2007 Grand Canyon History Symposium Dick Brown Brown is a long-time member of GCHS/GCPS and GCA/GCNHA. He is an engineer by profession and a 40-year resident of New Mexico. As a former submariner, he chairs the Navy League committee for the U.S. Navy's newest submarine, USS New Mexico. He has spent many years researching our canyon pioneers, hiking the canyon backcountry, exploring mines below the rim, and tracing remnants of the Canyon's first tourist enterprises. He developed a book-length manuscript titled "Canyon Pioneers" and located many previously unpublished historic images in special collections throughout the Southwest. He came to know Pete Berry the best but at the same time became intrigued by one of the least known, least understood of our canyon pioneers, Louis Boucher. Presentation Abstract... The Elusive Louis Boucher:   Louis D. Boucher left very few clues about his time at the Canyon, and even less about his life before and after the Canyon. His trail through life, with teasing twists and shadowy switchbacks, is as difficult to follow as his canyon trails. This quiet, reclusive trail-builder and prospector came to be known as the Hermit. While his story remains incomplete, there are interesting fragments of history that may help us piece together the life and times of Boucher. There is a record of a Louis Boucher residing in Sherbrooke, Quebec in 1875. The first record of Boucher at the Canyon dates back to July 1891 when he was employed by John Hance as a trail guide. An August 1892 edition of Scientific American refers to a French-Canadian trail guide – "Louis de Bouchere, intelligent, obliging, and not too talkative…" Perhaps Boucher's trail from Sherbrooke to the Grand Canyon passed through Sioux Country. A Winchester carbine is inscribed "To Chief Spotted Tail from Louis Boucher" and Boucher's "Crazy Horse" mining claim carried the name of the uncle of this famous Sioux chief. It is rumored that a trader named Louis Boucher, married to Spotted Tail's daughter, smuggled guns to the Sioux. Boucher does not appear in the census reports of 1890, 1900 or 1910. Was the Hermit a fugitive, hiding from the past? Boucher left the Canyon in 1909. His trail winds through New Mexico and Colorado and fades into coal-mining country of central Utah. We have but one last glimpse of Boucher in 1912 when he returns to the South Rim, signing the Grandview Hotel register as "Louis Boucher, Mohrland, Utah." There is no further record of this elusive Canyon Pioneer. He died in obscurity, unmourned and unheralded, yet no man stands more nobly in the memory of canyon pioneers.