English: Grand Canyon Pioneer Cemetery, part of the Grand Canyon Village National Historic District-has more than 390 individual graves, several of which date back to before the establishment of the park and the dedication of the cemetery in 1928. The Grand Canyon Village's initial listing on the National Register of Historic Places took place on November 20, 1975 and included 39 buildings, then was expanded in 1982 to include the Bright Angel Lodge and an additional 25 buildings. The district was declared a National Historic Landmark District on February 18, 1987. People interred at the cemetery include Grand Canyon pioneers, war veterans, tribal members, employees and concessioners of the park, U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service members and their families. The cemetery, grave markers, and gateway arch are included on the List of Classified Historic Structures in Grand Canyon National Park.

The cemetery is located next to Shrine of the Ages on the South Rim. The area is halfway between El Tovar and Yavapai Point. Some of the Canyon's first residents were to come to odds with the Fred Harvey Company, that would hire architect Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter to build the parks many buildings that are now National Historic Landmarks. Harvey came into the area when it was wild to create a destination area worth visiting. He built tents and a train that would come in and dump tourists who wanted to experience the rough and tumble location. Wild elk, bison, bears, dear and a plethora of other wildlife fill the park all year long — the snow just drew a tougher kind of tourist.

Harvey was famous for his tourist destinations and created positions for young, good-looking women called the "Harvey Girls," kind of the stewardesses of the Grand Canyon hotels and restaurants he built. Many of these Harvey Girls made great wives for the lonely rangers, and would even become rangers once Harvey pulled up stakes.

Legendary Canyon photographers Emery and Ellsworth Kolb would go head-to-head against Harvey who had created a monopoly by corning the printer and forcing an exclusive for little memory album photo books. The war became a heated one that would last decades, the brothers would try their hand at movies, travel, come back, try to strike a deal with the parks system. In the end the brothers were buried in the Pioneer Cemetery, one with his wife and daughter. Their sad legacy was so filled with ups and downs, leaving thousands of photographic memories behind, a collection they left to the University of Northern Arizona. Today, you can visit the cliff-side Kolb Studio, left to the park system and now a protected museum and part of the Grand Canyon Village National Historic District.

Generations of the Verkamp family, who owned the first curio shop at the South Rim, are also buried behind the big log gates, as well as John Hance, one of the Canyon's first residents. Also buried there are many of the hikers who met their end there and who left no way to contact their relatives. Twenty-eight members of the

The majority of graves have large local boulders and stones crafted into memorials. The cemetery itself is like a national park, shaded by trees with morning and late afternoon with warm lights streaming through. To go through and read the heartfelt epithets is to know the joys and tragedies of the Grand Canyon park itself. Reading about babies who were born still is to know the park's stifled joy of a new member of their family, the loss of grandmothers and grandfathers who held the community together is to know the community that mourned for its elders. Rangers who were found years later after accidents in the canyon were celebrated when their bodies were carried home to rest. Because it was a destination point, you can see several places in the cemetery where a sickness swept through and took handfuls of residents at a time. And when tragedy struck and a ranger died in the line of their duties, you can feel the sadness their friends and family felt, many still with tokens remaining on their graves of that time.

Kenneth Carmel Patrick's (1933-1973) poet, faithful husband and Arizona State Patrolman, has a memorial telling the entire story of his idyllic life — up to the time he accidentally stumbled upon some poachers, "They just shot him."

There are two particularly heart-wrenching tombstones belonging to Jessica Cochran and Paco Hunter, boyfriend and girlfriend who were in a car during the afternoon and were killed by a driver, also killed, who veered into their lane. Their story is like one of those rock and roll ballads from the 1950s. Now they are buried side-by-side. Following the ceremony, Jessica and Paco were laid to rest side-by-side in Grand Canyon Cemetery. Said Jon Bowser, her uncle, in the local paper. “These kids are together forever in a place that they loved.”

William Bass was an early pioneer of the Grand Canyon. In 1884, he rallied the local Havasupai Native Americans to help build a cabin, and rallied their causes locally and in D.C. His legacies are many in the Grand Canyon, as he established a river camp at Bass Ferry, made mineral stakes and guided the first geological survey in the 1890s. He also designed and oversaw the construction of the cableway across the Colorado River in 1906. A big advocate for education, he helped the Grand Canyon community's first school in 1911. He succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage. His legend to large to contain in a grave, his ashes were scattered on the wind over the Grand Canyon and the a memorial stone was raised in his memory. His wife Ada Lenore "1st White Woman to raise a family on the rim of the Grand Canyon," (she used to hike down and wash the clothes in the river below) and children, William Bass, Grand Canyon tour guide (buried in another county with his wife and child) and Edith Jane Bass Lauzon, her husband, a park ranger who died 25 years later, their son Loren Hampton Lauzon who lived to the ripe age of 79 and his second wife are buried there with them. Many of the early families met their spouses and had their children, died and were buried on the Canyon rim. People came from all over the world to live in the national park and love stories of couples who'd met while in the service of the park system dot the cemetery's landscape.

The interred include U.S. Congressman/U.S. Senator Ralph Henry Camron (1953). He located to Arizona in 1883, and was a businessman, prospector and finally, politician. He served as a territorial delegate and Arizona’s first rep in the US Senate. His accomplishments in the Grand Canyon included building the Bright Angel trail and was Sheriff of Coconino County, (1891, 1894-98), and was on the board of supervisors of the county 1905-07. In 1909, he went beyond the canyon and was elected a Republican Delegate to the Sixty-first and Sixty-second Congresses, serving until 1912. When Arizona was admitted as a State into the Union, he was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate, serving 1921-27. He then went into gold mining in California and Arizona, and was on the road on a business trip on the East Coast and died of a heart attack at age 89.

Dr. Edwin Dinwiddle McKee took over the position of Park Naturalist at Grand Canyon National Park 1929. He established nature walks, educational pamphlets and was the first Executive Secretary of the Grand Canyon Natural History Association. He was a trained geologist who enjoyed fame around the world and authored a book, Ancient Landscapes of the Grand Canyon Region, published in 1931. You may read his field notes (in his own handwriting) here https://archive.org/details/FieldnotesArizo00Walc/page/n0 https://archive.org/details/FieldnotesArizo00Walc/page/n0 https://archive.org/details/paleotectonicinv02mcke https://archive.org/details/supaigroupsubdiv00mcke/page/n0 His work in geology was well-acknowledged and in1940 he took a position as a geology professor at the University of Arizona. In 1957, Northern Arizona University honored him with an honorary PhD in science. His final honors, before his death in 1984, was the title of Honorary Member of the Society for Sedimentary Science in 1970, and the society's highest medal of recognition, the William H. Twenhofel Medal for Excellence in Sedimentary Geology. After his death, McKee Point, an overlook above the Colorado River and the Hualapai Reservation, was named in his honor. His wife Barbara is also buried at the cemetery, the couple had no children.

World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979

After nearly 100 years since its opening, Grand Canyon Pioneer Cemetery will close to new burials due to lack of space. Although the cemetery is closed to new plots, some burials may continue for individuals with a spouse or immediate family already interred in the cemetery.