The Kolb brothers, the Fred Harvey Company and a long fight over a Grand Canyon studio

For decades two brothers who ran a photography studio on the rim of the Grand Canyon fought with the biggest tourist company there and then with the National Park Service, and the building they fought over is still standing. This National Park Service article tells the story of the Kolb brothers and Kolb Studio.

Ellsworth Kolb and Emery Kolb.

Two brothers arrive

Ellsworth Kolb reached the rim in 1901, when there was no El Tovar Hotel or studio, only small tent cabins for train passengers. He persuaded his younger brother Emery to come west. Emery arrived in Williams, Arizona in October 1902 with a camera, a guitar and the clothes on his back, and $425 bought a photographic shop that happened to be for sale. A year later the brothers moved their business near the Bright Angel trailhead with permission from the trail's owner, first a tent on the rim, then a small wooden house in 1906 that they called Kolb Studio. They photographed visitors and lesser-known parts of the canyon, selling their photographs in a leather-bound book for three dollars each.

Kolb Studio.

The Fred Harvey Company

The Fred Harvey Company's Grand Canyon operations began with the El Tovar's completion in 1905. It was famous for food, elegant service and "Harvey Girl" waitresses, and it bought up businesses until it held a monopoly; only the Kolb and Verkamp families held out. Seeing the Kolbs' success, the company made its own photo album under an exclusive contract that barred the maker from working with other Grand Canyon interests, especially the Kolbs. They found another album company, but the episode started a long conflict.

Then the brothers ran the Colorado River, a hundred and one days of mishaps and triumphs filmed with a motion-picture camera. They planned to show the film at the studio, but the National Forest Service, which oversaw the canyon then, stopped them, and the article says the Harvey Company influenced that. The brothers toured the eastern United States with a film lecture series instead, and it was a success except for an Ohio tour in 1913, which lost money after one brother insisted on going without a guaranteed fee. The row that followed ended the partnership. A coin toss gave Emery the studio, and Ellsworth moved to Los Angeles.

Lookout Studio and the rim

In 1914 the company built Lookout Studio a short way from Kolb Studio, along with a mule corral that blocked the rim trail and hid the studio from view. Emery thought it was meant to deter visitors, and he was proved right when he learned the El Tovar's manager had complained that Kolb Studio took business. Emery wrote that Lookout Studio was "an obstruction to his business." The company's owner scolded the manager and said Emery's lecturing helped promote the canyon.

A writer's introduction to a book had said Harvey employees tried to stop him and his wife from visiting the studio; the owner asked him to retract it, he refused, and the two sides agreed that employees would give accurate information about Kolb Studio and the line would be removed from the next edition. The feud subsided for a time.

The National Park Service years

Grand Canyon National Park was created in 1919, when the Kolbs signed the first of many ten-year concession agreements, and business boomed in the twenties. The Great Depression hurt it, and Emery blamed park rules, including a 1932 ban on public advertising or soliciting. He protested for five years until a Harvey hotel manager agreed to display Kolb literature and place a directional sign, which Emery rejected because it would miss visitors arriving by car. The park later let him hand out literature at points in the park.

In 1962 the park service offered Emery a three-year concession with a clause giving it the studio on his death. It wanted to demolish a building whose architecture did not fit the other buildings. Emery refused, saying it would deprive his daughter of the family business. A U.S. senator from Arizona got the term lengthened to five years but could not remove the clause. Emery asked for $65,000 for the studio and the right to live there until his death. The conflict continued until Congress passed the Historic Sites Act, which the article says protects any park structure over 50 years old.

Knowing the studio would stand, Emery began giving away his belongings. He gave his photographs and papers not to the park museum but to a university in Flagstaff. He died in December 1976 at 96 and is buried in the Grand Canyon Pioneer Cemetery.

Kolb Studio today. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Sources

• National Park Service article (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/kolb-brothers-conflict-on-the-canyon-s-rim.htm), a U.S. government work in the public domain. The article's date for the studio's opening, which disagrees with its building date, and its count of years of conflict are left out; the names of the brothers' family members are not given.
• National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx's own words.