Yes, Grand Canyon National Park has its own historical cemetery. Situated next to the Shrine of Ages, the Pioneer Cemetery had been an active cemetery until 2017, when it ran out of burial spots. To have been buried within this cemetery, there were requirements that needed to be met to even be considered for an eternal resting spot here. One of the requirements was a person would had to have lived and worked in the park for over three years. Another way was to have made a significant contribution towards the benefit of Grand Canyon National Park itself. This is a beautifully maintained cemetery and holds 305 graves at the time that this book was written. In the year 1928, the John Ivens Post No. 42 of the American Legion contributed the rustic gates that still mark the cemetery entrance to this day. The Pioneer Cemetery is set in the world’s largest ponderosa pine forest and has log fencing encircling the perimeter. Inside the grounds is a dirt walking path that makes a complete loop with benches that allow visitors to sit and enjoy the peaceful beauty and watch the occasional wildlife that wanders within its borders. Included in this cemetery are the headstones of many important colorful characters that helped in the making of the Grand Canyon to become our country’s most popular national park.
So just who was the first person to be buried within the Pioneer Cemetery? Well, it was actually the other way around. Have you ever heard of John Hance? He was born in 1838 in Cowan’s Ferry, Tennessee, and in 1852 relocated to Phelps County, Missouri. During the Civil War, Mr. Hance fought for the Confederate Army, but was soon captured by the Union forces. He was imprisoned for a time, and after the war, Hance decided to head towards Kansas. When John Hance fought with the Confederate Army, he was only enlisted as a private, however soon after the war, Private John Hance proudly gave himself a promotion to “Captain” and it stuck. Soon after arriving in Kansas, Captain Hance became a dispatch carrier out of Fort Leavenworth. In late 1868, John Hance, his brother, and twenty frontiersmen left Kansas in hopes of better prospects in Prescott, Arizona. Traveling into the American Southwest during the 1860s and 1870s was a very dangerous time. Native Americans were being forced off of their ancestral lands and whole tribes were being slaughtered by the United States Calvary. Natives were retaliating aggressively by killing all white men (women and children included) that trespassed anywhere near their territory. When Hance’s party finally arrived in Arizona on December 4, 1868, there were only twelve men left from their party, all the others had been killed by warring Native Americans. Soon after arriving in Arizona, Hance and his brother found employment working on a large cattle ranch.
At some point in time within the next decade, John Hance moved to Williams, Arizona, and by the year 1883, he traveled to the Grand Canyon to see for himself what everyone else wouldn’t stop talking about. Upon arrival, it was love at first sight. Hance immediately moved to the canyon and built a cabin with a water tank near a natural spring between present day Grandview Point and Moran Point. It is also widely believed that John Hance was the first permanent Caucasian (white) settler to have lived at the Grand Canyon. While surveying the area where he built his cabin, Hance discovered an old Native American foot trail that lead down the steep walls into the interior of the canyon. The trail itself was in very poor condition, with every step possibly being his last, however this well-seasoned explorer and adventurer saw huge potential in restoring the trail. He worked long and hard to make the hiking trail accessible for travelers of any age who wanted to venture deeper into the canyon, not just view it from the rim. It is believed that Captain John Hance was the Grand Canyon’s very first trail guide, having led his first tourist group into its depths in 1884.
Captain Hance is fondly remembered as the canyon’s (if not the world’s) biggest storyteller. John’s stories barely had any shred of truth to them. Did you know that John Hance created the Grand Canyon? This is how he did it. Upon coming to Northern Arizona, John was a very poor man and all he had to his name was an old nickel. One day, he pulled that nickel out from his pocket to admire it when John accidently dropped it on the ground and it fell into a crack. Digging with his fingers into the hard, dry soil, that nickel slipped even farther into the earth. This was his only nickel and wasn’t about to let it get away. Panicking, Hance ran to his cabin, grabbed several shovels and every other tool he might need to retrieve that darn nickel. Every time he would get within an inch of his coin, it would slide even farther away. Eventually, the nickel hit rock bottom, which gave John great delight. He stooped down, picked up the nickel, but when he looked up, he realized he had carved a huge hole into the earth, which we now know as Grand Canyon.
One day as he was telling this story to a group of tourists, a young boy asked, “If you actually dug it, where is all the displaced dirt at?”
John Hance, in his brilliance, looked at the boy and said, “I hauled all the dirt way over there,” as he pointed to the San Francisco Peaks, which tower over present day Flagstaff, Arizona, eighty miles away. He continued, “That thar dirt is how them mountains was made.”
Another time, a female tourist asked Captain Hance if he was married. His answer was priceless, “Yep, once, but my wife got her leg broke one day when we was a-goin’ down the trail, so I had to shoot her.” John was so convincing, that all the tourists upon hearing this story actually believed him and were horrified. The joke of course was on his audience; he had never been married.
John Hance always kept his audience riveted. An old guest book from the early days of the Grand Canyon has been found that contained some visitors’ experiences from the bygone days. A traveler, Chester P. Dorland, wrote about his trip to the canyon by writing, “Captain John Hance—a genius, a philosopher, and a poet, the possessor of a fund of information vastly important, if true. He laughs with the giddy, yarns to the gullible, talks sense to the sedate and is most excellent judge of scenery, human nature and pie. To see the canyon only, and not see Captain Hance, is to miss half the show” (Campbell).
The Bright Angel Lodge’s own celebrity, Buckey O’Neill once wrote, “God made the canyon and John Hance the trails. Neither would be complete without the other” (Hefley). I wish it was possible to go back in time to the Grand Canyon in the late 1800s, when John Hance was telling his stories to his gullible audience, to be able to hear his wild tales. Living in the twenty-first century, we as humans have lost so much about enjoying day-to-day life. It seems everyone’s wrong if they are not politically correct or comedians are racist just because they try to make us laugh at ourselves. Let’s try to remember people like John Hance, who could make you feel good about yourself, if only for a little while.
John Hance passed away in Flagstaff on January 26, 1919, from the Spanish flu. His body was brought back to the canyon by friends and buried in a little, unused area a mile east of the Grand Canyon Village. On February 26, 1919, exactly one month from the passing of John Hance, the Grand Canyon became a national park. Now that Grand Canyon was part of the National Park Service, the government started programs for civic improvements throughout the park. One of the projects would be to create a cemetery somewhere within the park’s boundaries.
In 1928, the place chosen for the new Pioneer Cemetery was where John Hance had been interred. Captain Hance’s grave was designated as the centerpiece for the new burial grounds. If you happen to venture into the cemetery to find the captain’s grave, he is in the middle of the cemetery and his head and foot stones are purposely spaced longer than his actual plot in honor of this pioneer and his tall tales.
Before the government intervened, when prospectors or adventures stumbled across any human remains inside the canyon, they buried them where they were discovered. Even to this day, only a small fraction of the Grand Canyon has ever been extensively explored, so it’s completely possible that if hikers go off any existing trail, they could stumble across the long-deceased remains of Native Americans and early pioneers.
Interred within this small but quaint cemetery are canyon pioneers, park service employees, including their family members, and Grand Canyon Village residents. There is also a large monument as you first enter the cemetery to honor twenty-nine victims of a tragic crash involving two airplanes over the eastern half of the Grand Canyon. On June 30, 1956, TWA (Trans World Airlines) Constellation Flight 2 (with seventy crew members and passengers) entered the vertical airspace that was already occupied by United Airlines DC-7 Flight 718 (with fifty-eight crew members and passengers) at 21,000 feet. Both flights had departed from LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) earlier that morning. The Constellation had departed LAX at 9:01 a.m., three minutes before DC-7 was given final clearance to depart at 9:04. The Constellation was bound for Kansas City, Missouri, while DC-7 was headed to Chicago, Illinois.
Both flights had diverted off their plotted courses so their passengers could have a scenic overhead view of the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, both aircrafts were flying into the blind spot of the other. United Airlines DC-7 collided mid-air with the TWA Constellation. The Constellation went down on the east shoulder of Temple Butte while the DC-7 disintegrated against Chuar Butte. Both aircrafts crashed in the immediate area where the Little Colorado River connects with the monstrous Colorado River in areas that were inaccessible for an immediate rescue. Special Swiss Mountain rescue teams were called in to help with the recovery. Sadly, the would-be rescuers became traumatized for life by the horrific scene playing out before their eyes. All 128 people aboard both planes, from infants to the elderly, died upon impact. The passengers aboard the DC-7 died instantly, with only a few body fragments ever being found, while on the other hand, thirty bodies from the Constellation were recovered and of those bodies, only three were able to be identified.
Wreckage from both aircrafts are still scattered over the initial wreckage areas even to this day. The crash sites remain off limits to all visitors out of respect for the passengers that lost their lives and to prevent any theft of personal property still scattered around the wreckage site.
Sixty-seven victims of the TWA Constellation Flight 2 are memorialized at the Citizens Cemetery in Flagstaff, AZ. Twenty-nine of the passengers and crew from the United DC-7’s were unidentifiable, so administrators from Grand Canyon National Park had a mass funeral on July 9, 1956, for these twenty-nine lost souls. The unidentified remains were interred in four caskets and buried within the Pioneer Cemetery.
The ravine between the two buttes where the airliners crashed has been given the unofficial title of “Crash Canyon.” Even though the site is strictly off limits to anyone visiting the park, there have been quite a few individuals who have trespassed on these now-sacred sites and have come back with spine-tingling tales of encountering the supernatural as a result. The designated crash area is not part of the Grand Canyon Village, but these stories are way too good not to share with you. The two separate crash sites are now considered to be one of the most haunted places inside the Grand Canyon, as well as the entire state of Arizona itself. Rangers and hikers in this general area have supposedly witnessed apparitions walking around, white lights floating in inaccessible areas, and bloodcurdling screams pleading for help just to name a few. Some witnesses have even experienced a sudden burst of wind that streams directly down the canyon walls, carrying the sound of audible, distinct, yet incoherent human voices. These individuals who have admitted to hearing these voices claimed that this phenomena scared them to their core.
Probably the best ghost story to have come out of Crash Canyon was told by a park ranger who had a terrifying encounter one night, fifty years after the tragic event. This lone female ranger had set up camp in the ravine between where the two airliners crashed. The ranger was sleeping inside her tent, when out of nowhere she heard the sounds of multiple people talking. It was startling for her because it was the middle of the night and this area was off-limits to the everyday visitors including Colorado River rafting groups. When the ranger opened the outside flap of her tent, she saw more than a dozen people walking up a trail, wearing 1950s era clothing. They were talking amongst themselves and behind them were five Native Americans, and none of them seemed to have notice the ranger or her tent. After this strange parade of people disappeared from sight, the sole ranger cautiously crawled out from her tent to see where they had gone but everyone had mysteriously vanished.
There have been reports of a woman in black clothing seen at the memorial for the United Airlines victims in the Pioneer Cemetery. She is seen knelt down in front of the monument, weeping. If anyone tries to approach her, she vanishes into thin air. There is also a feeling of sadness and despair that encompasses the area around this memorial, but would you expect anything less from such a horrible tragedy?
There are many other notable historic figures buried within the Pioneer Cemetery that helped make the Grand Canyon the vacation destination that it is today. Peter “Pete” D. Berry first arrived at the Grand Canyon in 1890, after attending his brother’s funeral in Flagstaff, Arizona. Berry had heard that some miners were relocating to the canyon with high hopes of striking it rich with newly discovered copper ores. Berry and a couple of other men decided to venture towards the canyon and ended up staking copper claims on Horseshoe Mesa at 2,500 feet below Grandview Point. After mining for a few years, Pete Berry soon realized that the best way to make it rich at the canyon was to go into the increasingly demanding hospitality business. By 1892, Berry had constructed the then-popular Grand View Hotel, which was located ten miles east of today’s Grand Canyon Village. When the train from the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway started bringing visitors to the Grand Canyon Village in 1901, the majority of the tourists decided to lodge within the village area. That was financially devastating for the Grand View Hotel due to it being so far away from the main village. By 1916, the Grand View Hotel was out of business, and in 1929, the old hotel was demolished. Berry continued to live and work on odds and ends at the canyon with his beloved wife Martha by his side. Martha Berry passed away in 1931 of blood poisoning and a year later Peter Berry passed away from cancer. Both are buried in the Pioneer Cemetery.
Ralph Cameron was one of the first pioneers of the Grand Canyon and a successful businessman as well. He arrived at the South Rim in the year of 1883. Cameron was good friends with Pete Berry. In the 1890s, Cameron, along with a working crew, constructed the Bright Angel Trail and even charged visiting park guests a whopping one dollar access fee if they wanted to hike down it (that is equivalent to $28.45 today). Cameron was a real estate swindler and also “salted” mining claims with imported minerals and set up fake mining equipment. Ralph Cameron was very much against the Grand Canyon becoming a national park. His logic was that if the canyon was to become a national park, he would be out of a lot of money in his business scams that he was investing in around the area. When the Department of the Interior declared the Grand Canyon a national park in 1919, Cameron was now considered a trespasser and had to find a new home. On February 12, 1953, at the age of 89, Ralph Cameron passed away while living in Washington D.C. His family was able to bury him at the Pioneer Cemetery near his old friend Peter Berry. Could his spirit be one of the ghosts that haunt this cemetery today?
William Wallace Bass was born in Selbyville, Indiana, on October 2, 1849. When he was in his early teenage years, Bass learned carpentry and studied telegraphy. By the time he was seventeen years old, he was able to obtain a job as a conductor on the Erie Railroad. Bass was sickly in his early years of life, so as he grew older, his health progressively deteriorated. At the age of twenty-seven, Bass went to see a medical doctor who discovered that Bass was suffering from a heart aneurysm. The prognosis didn’t look good, so the doctor suggested that William might live a little while longer if he relocated to the arid American Southwest region.
In July of 1883, William Bass moved to Williams, Arizona, and began to look for work on the railroad. Unsuccessful at finding employment with the railroad, he had to settle for any odd job he could find around the area. After having moved to the dry climate of the southwest, Bass’s health miraculously started to improve. As time went on, Bass went into cattle ranching north of Williams. During his time as a wrangler, he became friends with the local Havasupai Tribe. In the autumn of 1883, some of the Havasupai scouts escorted William Bass to see the Grand Canyon. Upon seeing the giant chasm, Bass decided to make the canyon his new home and built a small cabin near today’s Havasupai Point.
Bass also improved an old Indian path that lead into the canyon and named it Mystic Springs Trail. He also began to call himself “Captain” just like his new buddy, John Hance. Captain Bass eventually established a river camp, built a rock cabin, and constructed a wooden boat to cross the Colorado River at a serene area so he and his passengers could have new adventures exploring the North Rim. He named the spot where his boat was located “Bass Ferry.” As time went on, Captain Bass opened up a stage line between Ash Fork, Arizona, and the Grand Canyon. He also opened up his own home to tourists from all over the country.
One of his home visitors was a young music teacher from New York City named Ada Lenore Diefendorf. Soon a romance blossomed between the two, and by 1894 William and Ada had married and raised four children at the canyon’s rim. They were the first white couple to raise a family at the Grand Canyon. Ada was a strong, independent woman, but found living at the canyon exceptionally hard. Ada’s daily life had become non-stop cooking, cleaning, taking care of all their livestock, and raising the children alone for most of the time. Laundry day for us in the present day generally means ninety minutes of inconvenience. For Ada, laundry day was a torturous three-day excursion. Just to wash her families clothing and bedding, Ada would have to travel fourteen miles round trip on a mule and travel down the steep, dusty trails into the canyon’s searing heat to the shores of the Colorado River. In those days, there was no Glen Canyon Dam to hold back the flow of water, so the mighty Colorado River was normally full of red dirt and sediment and it’s conceivable to believe that the clothes were actually dirtier after their washing. The Bass family was instrumental in making the Grand Canyon what it is today. There is an antique child’s rocking horse on display at the small museum at the Bright Angel Lodge that belonged to the Bass children. On March 7, 1933, William Bass passed away at age 84 from a cerebral hemorrhage. He wished for his ashes to be spread over Holy Grail Temple, which lies inside the canyon. Ada passed away in Phoenix, Arizona, on May 5, 1951. This great woman is buried within the Pioneer Cemetery.
The Pioneer Cemetery is considered private property of the National Park Service, however they do allow park visitors to explore the grounds and gravestones. It is off limits to all visitors after sunset (unless the park service has a special event occurring). Do not vandalize any property whatsoever within any national park. It is a crime and the Grand Canyon has its own jail and judge.
Cemetery Fun
Many people come and walk through this historic cemetery looking at all the aged tombstones, admiring the different styles that families chose to decorate the graves of deceased loved ones, and wondering how some passed away. Many visitors snap photographs of graves and the surrounding area adjacent to this cemetery. After the visitor returns home and looks through the many pictures that were captured, they are shocked to see strange, unexplainable figures lurking in the photos that weren’t there when the picture was originally taken. One such photo was taken in the northwestern section of the cemetery. A man and woman had been walking through the cemetery one evening and noticed an unexpected exit in the back of the graveyard that entered into the surrounding forest. As the couple casually walked around admiring the view, they took out their camera and began snapping pictures of the cemetery and forest. After they returned back to their hotel room, boredom set in, so they decided to look at the pictures of the canyon and village that they had taken that day. To their absolute shock, they captured a photo of either a elderly man or woman with a severely hunched back, holding a walking stick and hovering over a grave in the cemetery; and they could see trees and gravestones through the image. The couple claimed that they were the only people there. They tried to debunk the picture as an optical illusion or matrixing but were unable to do so. They decided to go back to the exact same spot the next day at the same time to take more photos to see if it they could recapture the image. After taking several more pictures, they were unable to debunk the image of the hunchbacked ghostly image floating over the grave.
You’re Not Welcome Here
Kevin was at the cemetery one afternoon with his wife, Debby. They like to travel around the country and take pictures in old, abandoned, and historic cemeteries, and one of Debby’s hobbies is “stone rubbing,” which involves tracing gravestones with paper and chalk. Some tombstone rubbers have claimed that on older headstones of the deceased, the person that was buried on that spot’s image will eventually appear on their gravestone, and you can sometimes capture their facial features with the rubbing of the chalk on the paper. While Debby was tracing some gravestones, Kevin just walked around snapping pictures of anything that caught his attention in the cemetery. They had been there for about an hour and it was approaching dusk, so Debby called out to Kevin for them to call it a night. As Kevin started walking towards Debby, he would occasionally turn around and snap a picture behind him. Kevin claimed that it started feeling eerie inside the cemetery as the sun began to set and wanted to capture that perfect picture of the darkness falling. When he reached the spot where Debby was at, Kevin turned around and snapped several more pictures from where he had been previously standing when his wife called it a day.
Looking at the screen on his camera, Kevin turned towards Debby and told her she needed to look at a couple of pictures he just snapped and tell him if she sees anything unusual in them. Debby walked over to Kevin and they both looked over the photos he just took and noticed a very large singular orb giving off its own light. Jonathan said each picture seemed as if this orb was following him. Debby suggested Kevin take another picture in the area they were standing. After the picture was taken, they both checked the screen and within two feet of them, was the same exact orb. Debby became frightened and told Kevin that she wanted to get the hell out of there. They were quickly walking towards the front gate of the cemetery, but Kevin would occasionally turn around and take a picture. As suspected, the pictures proved to them that the orb was still following them, but to the frightened couples surprise, the orb’s light that it was emitting was now illuminating into different colors. Several pictures showed it went from a bluish white to a bright purple and then another photo showed it went from purple to a vibrant red and had increased in size. Upon exiting the cemetery grounds, Kevin turned around and took one last photo of the cemeteries front gate and captured the orb, hovering inside the entry to the cemetery but not beyond its perimeters. This incident didn’t stop the couple from their hobby of finding historic cemeteries and stone-rubbing headstones, but they are now more aware that some cemeteries have what is called a spirit guardian, and if they feel unwelcomed, they pack up and leave.
Cry If You Must
If time permits and you are able to take a stroll through the Pioneer Cemetery, after you enter the front gate, look over to the left and you will see the graves of two young lovers who had worked in the park and died together in a tragic car accident. Their families decided to have them buried next to each other. At this grave site of these two sweethearts, severe depression has been known to affect many visitors right down to hard-nosed men who claim they don’t cry and nothing can upset them. Disembodied sounds of crying have also been heard around this grave and the unknown woman in black from the United Airlines Memorial has also been seen at the joint grave site of the two lost loves.
Sadie had been employed at the park for roughly a year. In the summer of 2014, Sadie was transferred to work at the Yavapai Lodge’s cafeteria and found solace in taking a short walk to the Pioneers Cemetery and sitting on a bench amongst the tombstones on occasion. One day, Sadie decided that she was just going to walk around and see who was buried at the different grave sites. She was casually walking around the western perimeter of the cemetery when she felt a wave of severe depression consume her. The feeling became so intense that Sadie began to sob uncontrollably, however she was confused because she couldn’t figure out why she had become so emotional. She began to walk faster to get out of this particular area when she heard someone walking behind her. Sadie thought that she was the only person in the cemetery at that moment, so she quickly spun around to see who else had entered the cemetery. She glanced around the entire cemetery to see if she was still all by herself and she was. As Sadie continued walking, once again she could clearly hear someone’s footsteps crunching on the dry grass and pine needles as if they were walking right behind her. Sadie was terrified and started running towards the front gate to get out of the cemetery but could also hear the footsteps of someone she couldn’t see running as if to keep up with her.
As soon as she exited through the cemetery gates, the overwhelming sadness and disembodied footsteps completely stopped. Sadie was traumatized by this experience and told everyone that she would never again return to the Pioneer Cemetery under any circumstances. The odd part is, I have met a few people that have claimed that they, too, have experienced this exact same phenomena that Sadie had encountered, even during broad daylight when the sun is high in the sky and everything appears at peace.
Get Out
During a warm and clear summer’s evening in July 2013, a few park employees who had all heard of the rumors going around about people being attacked physically and emotionally at the Pioneer Cemetery decided that they would go there to prove these claims of paranormal experiences were false. Well, it sounded like a great idea on paper, but it didn’t go quite as planned. While these ghost hunters were investigating, they unknowingly became fresh targets for the playful spirits of the Pioneer Cemetery. It was quite late and there wasn’t much moonlight, but just enough so they wouldn’t trip on the grave stones and various water sprinkler spigots. The group first went towards the western boundary of the cemetery (where most of the hauntings are alleged to take place). With all of them standing still, they could easily hear if anything was out of the ordinary. One member of this group happened to be looking out towards the pine tree forest when she saw multiple black shadow figures quickly darting back and forth behind trees. Around the same time, another member of the group clearly heard Native American drums and chanting coming from the same area as the shadows, but deeper within the forest.
As the amateur investigators were comparing notes, one of them took out a flashlight and shined it into the woods where they were observing the shadows and listening to the phantom chanting. At first glance, they didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, so it was decided it would be best to turn the flashlight off for the moment. Almost immediately, everyone in the group began to see more and more shadow people dodging behind trees, so they immediately shined the flashlight out towards that area. As soon as the flashlight was turned back on, the dark shadows seemed to just disappear. It was concluded that they would get better results if they kept the flashlight off and they were indeed proven right. This ghost hunting team was now able to witness an incredible display of multiple shadows getting closer to the cemeteries boundary where they were at and now felt threatened. Everyone in the group decided it was finally time to get out of there. When they almost reached the front gate to the cemetery, one of the female members had her hair pulled very hard from something above her. She said the pull was so strong, she believes some of her hair was actually pulled out from the roots.
This particular group of paranormal investigators soon realized that they were the ones being investigated that night and they weren’t welcome inside the cemetery.
As you can see, this cemetery has its fair share of paranormal activity. The National Park Service has programs in the evenings at the Shrine of Ages and at the McKee Amphitheater on warm evenings. One of the programs is called “The Moonlit Cemetery Walk.” It is a wonderful program to teach people about those buried within the cemetery. A park ranger is dressed as the Grand Canyon’s famed John Hance and guides you to different graves, and the stories he tells are a fantastic and knowledgeable history lesson for all ages. I recommend this rare program to anyone who comes to visit the Grand Canyon.