Grand Canyon National Park: Shop's grand run about to end

BUSINESS | At canyon since 1800s, curio store gone soon

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. -- At a time when tourists visited the Grand Canyon in stagecoaches, they did their souvenir shopping at a tent set up by a man named John George Verkamp.

It was 1898, before the Grand Canyon was a national park, before there was a National Park Service and before Arizona was even a state. Not many had the means to visit the mile-deep gorge, so it was mostly just a handful of adventurers, prospectors, the American Indians whose people had lived there for centuries, and the Verkamps.

These days, the Grand Canyon has luxury lodges and cute coffee shops. The only thing it won't have come September is the Verkamps and their store, Verkamp's Curios.

The family's final chapter at the canyon began in 1998, when Congress passed a law that reversed giving preference to established businesses when issuing contracts. A company that had never operated at a given park now could outbid anyone if it had a better proposal -- even if the competition had been there for more than a century.

The Verkamps scrambled, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on appraisals, environmental consultants, financial advisers and lawyers -- all in an effort to prepare to face off against major corporations that could vie to run the gift shop Verkamp opened in a permanent building on the South Rim in 1906.

When the National Park Service issued the store's final prospectus last July, the family chose to give in to what they call "bureaucratic process fatigue."

"There's just so many hoops to do what you've always been doing," said Susie Verkamp, the 60-year-old granddaughter of John George Verkamp. "It kind of wears you out."

Susie Verkamp said there also was really no one left in the family to run the shop, which has been managed by someone other than a family member since 1995, although the Verkamps have stayed actively involved.

Park Service spokesman Jeffrey Olson said the 1998 law shows the public that there is no favoritism in issuing contracts to concessioners. He acknowledged that not everybody is happy with the law but said small businesses shouldn't lose sight of their own advantages.

"If I were a big business going up against somebody who had been in business for generations, I don't know that I would think I had this thing in the bag," he said. "Incumbency, when you talk about political circles, has a lot of weight."

The Park Service turned down three companies that put a bid on taking over the Verkamps' building, saying the Grand Canyon had plenty of gift shops on the South Rim. The agency compensated the Verkamps more than $3.2 million for the building, park spokeswoman Maureen Oltrogge said.

Park Superintendent Steve Martin said the structure might be used as a visitors' facility or a Grand Canyon history museum.

Mike Anderson, a Grand Canyon historian, described the Verkamps as pioneers.

"John G. Verkamp was there at the onset trying to make a living off Grand Canyon tourism when it was really still in its infant stage," Anderson said.

He said Verkamp's first customers would have primarily been the wealthy who took trains from the East to Williams, where they had to hire a stagecoach to travel the remaining 60 miles to the canyon.

It wasn't until 1930, when the automobile became affordable for the average American, that the middle class started showing up in larger numbers.

By 1936, the Depression had taken its toll on Verkamp's other business interests, so he moved his wife and four kids to a two-bedroom apartment above the shop. The Verkamps' two-story store hasn't changed much in its 102 years. It still sits about 100 feet from the edge of the Grand Canyon and it still sells hand-selected items from American Indian artists and regional traders.

Woven Navajo rugs hang from the ceiling and people warm themselves in front of a giant, crackling fire.

Susie Verkamp and her six brothers and sisters also grew up in the apartment upstairs. She said people always ask her if she and her family take the Grand Canyon for granted, considering it was their backyard.

"On the contrary," she said. "We have a certain intimacy with the canyon and love that couldn't be further from taking it for granted," Verkamp said from her home in El Prado, N.M. "It gives you kind of a unique perspective on life. We always had an understanding that the human species is a very small part of the big picture."

AP