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Who the Heck Was Blondie Jensen? |
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About the time that Major Powell was shoving off from Green River, Wyoming to unravel the mysteries of the Grand Canyon, a Mormon rancher from Kanab, Utah, rounding up his stock in the wilds of the Kaibab Plateau's deep forests, found himself and his companions at the edge of a stupendous chasm. "Boys," he is reputed to have said, "People'd sure pay a lot to look at that." The cowpokes all peered over the rim, looked at each other, and allowed it'd be one hell of a place to get a cow out of. . . ? But E.D. (Uncle Dee) Wooley was inspired, and for the next fifty-odd years moved heaven and a lot of earth developing the access and accommodations for tourists to come and taste the wonders they beheld both at and below the rim.
About the time Uncle Dee had roughed out a rugged road and was bringing buggy loads of eager and dusty tourists to Points Sublime or Imperial and to Bright Angel Point, in 1892, a bouncing baby boy, Altus F. Jensen was born in Fredonia. His father, Thomas Jensen was a rancher and later sheriff there and "adjoining area of Buckskin Mountain" . . . the whole Kaibab Plateau. (Thanks to John Azar for introducing Thomas to us in the January Jump-up story).
So now you know who "Blondie" was: a tow-headed kid who wrangled stock with his dad from the time he could "fork a horse". By the time he was twelve he'd ranged far and wide over the plateau, west from the Kanab Canyon drainage on east to Houserock Valley. He'd have camped at Big Spring for wild turkey, at Thompson Spring for Spruce grouse, and all over the plateau for deer . . . the big mountain mule deer that looked like elk until you got close.
Perhaps he saw Francois Mathes on his 1902 Geological Survey trip, working east from Muav Saddle. He might have joined Jim Owens on lion hunting parties . . . even including Teddy Roosevelt. These were exciting and transitional times on the lonely and lovely deeply forested north side of the Canyon. Heretofore the ranchers of the Arizona Strip were used to having their summer range and autumn hunting haunts shared only with their Paiute neighbors on a mutually wary basis. But what was happening now? "One road up thar makes it easier to git up thar, but all those waggins, 'n camps, 'n people: goldurn. . . I dunno 'bout that . . . ?" Of course all those people meant even more people needed to serve the influx. And by 1910, just eighteen years old, Blondie joined the ranks as guide and wrangler for Uncle Dee's Grand Canyon Transportation Company , just a year after the first automobile made its three-day rugged route up from Kanab to the Jacob Lake settlement and on out to the rim. On board was a jubilant Uncle Dee with his two families and all their gear.
All summer Blondie would guide rides along forest trails to overlooks such as Uncle Jim or Widforss, through aspen glens and dappled meadows brilliant with blooms and birds. Then, for more daring souls, he'd lead overnight camping excursions out to the farther points such as Sublime or Imperial. I'd loved to have been at the evening campfires to hear him tell of his boyhood in the vast expanses of Buckskin Mountain and the Kaibab Plateau, so named for the plethora of pelts: deer, bear, beaver or lion taken each year from the depths.
But Blondie was best known in later years for his guided trips down the old Bright Angel Trail. In those first years it was an arduous, dangerous, tedious but exciting three day expedition, from the North Rim, east of Uncle Jim Point to the site of today's bridge across the creek near the Pump house operator's residence. It wasn't even the same trail used today. We're talking about the original "Old Bright Angel Trail!"
From the time in late 1902 that Francois Matthes' men had first hewn a crude route for his pack animals down through the broken Redwall slope, Uncle Dee Wooley had let no grass grow on it. By 1904 his crew had roughed out a trail all the way to the Colorado River, with a crude camp near the shore, later known as Rust's Camp.
At $5.00 a horse per day, and $5.00 for three days supply of food and blankets, the total cost for each person was a mighty sum of $20.00, not counting a tip for the wrangler, cook and guide: Blondie. To quote an excerpt from Journey To The North Rim of The Grand Canyon in the Hotel Monthly of October, 1919: "The first day's journey of the B.A. Trail is to Ribbon Falls, about half way down. . . . Here camp is made and the excursionists sleep on the sand. The next day the journey is down to the river, lunch on the river bank and back to Ribbon Falls. The third day is taken up with the climb . . . to the rim. During the 45-mile trip, down and up the Bright Angel Creek has to be forded about 75 times, and sometimes the horses are knee-deep in the water for a hundred yards at a stretch."
At about that time Blondie guided the Crown Prince and Princess of Denmark with their entourage over the trail to the river, followed by 23 mules loaded with their baggage. He later complained that major domo had "laid him out in lavender" for letting one of the trunks hit the ground too hard, denting it. I hope that was the worst that happened on the trip. . . .
On the side trail up to Ribbon Falls one can see an iron ring imbedded in a big boulder above the creek, to the right. Across the little clearing there, up against the cliff, to the left, are the broken walls of the old stone tack shed, marking the site of the corral. Today there's not much sand to sleep on along the creek; just hard slabs of rock. But the falls still provides a cool oasis for weary travelers.
By about 1915 Blondie became Trail Boss. "He went up and down the B.A. Canyon more times'n you can shake a stick at." according to a waitress I interviewed at her home at Pipe Springs. She'd been a waitress at North Rim Lodge in the 20's, and when I asked her about Blondie her eyes lit up. "He was tall, with a rough shock of sun-bleached hair, though most times he wore a big broad western hat. And though he mostly was shy and kep' to himself, boy, did he have a way with the ladies! He was a hard worker; kep' his stock in good shape, and wintered them off the plateau". She told me that the Mormon ranchers who'd moved into the Arizona Strip from St. George clear to Kanab wintered much of their stock, both cattle and horses, down in the canyon facing the Colorado River. Kanab Canyon was a natural, with wide grassy swathes. But there was water and forage in others too. Down from Indian Hollow to Surprise Valley, Deer Creek or Fishtail Canyon or down Crazy Jug Trail into the Tapeats Creek area where in 1975 Dick McClaren, then head of the NPS Search and Rescue, told he had seen cow flaps and old horse buns when on a recent search. Blondie once said that his favorite spot in the canyon for stock wintering was Bonita Canyon: a small lush bowl overlooking the river, just below Surprise Junction. Twenty-two of his mules had died there one autumn, however, from "milk-weed poisoning in that creek", he said. Maybe named it Bonita in spite of that.
Uncle Dee wasn't satisfied just to reach the river. Tourists were coming in large numbers, by 1904, to the south rim too; even venturing down to the Indian Gardens. Perhaps he could lure them over to see the beauties of the North Rim too if feasible means could be found to get them across the tumultuous river. Boats proved impractical . . . (ever tried to get a horse into a rowboat?) He did get a steel cable across, which helped for people but not for "critters". So the two rims worked out a system where no critters crossing was necessary.
Let's say that Blondie had a party of four, with two pack mules, wanting to go to the South Rim. He'd light six well-spaced bonfires along the rim at B.A. Point where they would be visible from the El Tovar. Fred Harvey wranglers over there would then saddle up his animals the next morning and spend the night at Indian Gardens before meeting Blondie's party across the river from the mouth of Bright Angel Creek, next day. After getting dudes and gear across eventually, Blondie would dead-head his string back north, and the party would spend that night at the Gardens before hitting the south rim.
It worked pretty well, and Uncle Dee was mighty pleased that more came north than went south. So much so, indeed by 1907 he could afford to install a cable car to facilitate the crossing of man and beast, eliminating bonfires as well as confusion. That worked out even better. It was horrendous work getting it all down to the river: 500 feet of steel cable, taken in reels on the backs of mules "over the worst kind of trail," and stretching the cable "across the chasm about 300 feet above the water. The stretching must be done by men as there will be no machinery of any kind . . . ." (quoted from Wooly's order in 1905).
Blondie eventually got to go all the way to the South Rim with his parties in even an easier fashion after 1921 a "swaying foot bridge" replaced the cable car for a few years before wild canyon winds destroyed it. Just before he retired in late 1928 he saw transitions, mostly involving his trail work on the north side of the river, that he never could have dreamed of in his boyhood on Buckskin Mountain. Twelve major items not mentioned so far come to mind:
Now you can see why the story of Blondie and the other North Rim wranglers is an integral part of the saga of Bright Angel Canyon's development. I wonder what he thought about it all!
Used by permission of the Grand Canyon Pioneers Society.
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