NAU 568-75		ca. 1912

Ellsworth Kolb arrived at the canyon in 1901 seeking adventure. His younger brother Emery followed within a year. By 1903, sixteen years before the creation of Grand Canyon National Park, they founded a photographic studio at the Bright Angel trailhead. At first it was nothing more than a small cave in the side of the canyon wall. With a blanket over the entrance, the cave served as a makeshift darkroom and lab until the first permanent structure was begun in 1904. That year the crude darkroom was replaced by a two-story wooden structure built on a 55-by-20-foot (17-by-6-m) rock shelf blasted out of the canyon wall.

NAU 568-2786		1904

The Kolb brothers secured a prominent place in Grand Canyon history in 1912 with the completion of a boat trip down the Colorado River. While not the first to dare the rapids, the Kolbs were the first to record their adventures (and misadventures!) on the river with a movie camera. After the river trip’s completion and a transcontinental movie promotional tour, they returned to Grand Canyon.

NAU 568-5380		1911

In 1915 the brothers completed a three-story addition (for living quarters) and a small showroom (part of the present gallery). The addition of the showroom allowed them to present their river trip movie to Grand Canyon visitors. Emery ran the movie daily from 1915 until his death in 1976, making it the
longest-running movie in history. The film’s recorded narration was added in 1932, though Emery continued to introduce the film in person. Often, after introducing the movie, Emery would say he was too old and feeble to narrate the whole film. Having said that, he would then spring past the astonished audience and up a flight of stairs to start the projector. In later years it was not the movie that drew people into the auditorium but Emery himself, the last living pioneer of Grand Canyon.

NAU 568-772		ca. 1915