Grand Canyon West – Guano Point

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Guano Point is a classic story of  nature’s tendency to laugh at human greed.

Guano Point is one of the stops on the Grand Canyon West tour. It offers insane views of the canyon, and literally ZERO barriers. You could just fall right off. People actually DO fall into the Grand Canyon to their deaths every now and then, but I don’t think there have been any accidents at Guano Point. Probably.

The story of Guano Point starts a few decades ago. In the 1930s, a young man decided to go for a nice little boat ride down the Granite Gorge, just minding his own business, when he noticed a hole in one of the canyon walls. That man’s name was Harold Carpenter. He estimated the hole was maybe, 600 feet above the water, and he was curious. He should probably investigate. Why not, right?

Three days of climbing later, he finally reached the hole.

As it turned out, the hole was a giant cave and it was filled with guano. Aka bat poop. Guano is crazy rich in nitrates and phosphates, which is a main component in fertilizer. A mining engineer even estimated that there was at least 100,000 tons of guano in the cave. Surely that would net at least $12-15 million. That guano was gold.

Several companies attempted mining Guano Point, most of them unsuccessful.

Attempt #1: Extraction via tramway. That seemed simple enough.  The plan was to build a tramway from the cave entrance to a barge dock below. Easy! The small company immediately went bankrupt from construction expenses due to barges sinking and tram motor repairs. Well. They tried.

Attempt #2: Extraction via plane.  The King-Finn Fertilizer Company pursued this, building a landing strip on one of the sandbars a little upstream from the cave. They used the tramway that had previously built to haul guano out of the cave. Then they loaded the guano onto boats in the water. The boats would then float down the river to the airstrip and the guano would then be loaded into the airplane and sent off. However, this turned out to be mega expensive and rivers – crazy enough – are prone to changing water levels which would – and did – cover the airstrip. Well. They tried.

Attempt #3: In 1957,  the U.S. Guano Corporation bought the rights to the cave and began formulating plans to extract all that delicious guano from the cave. It was time to bring in the big guns. Their plan was to build a tram from the cave alllll the way to the other side of the canyon, 7,500 feet (2300 m) across at a whopping $3.5 million dollars. 30,000 feet (9100 m) of steel cable was used to haul up the cable cart from the mine. It was a pretty big deal, engineering wise.

The construction project took 14 months. After a couple of expensive misadventures (breaking a clutch lever, dropping 10.000 feet/3m of cable into the canyon, 20.000 feet/6m of cable wearing out, the replacement cable also wearing out, etc.) the company all but completely drained the mine of resources by 1959.

Less than two years to drain an entire cave of guano? How?? Well, they were able to excavate it so quickly because the cave only contained 1,000 tons instead of 100,000. The rest of the cave was useless limestone deposits.

#engineers

The movie Edge of Eternity was filmed at the site in 1959. They closed the unprofitable mine in 1960. Then, a few months after closing, a U.S Air Force jet illegally hot-dogging (I learned a new word today) down the canyon  clipped the mining cable with it’s wing, permanently disabling the tram. The pilot survived the crash, but not sure if he survived after his boss found out. The cave eventually became part of Grand Canyon National Park in 1975.

History lesson over.

I took a sneak peak inside the remnants of the old tram pulley. It was super cool but also kinda eerie, standing in the bones of an old mining tool. They even had a few signs up from when the tram was operational.

At least they cared about the workers. What a great place to work.

Inside the lift offered even closer views of the canyon facing the river. Just on the other side of the river was the cave, but like the excellent blogger I am, I didn’t take a picture of the ACTUAL cave lol. Anyways, the sun was starting to set, so the rest of my pictures from inside the tram lift were too dark to be recognizable. Oh well, guess you’ll have to visit for yourself!

So what are your thoughts on Guano Point? Would you want to visit? Also, do you think they still use guano in fertilizer???

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