Driving Tours

Start: Grand Canyon Village.

Finish: Hermits Rest.

Time: About 3 hours.

Highlights: Closed to private cars (except for those carrying people with physical disabilities) during high season, the overlooks are quieter than those on Desert View Drive and afford excellent river views.

Drawbacks: Occasional long waits for buses. The 8-mile-long road from Grand Canyon Village to Hermits Rest is open to private cars when the shuttles aren't running. (The shuttles run Mar 1-Nov 30.)

1. Trailviews 1 & 2

These viewpoints en route to Maricopa Point are great places to look back at Grand Canyon Village. Below the village, the switchbacks of the Bright Angel Trail descend along a natural break in the cliffs. This break was created by erosion along the Bright Angel Fault, one of many fault lines that crisscross the main canyon.

Looking north across the canyon, you can see how the fault created two side canyons in a straight line, on opposite sides of the river. Runoff seeps into the cracks along fault lines, beginning the process of forming side canyons such as these. Wildlife and Native Americans created the first foot paths through these side canyons. Below, Indian Garden, where Havasupai Indians farmed for generations, is identifiable by the lush vegetation that grows around the spring there. Past Indian Garden a trail travels straight out to the edge of the Tonto platform, where it dead-ends. This is not the Bright Angel Trail, which descends another side canyon to reach the Inner Gorge, but a spur known as the Plateau Point Trail.

2. Maricopa Point

The Orphan Mine southwest of this point produced some of the richest uranium ore in the Southwest during the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, this land was once the center of the most exhaustive mining in the canyon. Below and to the west, you can see some of the metal framework of the tramway that moved ore to the rim from 1956 to 1959. Later, a 1,500-foot-high elevator replaced the tramway. A metal head frame from that elevator remains visible on the rim, directly above the old shaft. Half a million tons of ore were removed for atomic energy use from 1956 until 1969, by which time mining here had ended.

3. Powell Memorial

Here you'll find a large memorial to John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War veteran who is widely believed to have been the first non-native individual to float through the canyon. In fact, the park was formally dedicated in 1920 at Powell Point with members of Powell's family in attendance.

Funded in part by the Smithsonian Institute, Powell first drifted into the canyon on August 5, 1869. He and his crew of eight portaged around rapids when the walls were gradual enough to allow it. In parts of the canyon's Inner Gorge, however, the walls became too steep to climb, and the men were forced to float blindly, in wooden boats, through some of the world's most dangerous waters.

Parts of the Inner Gorge are visible below this point, but only a tiny stretch of the river can be seen. Where Powell saw the Inner Gorge's dark, steep rocks lining the water, he thought not of their beauty but of the peril they represented. He called the gorge "our granite prison" and described his men "ever watching, ever peering ahead, for the narrow canyon is winding and the river is closed in . . . and what there may be below, we know not."

When the men stopped above what appeared to be another set of dangerous rapids after 3 weeks in the canyon, three of them left the expedition by walking out into what is now known as Separation Canyon, but were never seen again. The irony here was that the expedition had already passed most of the worst rapids. The remaining crew negotiated the last white water and soon arrived at a small Mormon outpost bearing the first records of the inner canyon's rocks, geography, and life-forms. Powell later fleshed out these records and notes in a lengthy diary, "The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons." The names of the three crew members who left at Separation Canyon do not appear on the monument.

4. Hopi Point

Because it projects far into the canyon, the tip of Hopi Point is the best place along Hermits Rest Route to watch the sunset. As the sun drops, its light plays across four of the canyon's loveliest temples. The flat mesa almost due north of the point is Shiva Temple. The temple southwest of it is Osiris; the one southeast of it is Isis. East of Isis is Buddha Temple.

Named for a destructive yet popular Hindu god, Shiva Temple was the site of a much-ballyhooed 1937 mission by a team of scientists from the American Museum of Natural History. Believing that the canyon isolated the forest atop Shiva Temple the same way oceans isolated the Galapagos Islands, the team set out to find species that had evolved differently from those on the rim. The East Coast press drummed up sensationalistic stories about the trip, even going so far as to hail it as a search for living dinosaurs. Alas, the search didn't turn up any new species, let alone dinosaurs. Rather, the team learned that cliffs and desert didn't bar the movements of most Grand Canyon species. (The Colorado River poses a more significant barrier.) The most noteworthy discovery: an empty Kodak film box and soup cans deliberately left behind by canyon local Emery Kolb, who was upset when the expedition declined his offer to help. Kolb easily made the ascent himself, proving that the cliffs were hardly a barrier.

5. Mohave Point

This is a great place to observe some of the Colorado River's most furious rapids. Farthest downstream, to your left, lies Hermit Rapids (named after canyon pioneer Louis Boucher, who was considered "The Hermit of Hermit Canyon" because he made his home in the side canyons in the early 1900s). Above Hermit Rapids, you can make out the top of the dangerous Granite Rapids, one of the steepest navigable rapids in the world. Just above Granite Rapids, the bottom of Salt Creek Rapids is visible. As you look at Hermit Creek Canyon and the rapids below it, you can easily visualize how flash floods washed rocks from the side canyon into the Colorado River, forming the natural dam that creates the rapids.

6. The Abyss

The walls in this side canyon -- a deep bay cut into the South Rim by Monument Creek -- fall a steep 2,600 feet to the base of the Redwall Limestone. The best way to appreciate these plunging walls is to follow the rim trail a few hundred yards west of the overlook, where the cliffs plummet most precipitously.

7. Pima Point

Three thousand feet below Pima Point -- which offers a stunning view of the Colorado River -- you can see some of the foundations and walls from the old Hermit Camp, a tourist destination built in 1912 by the Santa Fe Railroad. Situated alongside Hermit Creek, the camp featured heavy-duty tents, each with stoves, Native American rugs, and windows. An aerial tramway connected this point with the camp below. Used to lower supplies, it made the 3,000-foot descent in roughly a half-hour.

To get to Hermit Camp, tourists traveled 51 miles by train from Williams to Grand Canyon Village, 9 miles by stagecoach from the village to the top of the Hermit Trail trail head, and 8 miles by mule to the camp. After the Park Service wrested control of the Bright Angel Trail from Ralph Cameron in the 1920s, Phantom Ranch became a more popular tourist destination, and Hermit Camp closed its doors in 1930.

The Hermit Trail, however, remains popular. North of the overlook, below the fin of rock known as Cope Butte, you can see it zigzagging down the blue-green Bright Angel Shale.

8. Hermits Rest

Before descending to Hermit Camp, tourists rested at this Mary Colter-designed building, built in 1914. Here, Colter celebrated the "hermit" theme, making the building look as if an isolated mountain man had constructed it. It resembles a crude rock shelter, with stones heaped highest around the chimney. A large fireplace dominates the interior. Colter covered the ceiling above it with soot, so that the room had the look of a cave warmed by fire -- much like the nearby Dripping Springs overhang where "The Hermit of Hermit Canyon," Louis Boucher, once passed time. Colter had a knack for finding the perfect details. Note the anthropomorphic rock above the fireplace (not a bad place to warm up in winter), the candelabra, and the hanging lanterns. Some of the original hand-carved furniture is still here.

A snack bar sells candy, ice cream, chips, soda, and ham or turkey sandwiches. Two heavily used restrooms are behind the main building. Before leaving, take one last look at the canyon. The three-pronged temple across the canyon to the north is the Tower of Ra, named for the always-victorious Egyptian sun god. Seen from above, each prong points to a different set of rapids: the near arm to Hermit Creek, the middle to Boucher, and the far one to Crystal -- waters that have triumphed over more than a few river guides.