As in a Dream That is Past...

From an article titled "As in a dream that is past: Buck Lowrey, the Navajo Bridge, and Marble Canyon Lodge". Published by Laura Graves, South Plains College, Levelland, Texas. Spring 1998.

Buck Lowrey must have gone to sleep on the night of June 15, 1929, a happy man. He had spent the last two days catering to the needs of many of the more than 5,000 men, women, and children who had arrived in his front yard at Marble Canyon, Arizona, to celebrate the opening of one the highest steel and reinforced concrete bridges to have been built at that time. The celebrants arrived by automobile, horse-drawn wagons, and on horseback. Most spent the nights camped in tents spread out over three miles of desert; and a handful of dignitaries, among whom were the governors of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, and the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stayed in one of the newly opened rooms at Marble Canyon Lodge. Hundreds of tourists had failed to heed the published advice and had arrived without sufficient food. They paid dearly for the "beef stew, coffee, and doughnuts" served them by Buck Lowrey, proprietor of the Marble Canyon trading post and lodge.

The day's activities, complete with speeches, flag ceremonies, Hopi and Navajo dances, and "camp fire tales of long ago" were part of the dream that had sustained Lowrey as he built his business on homesteaded land on the west side of the gorge cut by the Colorado River. As he prepared for bed that night Lowrey must have remembered the years during which he worked for another man's gain and the months of backbreaking labor to construct the rock buildings that were now filled to over-flowing. While he worked on the west side of the gorge, his family resided on the east side, less than a quarter of a mile away, but in order for Lowrey to be with them he had to travel via Lees Ferry, about a twenty mile detour around the Marble Canyon gorge. At last, he owned his own post and tourists were already there.

Lowrey's dream for the future were shared by many others for whom the bridge was also a symbol. Its completion would allow the transportation of goods to southeastern Utah and northeastern Arizona which were separated from one another because of the Colorado River. The regions resources, primarily timber and mineral, would also be more easily exploited. At the time there were two bridges across the Colorado River. One was at Green River, Utah; the other some six hundred miles away at Topock, California. The construction of the bridge was also seen in progressive terms. Odessa Davenport in an April, 1928, article for Arizona Highways remarked tha the construction of the bridge would not only be a "decisive victory in man's battle to tame" the Colorado River but that its "remoteness from any human habitation or settlement", and the difficulty of transporting building materials and supplies were obstacles that American ingenuity could overcome. The bridge, she wrote will open a "great new north and south highway from Mexico to Canada." Not to be done in patriotic hyperbole, E. O. Whitman, writing for Progessive Arizona, wrote that the opening of the bridge would be seen by all as "an occassion of national significance...paying tribute to a monument to modern science and a history making highway link for the west".

But, the promises for an early spring in that high country can be elusive and for Buck Lowrey this was to be about the brightest moment in the next six years. Indeed, he had borrowed $10,000 from Lorenzo Hubbell, Jr. just a month before in order to finance an expansion of his newly-opened operation at Marble Canyon in order to accomodate what everyone knew would be an ever-increasing and lucrative tourist business. Buck Lowrey retired that night exhausted from his labors but secure in the knowledge that his future was as bright as springtime in northeastern Arizona.

David Crockett "Buck" Lowrey was born at Sparta, Tennessee, August 25, 1887. Before moving to Arizona, Buck Lowrey and his wife Florence Wilmeth, lived near Francis, Oklahoma, where Lowrey tried his hand at peanut farming and where two of the Lowrey children were born: Mary "Mamie" Bonheur Lowrey Woodruff (born January 25, 1911) and David Crockett Lowrey, Jr. (born May 19, 1912). Lowrey was then employed as a railroad yard worker but an accident which crushed his leg ended that career and the Lowreys moved near Waco, Texas, to live near Florence Lowrey's relatives. Lowrey tried his hand at farming and stockraising in 1917 and 1918 near Cleburn, Texas.

While in Texas, Lowrey met Claude D. Richardson a descendent of the Arizona pioneer traders Frederick Smith and George McAdams who traded on or near the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona. Like his ancestors, C. D. Richardson and his brothers owned and operated Indian trading posts all over the western half of the reservation.

Richardson was a member of a profession that was already old, well-established, and well-regulated. During the ninteenth century trading posts on and near the reservation were mainly independently owned and as numerous as competition would allow. However, by the first decades of the twentieth century the number of posts was reduced when a handfull of extended families consolidated ownership. They were the Richardsons, the Babbit Brothers, wholesalers from Flagstaff; John Lorenzo Hubbell and his sons, Lorenzo and Roman; and the Wetherills. The Richardsons opened or bought-out existing posts at Cameron, The Gap, Tuba City, Rainbow Bridge, Inscription House, Shonto, Kaibito (which they later sold to the Babbits), and Blue Canyon. Among others the Babbitts operated posts at Cedar Ridge, Cow Springs, Tonalea, and Tuba City. The Hubbells ran posts at Ganado, Keams Canyon, Oraibi, and eventually Marble Canyon. The Wetherills ran trading posts at Kayenta, Marsh Pass, where they traded primarily with the archaologists between 1921 and 1923; and at Piute Mesa which was only open during the fall seasons between 1923 and 1926.

Because the owners could not oversee the day to day operations at all of their posts, resident managers became increasingly common. These managers were also a mobile bunch, moving from one post to another as the owner and circumstances required. C. D. Richardson hired Buck Lowrey in 1918 to manage his trading post at Kaibito and Lowrey began what would become a ten year stint with Richardson. Lowrey's family would reside at almost all of Richardson's posts at one time or another. While the Lowreys were living at Kaibito, their third child, Virginia Lee Lowrey Greer was born March 22, 1920 in Tuba City. She was delivered by the local veteranarian. Between May and November, 1921, Buck Lowrey was employed by the federal government as an assistant veteranian in a program designed to eradicate a venereal disease in horses on the western reservation but a year later he was again in the employ of C. D. Richardson, this time at Richardson's trading post at Shonto. From Shonto the Lowrey's moved to Cedar Ridge and from there to The Gap where Lowrey was the managing trader from 1924 to 1925.

In 1925, Lowrey was 38 years old. Working for C. D. Richardson provided Lowrey with an income and a place for this family to live. Florence Lowrey was employed from time to time as a clerk at the post. However, the family was not putting down roots or building equity in a business of their own. Buck Lowrey was like many men of this generation who looked at their careers of regular employment with nothing to show for it at retirement. In January, 1925, Buck Lowrey began to change those circumstances. He and a partner Carl Calvin Mayhew applied for a license "to trade at a point where the eastern terminus of the proposed Bridge over the Colorado River below Lee's Ferry is to be located". They were the second traders to apply for a license at this location, the other being Kenneth Webber. In supporting Lowrey's and Mayhew's application, Navajo Agent Meyer noted that there would be enough business during the bridge construction to support two trading posts. In the meantime Lowrey continued to run the post at The Gap. But, before embarking on this own and leaving Richardson's employ Lowrey moved to Richardson's post at Tuba City. This move was designed to last only until Lowrey could build his post at the bridge site. But, because the construction of the bridge had not begun and the location as yet unprofitable, Lowrey did not begin construction of his trading post, although he "claimed" the site by virtue of this application for a license.

When Buck Lowrey applied for his license to operate a trading post at Marble Canyon in 1925, he followed the pattern established in the nineteenth century which was proving successful at many locations on the Navajo Reservation and near Marble Canyon. At the trading post at Canyon de Chelly, Sam Day and his sons guided archaeologists and tourists into the ruins and their business was so successful that when Cozy McSparron took over the post he amended his business to capitalize on the increasing number of scientists and tourists arriving in the area to examine the prehistoric sites within the canyon. He expanded the size and number of buildings desinged to cater to the needs of tourists. At Thunderbird Lodge, as McSparron now called his post, American manufacturerd goods were sold to Navajo customers in exchange for their wool and wollen blankets and American tourists could look at prehistoric Indian sites in the area while looking at contemporary Indians at the post.

At Cameron, Arizona, trading posts had operated at several different locations near the juncture of the Little Colorado and Colorado Rivers. When a bridge was constructed over the Little Colorado River canyon in 1911, Hubert Richardson built a trading post at the site in 1916. The trader not only traded with the local Indians, but he also traded with the growing number of travelers on the road. In 1917 Richardson put in a gasoline service station, a restaurant, and a hotel.

In late 1923, Hubert Richardson built a trading post in the Rainbow Bridge region on the Utah/Arizona boarder because he believed that the region's natural splendor would be an ideal tourist spot. Richardson believed that tourists would pay up to $2,500 each to see the natural bridge as well as many of the inaccessable archaeological sites in the region at Betatakin, Kiet Siel, and Navajo Canyon. Richarson was correct in that advanced reservations at the almost inaccessable trading post and lodge were kept full most of the spring, summer and fall.

To the sale of Indian arts and crafts and the region's natural history, traders in the early part of the twentieth century added another component to their diversified clientelle; movie producers, directors, and actors. Mike and Harry Goulding at Gouldings Trading Post in Monument Valley were perhaps involved in more Hollywood movies than any other traders. They accommodated film crews and arranged for Indian extras and indirectly effected the popular American and European perceptions about what they believed the west was, and what they believed it looked like. According to his daughter, Buck Lowrey made similar arrangements for movies shot near the trading post at The Gap, and Gladwell "Toney" Richardson, popular western novelist and trader, also provided services to movie personnel. The tourist business, whether it is in the form of sales of Indian arts and crafts, or in the form of tourist accomodations, is an important aspect to the modern trading post business.

The region's natural beauty coupled with the traffic on U. S. Highway 89 would make the Marble Canyon location a sure money-maker. Lowrey ignored the fact that his location was in one of the most remote regions of the Navajo Reservation with the lowest population density of the entire reservation and the poorest Navajos. Lowrey's dream for a tourist court and trading post was located at the end of the road from Flagstaff to the Colorado River, but until the bridge was completed this was a dead end.

Lowrey began by constructing a trading post on the east side of the river on the Navajo Reservation. Lowrey's Marble Canyon trading post was constructed of local rock and its simplicity reflected the reality that it was never intended to be a permanent trading post. Here he sold the Navajos food and manufactured goods in exchange for their wool and wool products, and when the bridge construction crew arrived at the site, Lowrey's trading post supplied the crew with meager supplies beyond their rations. But this post was only an expedient measure. Its primary drawback ironically was its location; land on the east side of the canyon was on the Navajo Reservation, land that Lowrey could never own, and any business conducted on the reservation was managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. There Lowrey would never be his own boss, nor would he be free of government interference. Across the canyon, however, was land Buck Lowrey could homestead. There he could run his affairs to suit himself; there he would provide a future for his family.

Even before the bridge was completed, Lowrey's trading post was already something of a tourist stop. In an article about his travels entitled "Behind the Beyond" Phil Townsend Hanna remarked that the beauty of the region was "greatly enhanced by the presence of Buck Lowrey, who with his gracious wife, caters to the creature comforts of the wayfarers who pass that way. Buck is a typical Indian trader who has spent his life amont the nomads. We sat upon the screen porch of his ranch house until another day was born listening to his illuminating and entertaining stories of Indian life, while the mighty Colorado purred by at our feet".

After the brige was opened in 1929, tourists arrived to marvel at man's accomplishments. Ernest McGaffey traveled from southern California via Williams, Arizona to the south rim of the Grand Canyon and on to Cameron and Tuba City. His objective "was the newly-opened Grand Canyon highway bridge across the Colorado River at Marble Caynon". The Fred Harvey Indian Detours made their first stop at Marble Canyon in April, 1929. The tour guide wrote that on Thursday, May 9, "we took lunch with us and drove to Lee's Ferry to see the new bridge across the Grand Canyon." On the way the tourists stopped at the trading post at Willow Springs, The Gap, and Cedar Ridge then they followed the road as it paralleled Echo Cliffs to Marble Canyon. "The Bridge," she wrote, "is really a marvelous piece of engineering and it gave us a thrill to take the first Harveycar across the Grand Canyon. Mr. and Mrs. Buck Lowrey have a Trading Post and Hotel at the Ferry".

The crash of the New York Stock Exchange in October, 1929, was not heard at Marble Canyon Lodge. But its effects were felt by Buck Lowrey, the infant tourist industry, as well as by many Indian traders on the Navajo Reservation and by the Navajos themselves. For the Indians and the traders, life never resumed its pre-depression ways. For David Crockett Lowrey, "his life was never the same". On March 16, 1929, Buck Lowrey borrowed $10,000 from Lorenzeo Hubbell, Jr. to exand his operation. Because the infant tourist industry in northeastern Arizona was all but shut down by the nation's economic woes, the loan, which carried 10 percent interest, had not been repaid by the fall of 1935. Lowrey had attempted to refinance the debt through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a New Deal program designed to refinance bank debts, but he had been turned down by them and by Valley Bank, an Arizona bank. By 1937, Lowrey faced a judgement of $625.00 from Albert A. Hayes, the receiver of the J. D. Hallstead Lumber Company. Lorenzeo Hubbell, who was also facing a sever cash flow problem of his own, paid the debt and encouraged Lowrey to find some way to finance the original loan. If that was not possible, Hubbell promised to help Lowrey find a buyer for the Marble Canyon Lodge.

Hubbell and Lowrey tried to interest Earl Shirley of the Fred Harvey Transportation Company at the Grand Canyon in the Marble Canyon Lodge. But, the Fred Harvey Comany was having its own economic problems. The $40,000 asking price for the land and improvements was too steep.

Had Buck Lowrey remained a trader on the Navajo Reservation he would not have been able to pay off his debt by selling the land and improvements. He could have sold only his inventory and whatever improvements the buyer was willing to pay for. That he had built Marble Canyon Lodge on land he had homesteaded meant that Lowrey could sell his land as well as the building and his inventory. There were ultimetaly no buyers for the Marble Canyon Lodge. Over the life of the loan, Lowrey had paid Hubbell $50 on the interest; the balance of the loan was almost $18,000. Lorenzo Hubbell Jr. finally took the facility in lieu of payment of the debt eight years to the day following the stock market crash.

Nora Cundell, a British author who lived off and on at Marble Canyon, was there when the Lowrey's left Marble Canyon. As she rode away from the canyon she wrote the she "felt that the whole, vast Vermillion Cliffs, and all that they had stood for, were crumbling and dissolving, as in a dream that is past". From Marble Canyon, Buck Lowrey and his family moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, where he and his son, David ran a service station. During the second world war Lowrey worked as a security officer at the U. S. Army Navajo Ordnance at Bellmont, about ten miles west of Flagstaff. Florence Lowrey died of cancer in 1949. Buck Lowrey remarried Alice May Reyktal of Prescott, Arizona, about 1951 and then moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where he died in 1963.

What is remarkable about David Crockett Lowrey's years on the Navajo Reservation is that his experiences are so unremarkable - - they are the experiences of most trading post managers. They enjoyed years of continual employment, but most left the business with nothing much to show for their years except for unique experiences and memories. Unlike his peers, however, Buck Lowrey managed to build, own, and operate his own trading post. He expanded at a time when business in the United States was booming and when the infant tourist industry in northeastern Arizona was expanding. However, when the tourist industry failed to develop because the nation's economy collapsed, Buck Lowrey did not have the financial reserves to weather the storm. Consequently, Buck Lowrey, like many Americans, in a variety of businesses found that his business was both over-extended and under capitalized. Neither their hard work, perseverence, nor their dreams were enough to pay off their indebtedness.