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.
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.
During this time, Owens and his dog, Pot Hound, claimed to have eliminated over 600 mountain lions between 1907 and 1919 as part of the preserve's wildlife management strategy. This predator removal had significant ecological consequences. The deer population exploded from approximately 10,000 in 1906 to between 30,000 and 50,000 by 1922. The overpopulation led to widespread overgrazing, affecting both livestock and the deer themselves. The landscape bore witness to these changes, with quaking aspens and just about anything else the deer could reach suffering severe defoliation. The effects of the deer overpopulation suppressed foliage regeneration for over a decade. Much has changed since Uncle Jimmy's time on the North Rim.
