New Hance Trail

John Hance was born in 1838 in Tennessee. He fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and was captured by Union forces and imprisoned briefly before heading west. Though he had been a private in the War, by the time he moved to Kansas in the late 1860s he had adopted the title of “Captain.” In late 1868 he and a brother moved to Arizona to work on a ranch. At some point over the next decade Hance moved to Williams, Arizona, and by 1883 had made his first visit to the Grand Canyon. He established a homestead between Grandview Point and Moran Point, where he built a cabin and water tank near a spring, one of the few water sources on the South Rim. Here he set to work improving a Havasupai trail into the canyon, which became known as the Old Hance Trail, so that he could prospect for ore and mine asbestos.

As most prospectors quickly found out, the costs to get any ore they might discover out of the Grand Canyon made mining far too expensive, and many either moved on or turned to other moneymaking ventures. Hance is often cited as the first tour guide at the canyon because he led a party down the Old Hance Trail in 1884. Seeing the money to be made off of curious travelers, he established tourist tents beside his cabin in 1885, making him the first “hotel” operator in the Grandview area of the canyon. Using this trail, he conveyed tourists down to his ranch at the bottom of Hance Canyon. It had steep switchbacks cutting through the more difficult terrain, and once the trail was improved he simply maintained it through use. This old trail was so rough that, as some recalled, he had to lower guests down one section of cliff using ropes.

Despite these difficulties, Hance attracted many famous people from around the country, including artist Thomas Moran, Arizona Senator Henry Ashurst, and Arizona Congressman Carl Hayden, because of his legendary storytelling abilities. Hance is probably the best-known and most beloved of the early storytellers/guides at the Grand Canyon. In some ways, Hance was as much an attraction as the Grand Canyon itself, drawing crowds of interested but wary tourists who wanted to see what tall tales he might concoct. As one visitor famously stated, “Any one who comes to the Grand Canyon, and fails to meet Captain John Hance, will miss half the show.”

By the mid-1890s several washouts and rockslides had nearly destroyed the Old Hance Trail so he abandoned it. In its place he constructed the New Hance Trail, sometimes known as the Red Canyon Trail, to reach his mines in Red Canyon. It served as an important eastern access route to the Tonto Platform for prospectors around the turn of the century. Though Hance alone is often credited with building the new trail around 1894, he may have had help from other miners, who claimed to have helped him build it as the south leg of a 27-mile trail they used in their prospecting activities, though there is no evidence to confirm either story.

The trail, which is only one or two feet wide and made of earth and stone, begins about one mile west of Moran Point and descends steeply in a series of tight switchbacks through the Kaibab, Toroweap, and Coconino formations. After this it takes visitors through forest vegetation to the grassy Coronado Butte Saddle in the Hermit Shale formation. From here it drops into a drainage that leads to Red Canyon. Hikers will enjoy the colorful rock layers as the trail follows the east side of Red Canyon and descends through the Supai formation to the top of the Redwall Limestone. Red Canyon contains pockets of layers known as the Supergroup, including bright orange Hakatai Shale, a massive basalt dyke intrusion in this shale, and portions of Bass Limestone containing ancient bacterial mats, which are some of the oldest fossils in the world. At this point the trail drops through steep, short switchbacks through crumbly limestone to the Tonto Platform. The trail crosses the Tonto and then follows the Red Canyon creek bed a few miles to the Colorado River. Just before reaching the river, it intersects with the Tonto Trail at the base of a large sand dune.