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Faces and mules - 1902-1909
To their disappointment, the United States Forester, who controlled the Grand Canyon area before it became a national park, bowed to the demands of the Santa Fe Railroad-Fred Harvey coalition and would not allow the Kolbs to open a studio at the canyon. Angry, Emery operated the business in Williams for a year until Ralph Cameron agreed to let them pitch a tent on his claim beside the Cameron Hotel at the head of the Bright Angel Trail.
On December 12, 1903, they tore down the old picture-taking gallery in Williams, gave the lumber to Cameron to build a barn, and settled into their makeshift headquarters on the rim until their more practical arrangements could be made.
In 1904, the hotels at the South Rim were too small to accommodate the increasing numbers of tourists, and the Fred Harvey Company began construction of El Tovar, billed as the most luxurious hotel in America. The great hotel opened in 1905.
The village was growing and the Kolb brothers'
business expanded with it. The Kolbs prevailed upon Cameron yet again, this time to permit them to build a more permanent structure on his claim at the head of Bright Angel Trail. The small building lacked running water for developing their photographs, however, and in 1906, they constructed a darkroom studio near a spring at Indian Garden, halfway between the rim and the river, thereby eliminating the water problems that had plagued them from the beginning.
With the new finish room, the daily routine changed. Now they took a picture of the departing mule party, ran 300 feet back up to their studio, made a proof, then dashed down halfway into the Canyon and caught the mules at Indian Gardens. There they took orders for prints and finished them with creek water while the mules went to the river. They ran back up the trial, arriving ahead of the mules at the end of the day, in time to deliver the photographs and close the sale.
It was a nine-mile round trip that covered 3,360 vertical feet.
Emery reported that he had made as many as three round trips in one day and two were not uncommon. (This went on until water was piped around Grand Canyon Village in 1928.)
The mule parties recorded the better part of a
remarkable century, on a human scale, and included photographs of: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, William Jennings Bryant, Emerson Hough, Owen Wister, John Muir, John Burroughs, Ida M. Tarbell, Thomas Moran, Harold Bell Wright, Frederick Remington, and James Swinnerton.
[View more photos from the mule parties.]
Emery Kolb once said of the
3.4 million people who stood before the Kolbs' lenses over the years.
To supplement the mule photos, the Kolbs ventured far and wide in search of unique views, which they later colored by hand and sold in beautifully bound albums.
"In a general way we had covered much of the country adjacent to our home, following our pack animals over ancient and little-used trails, climbing the walls of tributary canyons, dropping over the ledges with ropes when necessary, always in search of the interesting and the unusual," stated Ellsworth Kolb.
Continue - Making their mark - 1909-1911
Excerpts from:
Suran, William C. Kolb Brothers of Grand Canyon: Being a Collection of Tales of High Adventure, Memorable Incidents and Humorous Anecdotes. Grand Canyon, Arizona. Grand Canyon Association, 1991.Garrison, Lon. "A Camera and a Dream: The Story of the Kolb Brothers of Grand Canyon." Arizona Highways, January 1953.
Kolb, E. L. Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1914.
