Chapter 9
Verkamp’s Visitor Center is another historic building that neighbors the Hopi House to the east, built by John George Verkamp. Verkamp was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 22, 1877. While growing up in Cincinnati, John’s childhood friends were the Babbitt brothers (there were five of them) who lived across the street from him and his family. The Babbitt brothers had always dreamt of eventually owning a large cattle ranch in the wild west, so when the brothers finally pooled all their money together (twenty thousand dollars), two of the brothers (Billy and Dave) agreed to head out west to scout for prime cattle grazing land. After the two brothers found the perfect setting to establish a cattle ranch east of Flagstaff, Arizona, the other three Babbitt brothers (George, Charlie, and Edward) arrived, with John Verkamp accompanying them. The Babbitts also successfully opened up a mercantile store in Flagstaff.
By 1898, John Verkamp had hopes of possibly opening up his own store on the Grand Canyon’s South Rim after hearing about all the visitors flocking to see this huge hole in the ground. He took a wagon-load of Native American blankets to the canyon to sell for the Babbitt brothers and was fortunate to meet Martin Bugguln, owner of the Bright Angel Hotel. John Verkamp explained to Mr. Bugguln about his plan of owning and operating the first curio store at the canyon and Bugguln offered Verkamp one of the Bright Angel tents to help begin his business. Within a few short weeks after opening up shop, John was unfortunately unable to make enough profit to keep the tent open, so he sadly had to give up on his investment and promptly returned to Ohio.
The water pump in front of Verkamp’s Visitor Center, circa 2007
By 1905, tourism to the South Rim increased drastically, thanks to the new Santa Fe Railway, which traveled to the Grand Canyon Village and the grand opening of the luxurious El Tovar Hotel. John Verkamp had not completely given up on becoming a successful merchant at the canyon; he was just waiting for the right time financially to return and now saw an opportunity to achieve his dream. In 1906, John proudly opened the newest business venture in the main village and named it “Verkamp’s Curios.” This time instead of being inside a tent, Mr. Verkamp built a two-story, wood-shingled building roughly one hundred feet from the canyon’s rim east of the El Tovar Hotel and Hopi House. The second floor would serve as his home, where as the first floor would have plenty of room to eventually become a successful curio store. John Verkamp also came up with an inventive way to collect rain water and melted snow run-off, which is a precious commodity in such a harsh, arid region. He designed the roof of his home/business to capture any moisture that fell on the roof and it drain into a cistern (storage tank) underneath the front porch that had a pump, which enabled him to use reservoir of water whenever he needed it.
The new Verkamp’s Curio Store sold Native American art and crafts, post cards, and various other types of souvenirs that were affordable to all tourists. Placed out on the front porch was a large iron meteorite that John had acquired from a friend. On more than one occasion, thieves had tried to steal it, but were always unsuccessful. During one evening, after Mr. Verkamp had gone to bed, some pranksters rolled this giant hunk of iron to block the entry into the front and only doors, forcing John to find an alternative way out of the building.
Even though John Verkamp had become a successful businessman within the Grand Canyon Village, he still spent the majority of his time in Flagstaff. Three of his sisters had moved to Arizona and married three of the Babbitt brothers. While spending time with his family in Flagstaff, John met a woman named Catherine Wolfe, who had recently moved to Arizona to live with her brothers, who were working for the railway. They soon fell in love and were married in 1912. After the wedding, Catherine continued to reside in Flagstaff and the newlyweds were blessed with four children: Margaret (Peggy), John George Jr. (Jack), Mary Janet (Jan), and Catherine (Katie).
On October 29, 1929—Black Thursday—the Roaring Twenties came to an abrupt end as the United States of America officially entered into one of its darkest eras: the Great Depression. Family vacations and traveling during this difficult time had basically become nonexistent. Every national park around the country suffered financially. All the businesses around the Grand Canyon’s Village began to deteriorate. John Verkamp’s business was not immune to the crumbling economy, which meant that he could no longer afford for his family to live in two separate households. In 1936, Catherine Verkamp and their four children packed all of their belongings and moved to the Grand Canyon, into their new home above the store. The whole family pitched in to help keep the store up and running during the final years of the Depression. After the United States finally got back on track, Catherine and the children continued to reside at the canyon. The Grand Canyon National Park Service began hiring full-time employees and offered housing to those who brought their families with them. The Grand Canyon Village now saw an increase in school-aged children that needed a proper education. John and Catherine Verkamp were instrumental in establishing a full-time school that taught kindergarten through the twelfth grade. The Grand Canyon is the only national park that has a permanent unified school district. This husband-and-wife team also established chapters of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts for the younger children living in the village.
John George Verkamp passed away on April 4, 1944, from a stroke. After his untimely death, Catherine and their children continued making the Verkamp’s Curios store a popular destination choice for visiting tourists. On April 4, 1979, thirty-five years to the day of her husband’s passing, Catherine Verkamp joined her husband on the other side. John and Catherine are both buried next to each other in a family plot, along with nine other family members, inside the Pioneer Cemetery. In 2008, the surviving family members decided they were not going to renew their contract with the National Park Service to keep the curio shop open. The park service immediately took possession of the Verkamp’s Curio store and turned it into a Visitor Center. The Verkamp’s Visitor Center is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The only problem is someone forgot to tell the spirits of the Verkamp family, that the building is no longer their home.
Ghostly Lore
Nobody is really sure just who or how many spirits call Verkamp’s Visitor Center home. Strange sounds reverberate inside the building well after closing time, and a female ghost has been spotted multiple times on the second floor where the Verkamp family lived. The parking lot adjacent to Verkamp’s Visitor Center is reported to have an unfriendly spirit that seems to enjoy scaring anyone walking through it during the nighttime hours.
National Park Service employees will usually not divulge any information about paranormal experiences they’ve had to the general public. Whether they are scared of being ridiculed or being fired, it’s hard to get them to open up about the existence of ghosts. I was lucky enough to have an employee that had worked there, Melissa, tell me some stories she had heard from fellow co-workers and what she’s personally witnessed during her employment at Verkamp’s. Melissa said that many co-workers hear muffled disembodied voices when in the building after it is closed. Several people have heard their name being called by a male’s voice when they are alone in the building. Dark shadows are often seen moving around on the first and second floors. When workers are finishing up their closing duties on the first floor, they can distinctly hear footsteps of someone walking around on the second floor. When they go upstairs to check to see who is there, they discover they are all alone. Well, sort of …
If that isn’t bad enough, the parking lot adjacent to Verkamp’s Visitor Center is reported to have a malicious entity that stalks and terrorizes anyone who happens to be walking through the lot late at night. A terrifying encounter with this entity happened one evening to El Tovar dinner server Pam. She had gone into Flagstaff earlier that day to do some personal shopping to get her through for the next couple of busy weeks. By the time she returned back to the canyon, she realized she was running late for work. Pam took a quick shower and jumped into her car and sped towards the El Tovar. Normally, she would park her car by the Grand Canyon’s mule barn and railroad tracks and walk the rest of the way to her job. This day, Pam needed to find a closer parking spot, so she wouldn’t get into trouble for being late for work, having already been talked to a couple of times before for being tardy. As she approached the village area, she decided she had no choice but to park in the El Tovar Hotel’s parking lot that’s technically reserved for visitors. As soon as Pam reached the top of the hill and turned right into the car parking area, she was overly thrilled to see someone backing out of a spot at the end of the road next to Verkamp’s Visitors Center and claimed the spot.
It had been a long, busy night inside the restaurant, far more hectic than normal. There had been multiple large parties that evening and diners for some reason seemed to be extremely rude and overly needy. Pam was closing that night, so she was one of the last servers to leave the restaurant. It was a little after midnight when she exited through the front door of the lodge to walk to her car. As she started walking across the roundabout in front of the Hopi House, she noticed the moon wasn’t visible and the parking lot she had to walk through to get to her car was pitch black.
Pam was all alone and didn’t see anyone else out walking around. Cautiously, she began to walk through an endless sea of cars, scanning from side to side with each car she passed, keeping a watchful eye out for any possible threat that might have come her way. That’s when she noticed a solid black human-shaped figure near the end of the parking lot close to Verkamp’s Visitor Center. Even though it was totally dark out, she could still distinctly see that this person was slowly walking between cars, but it seemed more like it was floating, not taking steps. Pam felt her heart in her throat and began shaking. She considered turning around and running back to the El Tovar but right in front of her eyes, she saw this thing just fade away. She finally spotted her car and ran to it as fast as she could, got in, and locked the doors. She was trembling uncontrollably, so she tried to regain her composure before attempting to drive her car.
When she placed her keys into the ignition and was about ready to start the car, she glanced up at the second floor of the Verkamp’s Visitor Center because she noticed an eerie, luminous light in a window. Pam knew the building had closed at dusk and no one was supposed to be inside at that time of night. She continued to watch the window that was emitting the light and said that it eventually resembled a flame that would burn in an old-fashioned hurricane lamp. Then, to her horror, Pam saw an old woman with a blue glow around her peer out quickly from the window. Pam realized that this woman wasn’t alive and what she was actually seeing must have been a ghost. She backed her car up quickly and drove home as fast as she could. Pam had told several people about what she experienced that night and discovered that she was not alone in encountering the paranormal realm near the parking lot next to the Verkamp’s Visitor Center.
Park employee Charlie has always been considered a dedicated and exceptional worker for many years. When he first arrived at the Grand Canyon to begin his job, Charlie began to hear almost immediately about the different ghost stories that allegedly occur inside the park from other staff members. Charlie was actually hoping that he would experience something ghostly for himself. He already had a strong belief in ghosts and hauntings, having had lived in a haunted apartment complex in his hometown of Peachtree City, Georgia. Several years had gone by and Charlie had not witnessed anything paranormal for himself at the canyon, until a night in April 2012, when his supernatural dry spell came to an abrupt end.
Charlie had been working at the El Tovar’s front desk as a guest service agent. It was around 11:00 p.m., when he was finally able to call it quits for the day and go home. He was walking through the lobby when someone called out his name from behind him. He turned around and saw one of his good friends—Stephanie, a bartender from the El Tovar Cocktail Lounge who was a member of the Hopi Tribe—also leaving for the night. Charlie decided to escort Stephanie to her car. Stephanie could only find one parking spot when she had arrived at work and that was next to the Verkamp’s Visitor Center. Because of the late hour and cold weather that had enveloped the canyon that evening, Charlie and Stephanie were the only people walking around outside.
As they slowly strolled passed the Hopi House, Charlie was able to see a dark figure walking towards them from the parking lot area close to Verkamp’s building. Figuring that someone was coming back from a cold walk, Charlie asked Stephanie if she could see a person walking towards them. She said she could see someone but had an eerie feeling about it. She had also mentioned to Charlie that the person seemed as if it was gliding on air and not actually walking on solid ground. When the figure got within fifteen feet of them, they both noticed that this person wasn’t wearing a jacket, which was unusual given the temperature outside being a brisk twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit. As the two were within mere feet of the stranger, Charlie and Stephanie politely said, “Hello, how are you?” As they waited for a response from the person, the figure disappeared right before their eyes. Stephanie instinctively let out a scream while Charlie grabbed her arm and they rushed towards her car. They quickly stumbled in and sped away. Due to Stephanie’s mystical upbringing, she drove straight to the Hopi Reservation after she dropped Charlie off at his home where she could receive a spiritual cleansing. Charlie on the other hand was ecstatic about finally being able to witness one of the Grand Canyon Village’s ghosts with his own two eyes.
Verkamp’s Visitor Center has had its ups and downs and also had a loving family reside inside it for almost one hundred years. It’s an awesome building to go into and browse through its history. Just be aware that there is a good possibility that the building’s history just might be watching you and every move you make.