Grandview Mine: Copper at the Canyon's Edge

Grandview Point is one of the less-crowded overlooks on the South Rim, which is itself a measure of how many people are at the other overlooks. The view from here is expansive, the canyon opening east and west in a broad curve, the Colorado River a thin glint far below. Most visitors photograph it and move on. Very few look down and think about the copper.

In the eighteen nineties, a man named Pete Berry established one of the Grand Canyon's first commercial copper mines at the base of what is now Grandview Point. The ore body was below the rim, accessible only by a trail Berry built himself down the steep canyon face. The trail descended more than fifteen hundred feet. Berry's miners carried equipment and supplies down on their backs and transported copper ore back up by mule.

The mine had one genuine problem and one structural problem. The genuine problem was that the ore, while real, was not abundant enough to justify the extraordinary cost of extracting and transporting it. The structural problem was that there was no nearby railroad. Copper ore is heavy and worth less than its weight would suggest unless the smelter is close. Berry's operation required shipping the ore from the canyon rim to the nearest railroad connection, which added expense at every step.

Berry did build a substantial operation, including a bunkhouse and equipment storage on the rim, and he hauled the ore out by mule to the Flagstaff railroad for years. The mine never produced enough to pay the full cost of running it. Berry eventually shifted his energy to tourism, converting the operation's infrastructure into one of the canyon's early tourist camps. The trail he built for mining became one of the canyon's earliest hiking routes.

The overlook where you are standing sits above a failed financial venture. The view was always the better product.