Up on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, approximately 0.25 miles before the Widforss Trailhead (named for the early 20th-century Swedish-American painter Gunnar Widforss), a faint path heads across a meadow and leads to a small cave. The cave is empty and not much more than an overhang in the Kaibab Formation, and normally, it wouldn't have caught my interest, but its history did.
History
James T. "Uncle Jimmy" Owens, a former Texas cowboy and Yellowstone buffalo warden, was requested by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 to transfer to the North Rim to manage predator populations in the newly established 727,000-acre Grand Canyon National Game Preserve.
Owens spent the next 23 years at the Grand Canyon. This cave, however, was not his residence. Owens actually lived in a cabin on the rim during his tenure as a game warden. He is thought to have smoked meat in this cave.
