Скачать или смотреть The Mystery of Grand Canyon's Swimming Pools

There have been two pools at Grand Canyon, one of which was right on the rim!

• The first is the better known of the two, but the second is almost unknown because of a dark element of its history which may explain why the some would rather forget about it.

• The first is the pool built at Phantom Ranch by the Civilian Conservation Corps which completed the pool in 1934. A 20 man crew excavated the pool. It operated until 1972.

• Initially stream fed with a waterfall, health requirements led to a more traditional look to the pool in the 1960's.

• However, increasingly strict health requirements from the County health department made it impractical to continue to operate the pool, they were demanding things like chlorination and filtration, no longer the simple stream fed pool the CCC built.

• In 1972 the pool was filled and all that remains are the memories and a shallow depression in front of the cabins where the pool was filled with refuse and dirt.

• The second pool is much less well known, perhaps because of its somewhat less than illustrious history and location.

• I first came across this pool in a video about growing up at Grand Canyon posted by the National Park Service! It turns out that pool was at the Grand Canyon Inn, also called the Kachina Lodge, located on then-private land near the Powell Memorial on the rim of Grand Canyon!

• The Kachina Lodge was located on a private, 20 acre section of land that was initially developed as a gold and copper mine. Since both the founders were orphans, they named it the orphan mine. It turned out tourism was preliminarily a better business than mining, so initially a trading post was built, that later grew into cabins, a restaurant and eventually included a swimming pool. It was apparently a pretty freewheeling place, inviting informal dress, catering to locals and tourists with a restaurant and bar with outdoor dancing!

• There were various operators of the Kachina Lodge, including the Barrington Family who bought the business in 1950 and upgraded the property. The pool was dug by their child Jim Barrington, age 12, and a Native American employee and was finished sometime in the early 1950's.

• The Barringtons sold their interest in 1953 to an owner who renamed it the Grand Canyon Inn, and he, in turn sold the business, which included the mining rights, to a mining company.

• Now, here is the shocking aspect of the pool and the Grand Canyon Inn, it was located right next to what eventually became one of the richest uranium mines in the US.

• In 1951, radioactivity was discovered at the Orphan Mine, and mining operations were converted to uranium. It became one of the richest and most productive uranium mines in the US. The Grand Canyon Inn continued to operate contemporaneously with the uranium mine. In fact, the gift shop at the Inn even sold uranium samples!

• By 1961, the mine had excavated most of the ore on the private land and wished to follow the vein into the National Park land. The Park opposed this. Although the Grand Canyon Inn had been a losing proposition for a number of operators, the mining company, which now owned and operated the Inn, used a proposal for a hideous hotel overlapping the edge of the Canyon as incentive to allow it to extend its mining operations into the Park.

• The strategy worked, and a compromise was reached, the mining company extended operations into Park land, but agreed that the mine would pass to the park service in 25 years.

• Eventually, it took an act of Congress and a presidential signature to resolve the issue. In 1962, President Kennedy signed a law that mining operations would cease by 1987 and the Grand Canyon Inn would close in 1966.

• The economics of uranium production shifted and the mining company filed bankruptcy in 1967 and the mine closed for good in 1969. Eventually, the Park Service took title to the property, and removed the mine head frame in 2009. Instead of maintaining the historic structures, they wiped it clean.

• The area is closed to visitation now due to potential radioactive contamination, but you can still view the location of the Grand Canyon Inn and the Orphan Mine from Powell Point!

• With the Park service’s focus on conservation, I don’t think they were any too pleased that uranium was actively mined within Grand Canyon National Parks borders.

• Perhaps it is the illustrious nature of the operation of the Grand Canyon Inn, right next to the Orphan Mine, that leads to its history, and the history of the Swimming Pool on the rim of the Canyon, to be willfully ignored and forgotten.

• The details are sketchy and the photos are blurry, but a forgotten swimming pool operated on the rim of Grand Canyon, and it is that swimming pool, more than the outdoor dancing and the uranium mine, that people seem to remember the most today.