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One of the many intriguing places at Grand Canyon is the remote area at the west end of the North Rim known as Toroweap or Tuweep. This quiet, lonely place averages eight visitors per day. That’s 3,000 people per year out of Grand Canyon’s total of five million annual visitors.

Most people use the terms Toroweap and Tuweep (Tu-veep) interchangeably, but there’s a technical difference.

Toroweap refers to various named landforms — Toroweap Valley, Toroweap Point, Toroweap Lake, and Toroweap Overlook (the latter being a spot at the rim where the Colorado River is 3,000 feet below you, straight down). In Paiute, Toroweap means “dry valley” or “barren valley.”

Tuweep is the general spot on the map — a scattered settlement, if you can call it that, consisting of a small ranger station, the ranger’s residence, a few outbuildings, a Park Service airstrip, a primitive campground, and half a dozen trails of various lengths and degrees of difficulty. Tuweep is a Paiute word for “the earth.”

I’ve been to Toroweap twice. My first trip, in April 2000, was a four-day camping and hiking trip with the Grand Canyon Field Institute. Experienced guides made all the arrangements, provided transportation, and watched out for us. The trip was deceptively easy.

My second visit was an ill-fated solo hike in September 2001, cut short in dramatic fashion when I got food poisoning. The experience was sobering and scary.

I think of Toroweap/Tuweep as having four defining features.

The first is its remote location, at the end of a treacherous washboard road, 60 miles from the nearest pavement, 75 miles from the nearest town. The odds are high that your vehicle will have a flat tire, maybe two, somewhere along the way.

Inching along the road to Tuweep.

The second feature is the lack of services. There is no water, food, gas, lodging, phone service, or internet connection. You bring everything you need, and you solve your own problems. Yes, the ranger station is connected to park headquarters by radio, but the ranger station is six miles from the campground and the overlook.

Feature three is the scenery. The views of Toroweap Valley, the inner canyon, the river, and the ancient lava flows are truly spectacular. They will give you goosebumps.

Looking east/upstream from Toroweap Overlook.

The downstream view from Toroweap Overlook showing Lava Falls, the baddest rapid on the river. Covering the right bank: its namesake lava flow.

The fourth defining feature is historical: the story of John Hauert Riffey, who served as the sole park ranger at Tuweep from 1942 until 1980. A career of 38 years at one of the loneliest, most isolated places on the map.

Tuweep is stark desert country. The area is both bleak and beautiful, a mix of sagebrush, yucca, cacti, piñon pine, and rock. The weather, summer and winter, often is extreme.

Toroweap Lake is normally dry. Water collects there, and in scattered pockets among the rocks, only briefly after a storm.

The Tuweep campground.

The Tuweep Ranger Station.

John H. Riffey from Durango, Colorado, held degrees in forestry and range management when, in 1942, he accepted a ranger position at Grand Canyon National Monument. When he and his wife Laura arrived at Tuweep, they used firewood to heat the ranger’s residence, cooked on a gas stove, and collected rainwater and snowmelt in cisterns. They had no electricity and no refrigerator. Their nearest neighbor was a rancher who lived 20 miles north.

Under circumstances that might drive others mad, John and Laura were comfortable and content at Tuweep.

Riffey’s job was to take care of anything that needed attention. He repaired whatever broke, maintained the campground, greeted visitors, pulled vehicles from the mud, put out wildfires, and collected trash.

His equipment included a road grader to repair the local roads after storms. He kept records about the local flora and fauna. He submitted the reports demanded by the park bureaucracy.

Laura took an interest in the area’s birds, native and migratory. She had no training in such things, but for years, she kept detailed records of her observations. Her notes are considered scientifically important and are preserved in the park’s archives.

In 1943, John was drafted into the Army, and he served for 17 months as a medical technician on a hospital ship. After the war ended, John and Laura returned at Tuweep.

The years passed, and John did his job well. He received regular commendations and awards, while simultaneously turning down promotions that would require him to relocate.

By the late 1950s, John had become known around the Park Service for his dedication, hard work, and unusually long service at the same location. Normally, rangers take new assignments every few years.

At one point, the park superintendent ordered Riffey to accept a transfer, on the grounds that rotating to new assignments was what park rangers did. Riffey refused.

The superintendent gave Riffey a choice: leave Tuweep or face dismissal. When Riffey chose dismissal, the superintendent backed down. Riffey was quietly cheered by rangers throughout the Park Service. His status as a living legend was strengthened.

Ranger John H. Riffey.

Laura, who had several health issues, died in 1962. John stayed on the job. He said he had no problem living alone, although he enjoyed greeting visitors. “You like people if you are not overrun with them,” he explained.

He told a reporter, “My only contribution to society is trying to keep this place just like it is.”

Riffey may have been content with his solitude, but he didn’t remain a bachelor for long. In the spring of 1964, a graduate student from the University of Utah, Meribeth Mitchell, came to Tuweep to study the vegetation. She was 40, John was 53.

After her trip, they corresponded often. She returned to Tuweep in the fall, after which the correspondence continued. They were married in 1965.

Meribeth Riffey kept her job teaching biology at Western Washington University, north of Seattle, but she spent spring and summer at Tuweep. John scheduled his vacations in winter and spent them with Meribeth.

Sometime in the late 1960s, John took flying lessons and purchased a second-hand Piper Cub. He named the aircraft Pogo. A wooden enclosure to block the strong winds served as a hangar. Riffey nailed a sign to the enclosure that read

TUWEEP INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
SOUTH CONCOURSE
GATE 2

With Pogo, John was able to patrol thousands of acres around Tuweep and make quick hops to civilization for mail and groceries. He was known to fly through Grand Canyon below the rim. Meribeth was a regular passenger.

Ranger Riffey standing next to Pogo.

In July 1980, as John and a friend were hauling water to Tuweep from a nearby spring, John’s vision blurred, and he became weak. It was the beginning of a heart attack. The friend took the wheel and tried to reach the hospital in St. George, but John died on the way. He would have turned 69 in August.

With Meribeth’s permission, the park superintendent lobbied his superiors to suspend the rules and allow John to be buried at Tuweep. The request was granted. A spot with a sweeping view of the valley was chosen along the road between the ranger station and Toroweap Overlook.

This is inscribed on his monument:

John H. Riffey
‘The Last Old Time Ranger’

The man who could spend a lifetime on the rim and not waste a minute
National Park Ranger, Tuweep from 1942 to 1980
Good Samaritan, gentle friend, teller of tall tales

Meribeth died in 1993 and is buried beside him.

When I ventured out to Toroweap in 2000 and 2001, I knew nothing about John, Laura, and Meribeth Riffey. If the instructors at Grand Canyon Field Institute mentioned them, it didn’t register.

That’s a shame. I have vivid memories of Toroweap and wonderful images in my mind’s eye, but knowing this part of the human history adds to my appreciation of the place.

It also makes me regret that I missed a chance to visit the graves and pay my respects.