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. ![]() The hill is crowned with Monterey cypress trees.īecause of the fragility of the environment, visitors to the park are asked to keep to paths.Nature tourism was also developing in the 1890s, and both Berry and Cameron diversified their incomes by launching visitor services. ![]() It provides one of the last remaining habitats within the city for a number of native plants, including the endangered Franciscan wallflower and dune tansy, and also bush lupin, beach strawberry, bush monkey flower, and coyote bush. It is an outcrop of chert, which is part of the heterogeneous assemblage known as the Franciscan Formation, or Franciscan Assemblage, the primary geologic feature on which the city of San Francisco is founded, here covered with a thin layer of sand. ![]() The summit of Grandview Park rises to about 666 feet (203 m). It is surrounded by 14th and 15th Avenues, as well as Noriega Street.ĭespite its small size, 3.98 acres (1.61 ha) or about the size of a city block, the park is important geologically and botanically and offers views of downtown San Francisco, Golden Gate Park, to the Pacific Ocean, the Marin headlands, and across to the Sutro Tower. Grandview Park, also referred to as Turtle Hill by local residents, is a small, elevated park in the Sunset District, San Francisco, California.
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