Verkamp’s Visitor Center Opens On Park Anniversary

On Thursday, February 26th, park staff, partners and friends gathered at the new Verkamp’s Visitor Center on the South Rim to celebrate Grand Canyon’s 90th year as a national park and to commemorate the re-opening of an historic structure as a park visitor center.

As superintendent Steve Martin noted in his remarks, the Grand Canyon was designated as a national park when President Woodrow Wilson signed Senate Bill 390 on February 26, 1919. That date, 90 years past, seems like a long time ago when viewed through the narrow lens of a human lifespan.

As each speaker rose to share his or her thoughts on the importance of the park’s 90th anniversary, it became apparent that a broader perspective is also needed to conceive of the many values and meanings that people attribute to the park. In a pre-event interview available on the park’s web site, Martin said of the park, “we are a World Heritage Site, we are a national park, we are one of the seven wonders of the world.”

To some, the park is a tourist destination, an economic driver, a business partner or a neighbor. To others, it is a natural shrine, a wilderness, a classroom or even a playground. In remarks read by his Congressional district director, Ruben Reyes, Representative Raul Grijalva refers to the canyon as “a natural treasure.”

Yet, for all of those perspectives, few who visit the park think of it as a place to live, or raise a family, or go to school. It is site that requires more than 2,500 people to provide all of the services that the park’s approximately 4.5 million visitors require each year. Because of the long distance to the nearest community where housing is readily available, almost 1500 of those people live their day-to-day lives inside the park. They have potlucks and walk to the grocery store here; they send their children off to school each morning and attend school board meetings at night here; they work together to build better lives for themselves and for their families in a place others view as only a temporary destination.

Another definition for the superintendent’s list could be, “we are a community.” That is the story that the interpretive displays at the new Verkamp’s Visitor Center tell. The building itself used to house not only Verkamp’s Curios, but the Verkamp family, and the structure, the curio shop and the family are all indelible parts of the canyon’s history. Several members of the family were present for the celebration, and some even took the time to share snippets of their family’s history during the ceremony.

• To read superintendent Steve Martin’s pre-event interview, go to http://www.nps.gov/grca/photosmultimedia/upload/20090220MartinPod.mp3.
• To listen to John Verkamp III’s account of a day in the life of the Verkamp children from his remarks during the ceremony, go to http://www.nps.gov/grca/parknews/upload/John_Verkamp_INTERVIEW.mp3 .
• To listen to Susie Verkamp’s thoughts on what it means to be a part of the Grand Canyon community, visit http://www.nps.gov/grca/parknews/upload/Susie_Verkamp_INTERVIEW.mp3.