The Grand Canyon Railway Died in 1968. It Came Back.

In July 1968, the last train from Williams, Arizona pulled into the Grand Canyon with three passengers aboard. Interstate highways and cheap cars had done what nothing else could. They killed a railroad that had carried tourists to the rim since 1901.

The Line Nobody Wanted

The Santa Fe Railway dropped its passenger service that summer. Freight trains kept running for a few more years, then stopped too, in 1974.

The tracks through the pine forest of the Kaibab Plateau just sat there. A company that later tried and failed to revive the line began tearing up sections of rail for scrap.

By 1988, the Williams depot was abandoned. Weeds grew between the ties.

A Couple Bought the Wreck

Arizona business owners Max and Thelma Biegert bought the dead railroad in 1988. They announced their plan to rebuild it on January 10, 1989.

Crews rebuilt washed-out sections and bridges along all 65 miles of track between Williams and the canyon. They replaced roughly 30,000 railroad ties, along with countless rails and spikes.

Both depots got restored too, the one in Williams and the one at the South Rim.

88 Years to the Day

The Biegerts picked their reopening date on purpose. On September 17, 1989, a train ran from Williams to the Grand Canyon for the first time in 21 years.

That was exactly 88 years to the day since the first train had made the same trip in 1901. Around 10,000 people showed up to watch it happen.

Still Running Every Morning

The Grand Canyon Railway never stopped again. By 1993, it was carrying more than 105,000 passengers a year and pulling roughly 40,000 cars off the road into the park.

Ridership kept climbing. By 2004, more than 225,000 people a year were riding the rails instead of driving. Xanterra Travel Collection bought the railway from the Biegerts in 2007 and still runs it today.

A train still leaves Williams every morning for the two-hour, fifteen-minute run to the South Rim, on the same 65 miles of track that once sat rotting and forgotten.