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In 1972 the Santa Fe Railway discontinued all rail service to the Grand Canyon. The railroad continued its passenger service to the canyon until 1968 then cut back to only freight service. The company donated its buildings to the National Park Service and sold all tourist-related properties to the Fred Harvey Company. The Santa Fe Railway faced financial hardships and soon closed its operations at the Grand Canyon. Automobile travel proved far more popular a mode of travel for reaching the canyon since the 1920s. Forest Service and the National Park Service.īy 1954, however, the railroad’s popularity had long since waned. From 1905 to 1954 the Santa Fe Railway paid for and built many of the historic structures that are preserved at Grand Canyon Village today-often as partners with companies such as the Fred Harvey Company and federal agencies such as the U.S. Inspired by the writings and imagery from early explorers and artists such as John Wesley Powell and Thomas Moran, and enticed by railroad advertising posters and brochures, visitors came by the thousands to see the Grand Canyon for themselves.Īs the canyon’s popularity grew, the Santa Fe Railway continued to play an important part in Grand Canyon history. Now visitors could travel by train right to the doorstep of one of America’s greatest natural and cultural wonders and forgo the long stagecoach ride to the canyon.Īlthough the canyon did not become a National Park until 1919, Americans had long heard of the area through travel journals and popular accounts. During that year, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway (later known simply as the Santa Fe Railway) completed a new spur line of tracks connecting the depot at Williams, Arizona to Grand Canyon Village. In 1901 the trip to the Grand Canyon became a much more comfortable journey. Once they reached Williams, Arizona, the nearest train depot to the Grand Canyon, visitors would transfer from the train to the lumbering wooden stagecoaches for a 65 mile journey on dusty, bumpy roads to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. In the late 19th century, many of Grand Canyon’s tourists came from east coast and Midwest cities after traveling on board Santa Fe trains heading west. Looking at the Grand Canyon Railway Depot not only conjures images of nineteenth century tourists arriving at the canyon, it also is a built testament to the initial stages of developing the Grand Canyon Village.ĭuring the nascent days of Grand Canyon tourism, visitors traveled to the Grand Canyon using a combination of trains and stagecoaches. He Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and the building of the Grand Canyon Village are linked together. National Parks such as Yosemite, Mount Rainier, and Yellowstone.

To this day it is still a working train station as well as a testament to the role of railroads in establishing and promoting many western U.S. For over 100 years, this site has been an arrival and departure point for millions of tourists who have visited the Grand Canyon. National Park, the depot is more than wooden boards, train tracks, and benches. As one of the oldest standing wooden train depots in the United States and the oldest in a U.S. The Grand Canyon Railway Depot, a large wooden structure sitting at the end of the railroad tracks just down the hill from El Tovar, is a noted landmark in the South Rim Village and a great place to start your historical adventure. Indeed, exploring transportation routes to the Grand Canyon is a great way to better understand the Grand Canyon and its importance in American history and culture. Your journey was in some ways much like that taken by early tourists to the canyon. Perhaps you drove to the park, from the south, steadily climbing up the slow grades of the Colorado Plateau, through pinyon-juniper woodlands to the pine and fir forests in northern Arizona. Getting to the Grand Canyon, today and in years past, is a journey unto itself. How did you travel to the Grand Canyon? By car? By bus? By train?

Thunderbird lodge grand canyon history