South Rim’s Hermit Road set to reopen

Sunset viewing on the Grand Canyon’s South Rim will get a bit easier come Saturday, November. 15, when the historic Hermit Road reopens after nearly a year of being off-limits.

A Park Service release announced that the popular route to the nine overlooks at the western end of Grand Canyon National Park’s South Rim will reopen to the public next Saturday, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony scheduled for that day at 1 p.m.

The refurbishing project started in February this year to “address safety issues and to preserve the historic integrity of the road,” the Park Service said.

Nearly a million visitors every year head up the Hermit Road, which ends at the Mary Jane Colter-designed gift shop and rest station called Hermit’s Rest, one of several romantic stacked-rock structures designed by Colter for the park. Hermit’s Rest, Colter said, was meant to appear as if built by hand by the titular hermit using native stone and wood beams. It’s definitely worth driving, walking, or taking one of the park’s free shuttles along the Hermit Road, especially around sunset. The western lookouts are some of the best in the park for viewing that sun-dipping show, for obvious reasons.

The Santa Fe Railroad built the original Hermit Road between 1911 and 1913. In the mid-1930s the road was reworked by the Park Service to handle automobiles, but it was never meant to handle the volume of traffic it has been subjected to these last 80 years or so.

“Even with periodic maintenance over the years, the road had deteriorated to the point where it was unsafe for various user groups, such as bicyclists and pedestrians,” the Park Service said, adding that a good deal of work and consideration went into preserving the road’s “historical integrity.”

“The original metal hand railings at each of the overlooks and the rustic-style stone masonry culvert headwalls and retaining walls were retained,” the Park Service said.

Despite the reopening, after Nov. 15^th shuttle bus trips along the road will shut down for the winter, as is customary. They’ll begin again, riding smoothly along the new black ribbon along the rim, on March 1, 2009. Until then, private cars, and of course walking and bike riding, are allowed on the Hermit Road through February 28, 2009.