10/27/2009 1:39:00 PM See the cemetery under a full moon Special full moon hike this Halloween at Grand Canyon
Patrick Whitehurst/WGCN
Park Ranger Nicole DeLuca stands before a memorial for those who lost their lives in a 1956 plane crash over Grand Canyon. DeLuca will host a tour of the cemetery on Halloween night.
GRAND CANYON, Ariz. - The Grand Canyon Cemetery. A full moon. Halloween night.
Those are ingredients for what will be an evening to remember, as rangers at the Grand Canyon National Park host a guided hike of the Grand Canyon Cemetery. The tour begins at 8:30 p.m. under the light of a full moon, which just so happens to fall on Halloween night. Park Ranger Nicole DeLuca offers the tours.
"I lead guided hikes through the cemetery on full moon nights," she said. "We come into the cemetery and we talk about some of the people that are buried within the cemetery and a little bit about the cemetery itself. We're actually one of the few national parks that has its own cemetery. It all kind of started with a couple of the early pioneers that were buried here. John Hance, he was buried here in 1919. When a few other people wanted to start being buried within the Grand Canyon area, they decided to kind of consolidate and have them all buried in one area. They decided to establish this area as a cemetery in 1924. There are approximately 250 people buried within this cemetery now."
On average, DeLuca said there were roughly four people buried at the cemetery each year.
"This year we had to eight to nine people buried here, so it was a little bit higher," DeLuca said. "There will be a cap at some point, but they aren't really sure when that will come."
Grand Canyon notables buried at the cemetery include the Kolb brothers and John Hance, known for being one of the first pioneers to settle in the area, according to DeLuca.
"He had quite an interesting life. He is known as kind of the story teller here at Grand Canyon National Park, he tried mining for a while and, as many miners here in Grand Canyon realized, that it wasn't really too lucrative, so he kind of went into the tourism business. He told a lot of tells. The Fred Harvey Company actually hired him to sit in the El Tovar and just talk to guests. He was a personal tour guide for Teddy Roosevelt, when Teddy Roosevelt came out here and visited. There are all sorts of amazing characters buried here."
For one to be buried at the Grand Canyon Cemetery, there are a number of rules. Primarily, anyone buried there has to have lived in the national park for three years.
"It doesn't have to be consecutive," DeLuca said.
While she said she isn't aware of any ghost stories within the cemetery itself, DeLuca said she has heard of a number of ghost stories in the park.
"There are a few people who are buried outside of the grounds," she said. "One of which was a trail crew fellow who was working down at the bottom, kind of around Phantom Ranch and a boulder actually came loose and killed him. There's actually a little bit of tombstone down there honoring him. He wanted to be laid to rest in the area he worked. He loved working down in the Canyon and there's actually a ghost story that comes from that - that there is a light that comes from the tombstone. A couple of park rangers and trail crew fellows have actually said that they have seen that light."
DeLuca called the cemetery at Grand Canyon one of the area's "untapped resources."
"A lot of people that come to the Grand Canyon don't even realize we have this awesome gravesite, especially one with such a history," DeLuca said. "You can tell the human story here at Grand Canyon from inside of this graveyard. You have the Kolb brothers here, John Hance, Edward McKee, he was a huge geologist naturalist who worked for the park service. You have CCC members buried here, Harvey Girls, just an incredible history. The plane crash that occurred over the Grand Canyon in 1956, we have a memorial honoring them. One hundred and twenty-eight died. It was a TWA flight and another airline. They both left L.A. (Los Angeles) about three minutes apart and when they got over the Grand Canyon area, one plane clipped the other plane. There's actually still some wreckage within the Canyon. People who end up by Crash Canyon, where they call it, where some of the wreckage is, said they have seen some pretty weird stuff there as well."
There are a number of reasons why DeLuca prefers to hold the tour under a full moon.
"It's just a better time to be out and you always have that eerie thing about being out under a full moon. Also it gives us more light. Walking around here at night, it gets really dark. We have some great night skies, so the full moon give us a little more light," DeLuca said.
In the summer, DeLuca said over 250 have turned out for the cemetery program, adding that she asks people to stay on the trails at the cemetery out of respect for those who have been laid to rest there.
"I have a pretty good voice, so people can hear me pretty clearly. I bring a lantern with me and tell all of them to bring light sources, flashlights, headlamps," DeLuca said.
This is her fourth month offering the program at Grand Canyon.
"It's definitely become one of my programs that I have given," DeLuca said.
Anyone interested in taking the Halloween tour are asked to meet outside the Shrine of Ages building a little before 8:30 p.m. For more information on the guided cemetery hikes, call the park service's general information number at (928) 638-7888.
"There might be some historic figures meeting us that night," DeLuca hinted.
