Posted by Martha Krueger
on February 19, 2006, 6:39 pm
63.228.78.152
Dear Sirs, My father and grandparents started the first tourist camp at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in 1917. My father used Brighty the burro to carry water for the business from 1918 to 1921. The first summer he had to use "Teddy" the burro who was really stubborn and difficult and had been used by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906 during his cougar hunting trip. So it was with great relief that dad was given Brighty for the succeeding 3 summers by Uncle Jim Owen, the local cougar hunter and guide. Dad made up to 12 trips a day to a spot just below the rim, west of the camp, (the Wylie Way) The spot is hard to get to today because of the overgrowth and the trecherous hillside, but it is still there. Grandfather wrote an article for Sunset Magazine about his family's acquaintance with Brighty and Marguerite Henry based her book BRIGHTY OF THE GRAND CANYON on that article. She was not able to find my grandparents at the time of the writing, but when the book came out, my grandparents were looking for a present for me on my 10th birthday and then many letters were traded between Ms Henry and my grandparents. The book is fiction, but of course based on a real life character. My grandparents ran the camp from 1917 to 1928 when the first lodge was built there. Dad's picture on Brighty hangs above Peter Jepson's statue of Bright at the Grand Canyon Lodge in their large viewing room. Dad has written his memoirs which I am trying to have published at the moment. I think it is literature which is valuable to the history of the settlement of the canyon's rim and should be preserved. Thanks for your time, Martha Krueger
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