Grand Canyon Pioneers
Society, Inc. Collections

Grand Canyon Pioneers Society, Inc.

PH.87.1.1-14

Volume:
14 black-and-white photographs
Views include:
Grand Canyon Village, Powerhouse, Fire truck, Grand Canyon Railway accident, 1939; Fred Harvey Dormitories, ca. 1935
Related Materials:
NAU Manuscript Collection MS.90.9.1
Photographs are housed in the manuscript collection.

John L. Black

PH.90.9.1653-1712
Volume:
60 black-and-white photographs
Views Include:
Locomotives and trains

Greening

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Volume:
225 black-and-white photographs
Views include:
Grand Canyon and vicinity, including buildings, trails, and views; airplanes; Santa Fe Grand Canyon railway trains, train derailments, and station; Tuba City; AZ; Little Colorado River; Desert View, Hopi villages and Snake Dan ces; trips to Walnut Canyon, Oak Creek, Montezuma's Castle, Petrified Forest and Sunset Crater; San Francisco Peaks
Dates from the mid 1920's
Portrait(s):
Eddie Newman, his friends and family; Grand Canyon Santa Fe Railway employees; other Grand Canyon personnel; Hopi people
Biographic note:
These photos were from the personal pictures and album of Eddie Newman, a long-time Grand Canyon resident and employee of the Santa Fe Railway at Grand Canyon during the 1920's and 1930's. Most of the photos were attributed to Eddie Newman as the photographer.

The album was donated by Mr. Newman's niece and nephews: Edna Wolf Gordon, Jack Greening, and Ernie Greening.

Restrictions:
See the Curator of Photography regarding permission to duplicate images of Hopi Religious Ceremonies.

Frank & Violet Rinehart Merrifield Collection

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Volume:
This collection of 1072 images are in various formats, including black-and-white photographs, picture postcards, cyanotypes, a carte de visite, a hand colored photograph, cabinet cards, albumen photographs, color photographs and color slides. All are in 5 photoalbums with the exception of 91 individual images.
Views include:
Much of this collection documents the Rinehart and Merrifield families. Also included are images of Williams, Arizona and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
Biographic note:
George and Josephine Lumblo Rinehart of Wisconsin apparently moved to Williams, Arizona about 1910. George worked as an engineer with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway until his retirement in 1935. They had two children, Violet and Leroy. Violet first married Robert Dunn in 1922 and second, Frank H. Merrifield in 1928. Frank was a fireman who also worked for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.

Arthur Metzger Collection (Grand Canyon Pioneers Historical Society, Inc.)

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Volume:
592 black-and-white photographs; 44 color photographs, 1 black-and-white photograph with hand coloring, 2 photomechanical photographs, 175 black-and-white negatives, 84 color negatives
Views include:
These photographs document Art Metzger's family, friends and employees during his childhood, while a rancher and Postmaster at Grand Canyon, and later after his retirement to Prescott, Arizona, and Jalisco, Mexico. Views also include Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon Village, Grand Canyon Post Office, Little Colorado River Gorge, the Navajo Indian Reservation, the Supai Village, construction of the road between Grand Canyon and Cameron, the Hubbard-Doheny Expedition of 1924, Navajo Indians, Hopi Indians, Supai Indians, Hopi Villages, Grandview Hotel, ranching, and ranchlife in Arizona.
Biographic note:
James Arthur "Art" Metzger (1894-1990) arrived at the Grand Canyon in 1913. He ranched with his brother, Marcus, until he became Postmaster at Grand Canyon Village in 1928. Art retired in 1963, living in Prescott, Arizona and Jalisco, Mexico.

He married twice, first Ethel Abbott, then after her death, Jesse Frawley.

Robert Ryan Collection

Volume:
323 black-and-white photographs and postcards, all but one of which are in an album.
Views include:
Views include: 1919 survey in Grand Canyon for a proposed aerial tramway; oil exploration in Mexico in 1921-22
Biographic note:
Precisely when George K. Davol, a San Francisco-based engineer, first conceived of building a tramway across the Grand Canyon is unclear, but in 1916, he obtained the backing of the Santa Fe Railroad. After Grand Canyon became a national park in February of 1919, he also received tentative approval from Horace Albright, an administrator within the National Park Service (and its future director). Albright, believing that aircraft would have a limited future in the park, felt that a tramway would provide a more comfortable and scenic alternative than mules as a way of crossing the canyon. Davol proposed constructing four long spans, totaling five miles of cables, starting near the El Tovar Hotel, located on the South Rim, and ending on an as-yet undeveloped point on the North Rim. Steven Mather, the Director of the National Park Service, was horrified by the notion. After John Barton Payne, who was also opposed to the project, became Secretary of the Interior, Davol was given an official refusal on October 26, 1920.

The refusal, however, came after Davol sent a team to survey the proposed route in 1919. It was headed by three surveyors: L.C. Willey, Mr. Schliewen, and Robert Laurence Ryan, who were assisted by several "camp rustlers" and a cook. The proposed tram route extended from El Tovar Hotel, northward roughly across the Battleship, Dana Butte, the Tower of Set, Horus Temple, Osiris Temple, and Shiva Temple, before ending on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. The crew began sequentially constructing trams across the buttes, using the newly installed cable ways to ship food and gear to their next base camp (more than once, boxes smashed into cliffs, scattering the contents onto the topography below). Two pack burros were often laboriously hauled up and down cliffs using slings and block-and-tackle, a task not without hazard.

In order to cross the Colorado River, Ryan, the strongest swimmer, tied a rope around himself and swam across the current, a feat he performed twice. The crew constructed a raft out of empty ten-gallon oil cans and hitched it to the ropes via pulleys.

The work was an acrophobic's nightmare, as the men frequently had to scale sheer, exposed cliffs. When a severe November snow-storm struck, the ice, snow, and cold exacerbated the men's fears, and they abandoned the project, leaving food, equipment and the burros behind. The crew reported to Davol, who was staying at El Tovar. He paid them off, then hired two of the men to help him photo-document the line.

Robert Laurence Ryan, who assembled the album of survey photographs, was born on January 17, 1894 in Galesburg, Illinois. He attended Knox College in Galesburg before going to the University of California at Berkeley. He graduated in 1917 with a degree in engineering, although he left six months early in order to serve with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in France during World War I. After his work with the Grand Canyon survey, he went to Mexico to participate in oil exploration as an employee of the Mexican Eagle Oil Company (Royal Dutch Shell); photographs of that venture constitute the second part of his album. Ryan returned to California in 1922, and continued to work for petroleum industries. He met and married Ida May Shiveley (1901-1997), a native Californian and the daughter of a banker, after which he was elected Ventura County Surveyor. The couple had two children, Donna Shively and Robert Laurence. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Ryan joined the U.S. Naval Construction Battalion Corps (Seabees), and served in the Pacific. He attained the rank of Commander, and was awarded the Legion of Merit and a Navy Citation for outstanding service. Ryan died on July 31, 1954 in Oxnard, California.

For related information, see the Robert L. Ryan vertical file.

Cline Library
Special Collections and Archives Department
Northern Arizona University

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