descending the gulch which is tributary to Kanab Canyon, and continuing down the canyon. The narrows in the lower ten miles of Kanab Canyon afforded a miserable boulder hop, especially with pack animals.
Beaman, along with some miners accompanying him, arrived April 15th. The modern place names have been added in brackets in his account.
The day after our arrival I visited a mining camp, of which one John Riley was chief, a mile and half down-stream. Expecting to find them hard at work “panning out,” we were somewhat surprised to find only one person in camp, Riley having gone up the river a week previous with a small rocker to work up a newly-discovered flat, and the others of the company being absent on a “prospecting trip.” Near the place was a water-fall of three hundred feet into the river [Deer Creek Falls] from a lateral gulch called Marble Cañon [Deer Creek Narrows].
As the scenery was reported fine, I resolved to visit it; and so shouldering my camera, I started, with one assistant, for a ten-mile climb over limestone and marble boulders. I found the cataract fully equal to the description given of it. The walls rise perpendicularly five hundred feet, and the fall is unbroken and magnificent. Passing around the falls, we encountered a granite wall projecting into and over the river, which we were obligated to scale. This would have been impossible of accomplishment but for our alpenstocks and ropes, but, after two hours’ work, we found ourselves in the very heart of the American Alps, twelve hundred feet above the river, and at a point commanding an extended view of the Grand Cañon.
•••
We had now advanced one mile up the river from the Buckskin Cascade [Deer Creek Falls], as I named the fall, but, before retracing our steps, we determined to go on over the shelf, and, if possible, explore a strange fissure [Deer Creek Narrows] we had observed in the solid wall of the cañon. Expecting to find a narrow gorge or chasm, what was our surprise and wonder at suddenly emerging into a lonely valley, flower-decked and verdant! In its center stood a grove of young cotton-wood trees, through which flowed a limpid stream of water, fed by a dozen springs gushing from the foot of the mountain. Almost involuntarily we named this Surprise Valley [Deer Creek Valley], although paradise it seemed to our rock-wearied eyes. Bent upon enjoying the “good the gods had provided,” we scrambled down the mountain, and under the shade of the cotton-woods enjoyed the refreshment of sleep and food.
Notice that the name Surprise Valley was applied to Deer Creek Valley. Beaman and his companion passed the falls at river level, and once east of it climbed onto the bench above the Granite Narrows and continued up river but not as far as the mouth of Tapeats Creek. On the return, they followed the Tonto bench above the Granite Narrows to the saddle between Cogswell Butte and the low mesa immediately east of the Deer Creek Narrows, and descended into Deer Valley to the Patioa.
There are important aspects to Beaman’s narrative. Deer Canyon was not inhabited by miners when he visited it in early 1872. He was unaware of Thunder Spring or Tapeats Creek, so did not venture that far east. Miner access to Deer Canyon at the time was still via Kanab Canyon and the arduous hike upriver along the north bank of the Colorado River.

The Miners Trail
U. S. Geological Survey geologist Clarence Dutton organized a pack trip into Deer Canyon in 1880, allowing us a glimpse into the efforts that the miners expended to avoid Kanab Canyon and to open the areas to the east. Dutton’s party used a trail down through Tapeats Amphitheater and Surprise Valley to Deer Canyon that the miners had built. He wrote: “With considerable labor and danger this trail was built and used long enough to satisfy those who went there that they had been deceived” (Dutton, 1882, p. 159).
This was a forerunner of the Thunder River Trail. The Miners Trail headed on the Kaibab Plateau west of Big Saddle at a point about halfway between Crazy Jug and Monument points. It descended the Permian section to the Esplanade, contoured southward on the Esplanade under the east flank of Bridgers Knollb along the rim overlooking Surprise Valley, went down through the Redwall cliff where the modern tail descends into Surprise Valley, and on over to Deer Canyon following the same route the trail follows today.
In 1965, I was bushwhacking my way across the Esplanade east of Bridgers Knoll where I climbed what looked like a possible route through the Permian section. Through serendipity, as I started climbing the Coconino Sandstone, I stumbled onto the old Miners Trail described by Dutton. It was preserved there as drilled and blasted switchbacks through the Coconino ledges proving beyond doubt that it was the remnants of a constructed trail! I had no idea at the time that the trail was made by the miners or used by Dutton.
The horse trail he followed did not descend directly into Surprise Valley from the small saddle in the Supai ledges at the top as does the modern trail. This shortcut was shown on Dutton’s map as a climbable route, but when he arrived, the pack trail continued to the west of the small saddle where it contoured on the Esplanade along the west rim of Surprise Valley for about a mile and a half to Deer Canyon. At the rim of Deer Canyon, a gulch afforded easy descent through the Supai ledges to the top of the Redwall cliff. It then doubled back the mile and a half on top of the Redwall cliff before plunging into Surprise Valley where it does today.
Dutton does not mention visiting Thunder Spring, and it is doubtful that he got there, otherwise he would have extolled its magnificence. Rather, his party turned westward in Surprise Valley and followed the branch of the Miners Trail into Deer Canyon. Dutton’s map honors Beaman’s naming of Deer Valley as Surprise Valley. However, “Surprise Valley” is set in type east-west across his map instead of north-south along the trend of Deer Canyon. The word “Surprise” is unambiguously placed directly over Deer Valley, but “Valley” rides up the gulch to the east between the Redwall cliff and Cogswell Butte.
Somehow, on later maps, the name Surprise Valley was slid eastward into the basin eroded from the massive landslides between Deer Canyon and Thunder Spring that are drained by Bonita Canyon. That summer hell hole is a far cry from the shaded, spring-fed paradise intended to carry the evocative name given it by Beaman!
The miners also got to Thunder Spring and the floor of Tapeats Canyon. Their primary focus was the placer gravel along the Colorado River up and down stream from the mouth of Tapeats Canyon. To reach Tapeats Canyon, they built a branch from their Deer Creek Trail eastward through Surprise Valley and down into Tapeats Canyon. The modern Thunder River Trail follows much but not all of the route they used. The evidence for their route remains as another abandoned trail remnant that I found in 2001.
This remnant can be found well below the eastern rim of Surprise Valley where it turns south out of the little red saddle that affords the best eye level view of Thunder Spring from the modern trail. The modern trail drops northward out of the saddle and switchbacks down toward the spring in the same gulch that below captures the flow from the springs. It reaches a prominent landing where a spur leads to the base of the waterfall beneath the spring.
In contrast, the Miners Trail goes down the desolate, uninviting ravine to the south of the little red saddle, and passes completely behind a small ridge that blocks all views of Thunder Spring and Thunder River. Once the trail reaches the Tonto bench far below, it swings northward on the bench and contours to an intersection with the modern trail. The reach on the Tonto bench is very faint. However, much of the segment in the ravine is preserved as well constructed, walled up switchbacks that are in remarkably good condition but invisible from the modern trail.
This now abandoned segment was preferentially used by horse wranglers until at least the late 1950s or early 1960s because it was less steep and didn’t have the exposed drop offs found along the modern trail. In fact, the wranglers undoubtedly undertook periodic maintenance work on it until they stopped using it. River guide Drifter Smith found several 1950 vintage Canadian Ace beer cans that had been tossed along it.
It is clear that the miners built their system of trails to access both Deer and Tapeats canyons sometime after Beaman visited the area in early 1872, but before Dutton got there in 1880. Their trails were in disuse and bad shape when Dutton made his trip. The work that went into the trails belies the considerable effort they expended along the Colorado River in the Deer-Tapeats area.
As the focus of their activity moved upstream from the mouth of Kanab Canyon, it was only natural that the miners sought a better route into the area rather than use the original grind down Kanab Canyon. The location of their trail through Tapeats Amphitheater is the most efficient horse route possible. Once on the canyon rim, they followed essentially the same route that the modern forest roads take along favorable topography to Big Springs and Fredonia. Undoubtedly the miners followed old Indian routes in their discovery process, both within the canyon and on the Kaibab Plateau.
The rock walls along the west side of Deer Valley, which are often attributed as being Indian canals, are in fact built up cribs that were little more than platforms for the miners to sleep or pitch a tent on. Their construction allowed the miners relief from the humidity, heat, brush and bugs that go with the bottoms next to the creek. Probably some of the rock work of the miners was built upon Indian ruins. The occupation of the area by the miners was brief, and the location sufficiently remote. It doesn’t appear they imported any wood to build more permanent dwelling structures. That the cribs have a common east wall gave rise to the myth of an Indian canal.

Routes to the Esplanade
The next era of trail construction attended the use of the Esplanade as a wintering area for cattle by Morman ranchers beginning before the turn of 20th century (Anderson and others, early 1990s). A braided stock trail of sorts began to wear in on the Esplanade bench that eventually circumscribed the entire Tapeats Amphitheater. It went at least as far east as the head of Crazy Jug Canyon or possibly Muav Saddle. To the west it extended into Kanab Canyon and beyond. Access from the Kaibab Plateau down to the Esplanade was by means of various trails through the Permian section such as the Sowats Point Trail into Jumpup Canyon, a tributary to Kanab Canyon.
A possible eastern portal was the North Bass Trail that descends off Swamp Point on the north rim to Muav Saddle where it turns east down into Shinumo Amphitheater. The North Bass Trail intersected two other trails in Muav Saddle. One climbs up to the south to provide access to the surface of the Powell Plateau, and the other is the eastern limit of the Esplanade Trail which wound southward around the heads of numerous gulches tributary to upper Tapeats Canyon from the head of Crazy Jug Canyon.
The Bass Trail portal was all but useless for the cattlemen, and probably wasn’t used by them because it headed in the middle of nowhere on the Kaibab Plateau. In addition, the trek around the heads of all the tributaries to Tapeats and Crazy Jug canyons was long, arduous and hazardous for both cattle and humans. Although the direct distance between the head of Crazy Jug Canyon and Muav Saddle on the Esplanade is only seven miles, the trail wound back and forth in and out of every side canyon it passed on the way, adding miles to the distance. Compounding its lack of appeal was that it became fully incorporated into Grand Canyon National Park when the park was established in 1919.
The cattlemen needed a short route from the rim of Tapeats Amphitheater down to the Esplanade. It is obvious that the Miners Trail through the Permian section west of Crazy Jug Point had been lost in the mists of time, otherwise it would have served as the ideal solution and ultimately developed into the primary trail down to the Esplanade.
Instead, the cattlemen at or before the turn of the century solved the problem of reaching the Esplanade by building a stock trail into Crazy Jug Canyon from Big Saddle. This segment took the form of a well constructed pack trail that heads on the canyon rim at the easternmost side of Big Saddle. It contours to the southeast above a resistant limestone ledge in the Toroweap Formation for about one-third of a mile around the eastern side of the head of Crazy Jug Canyon.
A fissure-like slot through the ledge and the underlying Coconino Sandstone under Parissawampitts Point allows the trail to descend in a series of tight switchbacks to the canyon floor where it arrives within sight of the Crazy Jugc.
The Crazy Jug Trail was shown to me in 1965 by Rell Little, an old cattle rancher who at the time operated a grazing permit on the Kaibab Plateau, and who with his family worked out of a cabin at Big Saddle Camp during the summer months. He associated an early cattleman named Hatch with the trail. Ron Mace (1992) recalled working on maintaining it, probably sometime after the late 1920s.

According to local lore, it and the segment of the Esplanade Trail between the Crazy Jug and Muav Saddle provided poachers from Big Saddle surreptitious access to the fine bucks that populate the Powell Plateau in the National Park. That type of use seems to have ceased in the 1940s.
Most evidence for the Esplanade Trail between Bridgers Knoll and Muav Saddle was all but obliterated by the 1950s. This included the reach between Bridgers Knoll and the Crazy Jug which linked with the Crazy Jug Trail. Prior to that time, wranglers working for the Churches who operated Big Saddle Hunting Camp occasionally moved horses and mules back and forth to their grazing lease on the Esplanade via the Crazy Jug Trail (Church, 1992). The Crazy Jug Trail is now in very rough shape. The last time I used it was in the late 1960s or early 1970s.
Another access trail down to the Esplanade was built from Indian Hollow via Little Saddle at least as early as the turn of the century, probably before. Its early construction and maintenance also were the work of cattlemen. Later much of the maintenance was carried on by the Church family and their wranglers. The last involvement of the Churches with the trail was in the mid-1960s when they stopped wintering horses on the Esplanade. The big obstacle along it was the Coconino cliff which was negotiated by contouring a mile westward along the Toroweap Formation from Little Saddle to a break through the Coconino Sandstone.
Although the Little Saddle Trail was not intended to provide access to Tapeats and Deer canyons, it did just that. By linking with a segment of the Esplanade Trail over to Bridgers Knoll and then connecting with the old Miners Trail down through Surprise Valley, packers could pick their way all the way down to Thunder Spring and Cove Camp. This route became known as the Thunder River Horse Trail. It was long and difficult to follow. The monotony of winding in and out of all the tributaries to Deer Creek on the Esplanade was resented by most who used it.

Trail Realignments
The Miners Trail down through Surprise Valley was left to decay until interest in packing people into Thunder Spring and fishing Tapeats Creek developed in the 1920s. Forest Service ranger Ed Laws, later to become a Park Ranger, and others rebuilt the section through the Supai ledges and Redwall Limestone at the top of Surprise Valley in 1925–26 (Anderson, early 1990s). They probably were the ones who blasted the direct route through the Supai ledges there in order to make that segment readily passable. That improvement saved the three mile loop over to Deer Canyon used by the miners and Dutton for their pack trains.
An interesting chapter unfolded with respect to the Thunder River Trail below Thunder Spring in 1939. Small numbers of hikers were beginning to find their way to Thunder Spring but the trail they used to reach the base of the falls appears to have been a spur from the Miners Trail that did not continue to the bottom of Tapeats Canyon. Instead, it branched from the Miners Trail from the eye level saddle directly across from Thunder Spring where it descended to the prominent landing across from the base of the falls.
Apparently people who wanted to hike directly down to the floor of Tapeats Canyon from the spring had to bushwhack downward from the landing. Park superintendent H. C. Bryant wanted to exert a presence in this then westernmost reach of the park, so in concert with a proposal to plant fish in Tapeats Creek, he seized on the idea of finishing the Thunder River Trail from the landing to the bottom of the canyon (Bryant and Mann, 1939–43).
No reference was made by either Bryant or Mann to the old Miners Trail to the floor of Tapeats Canyon, or to the use of it by wranglers running fishing trips to Cove Camp. Cove Camp is a short distance downstream from the confluence of Thunder River and Tapeats Creek, and is now known as Upper Tapeats Camp. It probably dates from the placer gold days, and the Indians before then. The wranglers had equipped it with a cache of cookware.
Stanley White (1992) related that his father Weaver was the leader of the Thunder River Trail construction crew employed by the National Park Service to work on the Thunder River Trail in 1939. They improved the existing trail through Surprise Valley and on down to the landing below Thunder Spring. From there they extended it to the bottom of Tapeats Canyon, reaching Cove Camp during the third week of October. White recalled that in addition to his father, four people worked on the project for two to three months. Three of the others were Ferris Pratt, Raymond Pointer and Reece Locke.
Superintendent Bryant also recognized that the Little Saddle route down to the Esplanade was less than ideal, and proposed that the National Park in cooperation with the National Forest Service lay out and build a trail off the west side of Crazy Jug Point. Little did they know this proposed route was just a few tenths of a mile from the Miners Trail! Correspondence between the park and forest service reveals that the project was heading to construction when World War II broke out (Bryant and Mann, 1939–43). The project died for lack of resources, probably a combination of personnel and money.

Monument Point Route
Every adventurous hiker who plied the Thunder River Horse Trail was looking for a shortcut through the Permian cliffs. The most obvious route seemed to be directly off Monument Point, two miles west of Crazy Jug Point. Logging roads made it most of the way out to the point from Big Saddle Camp, providing decent access to the rim there.
People started using the Monument Point route at least as early as the 1930s. The route started down through the Kaibab Formation on the eastern side of Monument Point just a bit back from the end and dropped to a bench in the Toroweap Formation on the point of the ridge. From there it was straight down the point directly toward Bridgers Knoll over a series of ledges that terminated at a sheer cliff in the Coconino Sandstone. A twenty-foot nerve racking traverse across a ledge on the face of the upper Coconino cliff allowed one to negotiate around the point toward the east to a climbable slot down through the lower part of the Coconino cliff. The slot ended on the sharp Hermit ridge which forms the saddle between Monument Point and Bridgers Knoll. There were numerous routes off the saddle to the horse trail on the Esplanade to the west.
Many people desired to avoid the exposure on the Coconino cliff, so at least as early as the late 1960s they started using an alternative. Once down to the Toroweap Formation on the Monument Point route, they contoured about a half mile westward above a prominent ledge to a scree-filled shoot through the lower Toroweap Formation and Coconino Sandstone. The National Park Service developed this safer route into what they call the Bill Hall Trail during the late 1970s. Bill Hall’s name was attached to the trail as a memorial to his loss in the line of duty. He was a park ranger who, responding to an auto accident, was killed when he missed a turn while driving toward Jacob Lake on the highway from North Rim.
The Bill Hall segment was the last to be attached to what is now the Thunder River Trail. A few people still use the Thunder River Horse Trail from Little Saddle, but mainly in the early spring when the road to Monument Point is snowed in.

Related Lore
The story of the Thunder River Trail would not be complete without fleshing out the role that the Churches played in its maintenance. Big Saddle Hunting Camp was built by Hayden Church in the 1920s. His son Jack, and Jack’s wife Mardean, took it over and operated it until the mid 1960s. They also owned the Buckskin Tavern on the state line between Kanab and Fredonia. Although their primary business was the Utah Parks Company, which had concessions to operate mule trips in Bryce, Zion and the North Rim, they hosted hunters and guided hunting trips out of their lodge and several cabins at Big Saddle Camp during the fall.
The Big Saddle facilities are long gone. The smaller cabins were wrecked and burned in 1967. The main lodge was left standing but cut into three sections and moved years ago to its current location at the junction of U. S. 89a and Forest Service road 22 just southeast of Fredonia. It now forms the core for the house just to the southwest of the intersection there.
The Churches operated pack trips into Thunder River from Big Saddle via the Little Saddle route, mostly after hunting season. Their best known wrangler was Walapai Johnny Nelson, whose father was sheriff at Kingman. Johnny also was well known as a heavy drinker. Mardean Church (1992) recalled, “A great guide, people loved him, but had to fire him and rehire 50 times a season.” For years, Walapai Johnny maintained the stash of cookware at Cove Camp just down from the junction of Thunder River and Tapeats Creek. His inscription is in the rock shelter beneath the large boulder overlooking the roasting site just west of where the Thunder River Trail drops out of Surprise Valley to Thunder Spring.
The Churches wintered their Utah and Grand Canyon horses and mules on the Esplanade until the mid-1960s. For decades their trail hands did the bulk of the maintenance and even made some improvements on the Thunder River Trail from the canyon rim to Cove Camp. Their hands even did most of the work on the Crazy Jug segment before it was abandoned in the 1950s.
In 1965, Rell Little told me about getting the last of the cattle off the Esplanade sometime in the early 1960s. Another rancher named Johnny Vaughn, who also operated a cattle lease on the Kaibab Plateau, noticed that there were a fair number—at least a truck load—of feral cattle down there that they could occasionally see from the rim. Representing found money, they decided to go after them. This they did by taking a couple of docile cows out to Little Saddle, and wrangled them down onto the Esplanade via the Little Saddle Trail. In no time, the wild cattle congregated around the domesticated stock, and the wranglers were able to peacefully walk the entire lot out to the rim with the cows in the lead. They walked the lot right onto the truck without incident, and, the way he told me the story, drove right off to the packing plant to collect their reward. That was the end of cows on the Esplanade over in that country.

Acknowledgment
Grand Canyon historian Dove Menkes, who has assembled exhaustive files on the Grand Canyon and its lore, graciously spent hours sifting through his holdings in order to provide copies of transcripts of interviews, correspondence and other documents pertaining to the 1870s gold rush and the Thunder River Trail. Michael Anderson researched the history of the Thunder River Trail for the Grand Canyon National Park Service in order to get the trail listed in the National Register of Historic Places. As part of his research, he conducted the invaluable interviews with old timers familiar with fragments of the story incorporated here. He also generously provided drafts of his writings on the topic.

Peter Huntoon

References:

Anderson, Michael F., April 1995, Thunder River Trail at Grand Canyon National Park: unpublished manuscript, 23 p. (files of Dove Menkes).

Anderson, M. F, Sutphen, D., Jaconson, M., Zeman, A., early-1990s, Thunder River Trail: National Park Service nomination for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, draft report, 19 p. (files of Dove Menkes)

Beaman, E. O., 1874, The Cañon of the Colorado, and the Moquis Pueblos, chapters III–VI: Appletons’ Journal, v. 11, p. 545–548, 590–593.

Bryant, H. C., Superintendent, Grand Canyon National Park, and Mann, Walter G., Forest Supervisor, Kaibab National Forest, 1939-1943, Interagency correspondence pertaining to construction and maintenance of the Thunder River Trail including Forest Service Special Use Permit dated November 8, 1939, authorizing construction of a short cut from the rim along the west side of Crazy Jug Point to the Esplanade: Dove Menkes files.

Church, Mardine, May 22, 1992, Tape recorded interview by Michael F. Anderson: transcript in files of Dove Menkes.
Dutton, Clarence E., 1882, Tertiary history of the Grand Cañon district with atlas: U. S. Geological Survey, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 264 p. plus atlas.
Mace, Ronald, May 19, 1992, Tape recorded interview by Michael F. Anderson: transcript in files of Dove Menkes.

Smith, Drifter, 2003, Oral interview by Peter Huntoon.

White, Stanley, May 21, 1992, Tape recorded interview by Michael F. Anderson: transcript in files of Dove Menkes.

Endnotes:
a. The Patio is a modern river runners name given to the sandstone flat immediately upstream from the Deer Creek Narrows. It is one of the most scenic gathering and rest spots in the Grand Canyon.

b. Bridgers Knoll was called Bridgers Nose up until the 1960s, being named for Jim Bridger of Wyoming fame. Exactly who imported his name to the Grand Canyon is unknown to me, but I suspect it was one of the turn of the century wranglers working the cattle on the Esplanade.

c. The Crazy Jug is a peculiar pinnacle that juts above the Esplanade at the head of Crazy Jug Canyon some 1,400 feet below the canyon rim at Big Saddle. The early wranglers who worked the cattle on the Esplanade thought it resembled a partially melted bottle found in a burnt out camp fire, thus their name for it. It is the erosionally resistant upper part of a geologic feature called a breccia pipe that is localized along the trace of the Muav fault. The fault passes through Big Saddle, trends down Crazy Jug Canyon, and continues to the southeast through Muav Saddle into Shinumo Amphitheater. Breccia pipes in the Grand Canyon are caused by the collapse of the overlying rocks into caverns in the Redwall and Muav limestones. As successively higher rocks fall in, a rubble filled chimney forms that is called a breccia pipe. In this case, the rocks surrounding the breccia pipe eventually eroded leaving the breccia behind as a pinnacle. Crazy Jug Point and Crazy Jug Canyon derive their names from the feature.