2007 Grand Canyon History Symposium Peter Huntoon Huntoon is a ground water geologist (University of Arizona 1970), who did his MS and Ph.D. theses on the major springs in the eastern Grand Canyon. His M. S. work focused on the springs and associated caves in Tapeats Amphitheater and Deer Canyon, which caused him to become intimately familiar with the trails which are the subject of this presentation. He lived at Big Saddle hunting camp - now gone - for two field seasons in 1967 and 1968, where he became acquainted with a number of now deceased outfitting and ranching people with historic knowledge of the trail systems in that part of the Grand Canyon country. He spent his academic career at the University of Wyoming, where he was a professor of geology and geophysics. He published on the ground water geology and structural geology of the Grand Canyon throughout his professional career, and co-authored several geologic maps of the Grand Canyon with George Billingsley and other notable co-workers. Presentation Abstract... The Opening of Deer Creek and the History of the Thunder River Trail:   The famed Thunder River Trail off the western side of the Kaibab Plateau, which winds through Tapeats Amphitheater, owes its origin, of all things, to a gold rush that took place in 1872. At the end of 1871, while reconnoitering a route to move supplies down Kanab Canyon in order to possibly finish their river trip the following spring, members of the second Powell expedition discovered flour gold in the sand bars along the Colorado River at the mouth of Kanab Canyon. Word went out over the just completed telegraph line between Fredonia and St. George. Miners, adventurers, but mostly destitute men, numbering upwards of several hundred converged on Kanab Canyon, and began fighting their way up and down the banks of the Colorado River in their quest for gold bearing sands. The access route they had to take down Kanab Canyon was simply awful. E. O. Beamen, the photographer on the Powell expedition, severed his ties with Powell at the beginning of 1872, and set off on his own exploits. One of the first things he did was to follow the miners into the gold fields in order to photograph their activities. This led him and a companion in an arduous trek up the Colorado River from the mouth of Kanab Canyon to Buckskin Falls (Deer Creek Falls), where they climbed into Deer Canyon. There they discovered a verdant spring-fed tributary valley with a most unusual flat bottom. Miners followed in short order, occupied the place, and discovered abandoned Indian trails that led out through the more favorable terrain of what we now call Surprise Valley, and on up to the north rim of Tapeats Amphitheater west of Crazy Jug Point. The miners constructed a network of rudimentary trails along this route to serve their needs. They blasted through formidable ledges where necessary, making the route barely passable for a horse, but created in their wake rudimentary trails down Deer and Tapeats canyons to their workings along the river. The next visitor who left documentation was Clarence Dutton, the legendary geologic explorer, who mounted a pack trip into Deer Canyon in 1880, his only descent to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The miners were long starved out, their trail in ruins and marginally passable. Dutton did not find Thunder Spring, although the miners had. But the route into Deer and Tapeats canyons was established, to be followed with significant reroutes over the decades by successive generations of Mormon ranchers, packers, fishermen, park personnel and cave explorers, each of whom placed their imprimatur on the trail and canyon lore.