(Roughly) Daily

“I have always said that I would make more money out of the Grand Canyon than any other man.” Ralph H. Cameron, an entrepreneur in both business and politics, desired nothing less than a fortune from the canyon, and did not mind misusing laws—or his influence—to obtain it. From the time he arrived in Arizona in 1883, until he left under a cloud of disapproval after his single term in the Senate ended in 1927, Cameron used mining laws for many purposes other than mining.

Although Cameron began his work in the Grand Canyon legitimately, he drifted away from lawful practices, seeking more power and more money. Cameron wandered from early mines at the Grand Canyon to early tourist trails and eventually to Congress. But his routes repeatedly crossed opponents, from railroad companies to the federal government. He masked personal interests as public-mindedness, a charade hard to conceal forever. Seeing how Cameron bilked the public and opposed federal conservation efforts offers a window to the ways such questionable ethics undermined the public good to feed simple greed…

Ralph H. Cameron staked mining claims around the Grand Canyon, seeking to privatize it. When the federal government fought back, he ran for Senate. The cautionary tale of “The Man Who Tried to Claim the Grand Canyon.”

* Wallace Stegner

###

As we contemplate the commons, we might recall that it was on this date in 1961 that the Cape Cod National Seashore was created.  Encompassing 43,607 acres– and 40 miles of seashore– on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, it includes ponds, woods and beachfront in the Atlantic coastal pine barrens ecoregion in and around the towns of Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans and Chatham.

source