Grand Canyon Caverns - Contemporary History

Contemporary History

In 1927, Walter Peck, a cowboy and woodcutter, was walking through the area on his way to play poker with his friends. when he stumbled and nearly fell into a sizable hole in the ground. The following morning, Peck, and some of his friends returned to the location of the large, funnel shaped hole with lanterns and ropes. Peck was lowered into the hole by his friends with a rope tied around his waist to a depth of 150 feet (46 m) with a lantern and began exploring.

A very large, dark cavern welcomed Peck during his initial exploration where he saw some speckles on the walls that he thought were gold. He gathered up samples of some of these shiny rocks and had his friends pull him back to the surface. Peck then purchased the property and began making preparations for a gold mining operation. Once the assay reports were completed he learned that his potential mother lode was nothing more than iron oxide.

Not one to give up on entrepreneurial opportunities, Peck came up with an idea to lure travelers to the Caverns and began charging 25 cents to lower these early spelunkers down into the Caverns to explore and to view what had been reported in newspapers to be the remains of a caveman that had earlier been located on a ledge. Although the 'caveman' had also lured scientist from the east to study the remains, it was later confirmed in the 1960s to be the remains of two inhabitants of the area. These inhabitants had been in the area barely a decade earlier during the winter of 1917-1918, when a group of Hualapai Native Americans were harvesting and cutting firewood on the caverns hilltop and a snow storm trapped them on the there for three days. Two brothers died from a flu epidemic and since the ground was frozen solid with deep snow cover, their fellow lumberjacks buried them in what they thought was only a 50-foot (15 m) hole because returning them to their tribal headquarters in Peach Springs, risked spreading the flu.

During the Great Depression the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration made an agreement with Peck in 1935 to build a new entrance to the Caverns. In 1962, another entrance was built into the Caverns by blasting a 210-foot (64 m) shaft in the limestone and installing a large elevator at which time the natural entrance was also sealed off at the request of the Hualapai as it was considered a sacred burial place. Near the natural entrance, the skeletal remains of a Glossotherium Harlani were also found. This giant and extinct ground sloth lived during the Age of Mammals when the Woolly Mammoth and Saber Tooth Tiger lived more than 11,000 years ago. The study of the remains indicate it stood over 15 feet (4.6 m) tall and weighed near 2,000 pounds.

Peck had named the Caverns, The Yampai Caverns, with the name being changed several times and up until 1957, they were known as the Coconino Caverns. During 1957 through 1962, they were known as the Dinosaur Caverns and there are plenty of these contemporary but artificial 'dinosaur' artifacts from this era, that exist to this day. In 1962, the Caverns were renamed, The Grand Canyon Caverns, with good reason, as it is connected to the Grand Canyon to the north.

During the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. Government, deployed enough water and food rations to the Caverns, to support up to 2,000 people for up to 2 weeks. These supplies remain there today and are seen by all visitors who tour the caverns, but a more interesting fact is that these supplies are still as ready to eat and drink as they were more than 4 decades ago due to the constant dry and cool temperature of the air inside.

Not simply just an Historic Route 66 roadside tourist attraction that has survived into the current century with nearly 100,000 tourists annually, the Grand Canyon Caverns are the location of ongoing scientific work related to not only cave exploration, but space exploration as well. A cosmic ray telescope was installed in 1979 under 126 feet (38 m) of solid limestone by the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of New Mexico. The purpose of the telescope of course is the study of interstellar cosmic rays that constantly bombard the earth from deep space, penetrating solid rock.