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Tracks to the Canyon—Getting There is Still Half the FunStory and Photos by Glen Brewer Williams, Arizona – There are daily shootings in the streets here. Barely minutes before our train, the Williams Flyer, left for the South Rim of Grand Canyon, the notorious Cataract Creek Gang was apprehended, with much gunfire, in plain sight of the station.
In the halcyon days before automobiles and good highways became pervasive, people traveled to the great western parks by train. Major transcontinental lines vied for attention with colorful advertising featuring parks they served. Both Northern Pacific and Union Pacific served Yellowstone, Southern Pacific served Yosemite, Great Northern served Glacier and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe served the Grand Canyon. The railroad not only served the Grand Canyon, it promoted and developed it starting long before designation as a national park in 1919. Many of the improvements at the South Rim including the El Tovar Hotel, the water system and the power facilities were built by the railroad.
Significantly for railroad passenger business, downtown Williams is still on legendary US Route 66, which, beginning in 1926, was the main highway between Chicago and Los Angeles. Interstate 40 replaced Route 66, bypassing Williams a little to the north, in 1984. The old highway experience, especially for those of us old enough to have experienced it, is now itself of nostalgic interest. By 1968, the last scheduled passenger train operated by the AT&SF over the branch had but three passengers. The very last Santa Fe train to the canyon, a work train, ran in 1974. Eventually, the derelict tracks were saved by Max and Thelma Biegert who soon found themselves in the railroad business. A spectacular effort ensued to rebuild track and facilities and to acquire and refurbish engines and cars. The gray, colonnaded, 1908 Williams station with attached, original Fray Marcos Hotel (now the railway museum) is of unique cast concrete construction and had to be extensively rebuilt. The Fred Harvey Company operated the hotel and lunch room here as well as the more famous El Tovar Hotel at the South Rim. Today there is a new Frey Marcos Hotel facing the depot, and a much-enlarged museum is in the planning stage. A chronic problem of train travel in the nineteenth century was food. Before dining cars were commonly available, trains stopped, briefly, at established "eating houses". These places were notorious for bad food served too late. Fred Harvey, born in England in 1835, had been involved in several restaurant operations and was general freight agent for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad when, in 1876, he signed a lease with the AT&SF to take over the lunch counter in the Topeka, Kansas station. The tremendous approval resulting from superior food and service at Topeka lead to Fred Harvey managed hotels and restaurants being established all along the Santa Fe Railroad and eventually to Harvey service aboard the railroad's dining cars as well. Fame achieved was such that in 1946 MGM made a movie, "The Harvey Girls" staring Judy Garland.
The largest and primary engine used is former Chicago, Burlington & Quincy locomotive 4960. In my youth, during the late '50s and early '60, this engine pulled many special trips for railroad enthusiasts from Chicago to such relatively mundane Illinois destinations as Galesburg and Ottawa. I rode several of these trips, and, when I couldn't ride, I was often on hand to photograph them. Then, mixed with the excitement of the occasion, I felt a great sadness, because this locomotive was so obviously living on borrowed time. Forty-Nine-Sixty seemed sure to follow the thousands of others that had been or were rapidly being converted into humble bailing wire. But this time things were different. The Grand Canyon Railway acquired and overhauled the engine at a cost of $1.5 million. Eighty thousand man-hours were required. In the process, years were added to her useful life expectancy.
Our trip took two and one quarter hours. Along the way, the scenery changed from ponderosa pine to pinion and juniper to high desert sagebrush and back to pinion and juniper then ponderosa pine and scrub oak as we entered the national park. Little could be seen of former mining, lumber and livestock operations along the railroad.
A ranger once told me that the average visitor spends only about 15 minutes enjoying the view (because it takes so long to drive there and park). Not so with us: if we had taken the return train, we would have had three and one quarter, hassle free hours before train time. But, even better, we chose to stay overnight and take the train back the next afternoon.
Our return the next afternoon was aboard the Coconino dome car. Passengers were welcomed aboard with cheese and crackers, fresh fruit and an assortment of cold drinks. Champaign was served. Craig Summers, the wondering minstrel, serenaded us with guitar and his deep baritone voice. All was calm and relaxing. That is, it was until passengers spotted armed and masked men on horseback firing their guns alongside the train. Before Santa Fe absorbed it, the still incomplete railroad had been known as the Grand Canyon Railway. The revived Grand Canyon Railway ran its first passenger train in 1989 and celebrated its centennial in 2001.
Getting there Williams is 34 miles west of Flagstaff, Arizona on Interstate Highway 40. Take Exit 163 and follow Grand Canyon Boulevard south to the depot. Grand
Canyon Railway Information Grand Canyon National Park Information
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JustSayGO Travel Show
We
arrived inside the Grand Canyon Historic District. The picturesque station
is the only log depot still in service in the United States. Directly behind
it is the magnificent, rustic El Tovar Hotel.
Mary Colter, as chief architect and decorator for the Fred Harvey Company (1902
to 1948), designed many of the building in the Grand Canyon National Park. Immediately
beyond the famous old hotel is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in all
its majesty. We stood in awe.
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