Roadside Rest

John Hance's Deepest Tall Tales Are Masterful Visual Adventures in the Grand Canyon

In paying my respects at the grave of Capt. John Hance in the Grand Canyon Village cemetery recently, I confirmed an amusing rumor. The champion liar's footstone indeed is 12 feet 6 inches removed from his headstone.

A visual tall tale from the master for eternity.

Really only 6 feet 3, scarecrow-lean, Santa Claus-bearded John Hance regaled gullible tourists at the Canyon a century or so ago. He told so many fibs, history is hard put to trace his origins. But likely the man was born during the 1830s in Tennessee. At a "prime age" (he said), he first served as a Confederate soldier during the Civil War, was captured, then fought for the North.

Mustered out at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, John and his brother drifted around Western states and territories. Once he had a wife, but the marriage soured. As Hance explained, "She took the house, and I took the road."

Along about then, fantasy overtook Hance reality.

"I was down in Texas, wanting to move on, when abruptly I was caught in a stampede of buffalo. I climbed a tree and dropped onto the back of a big bull. I rode that critter for two weeks, all the way to Arizona."

If a dude happened to ask how he kept from starving to death, Hance would reply, "Oh, with that hump of a buffalo right in front of me, I had plenty to eat. You know, buffalo hump is the tastiest part of the animal."

By whatever route, Hance is remembered as the first white resident at the Canyon. After arriving in 1883, he built a log cabin, managed some asbestos mines, improved many trails around the South Rim of the Canyon, and guided adventurous tourists. Why would he be compelled to tell tall tales about a geographical feature astounding enough unembellished? It is, after all, a hole in the ground averaging a mile deep, four to 18 miles wide, and 277 Colorado River miles long.

Yet Hance averred, "It was dug by a Scot lookin' for a lost nickel. Where he piled the dirt became the San Francisco Peaks."

When the railroad reached the South Rim, the Fred Harvey Company hired Hance to hang out around the hotels and entertain the guests. The role called for Hance to be himself - whiskery visage, frontier duds, Southern drawl, authentic armament, and infinite deceit.

"Old Roany, my best hoss, could jump across the Canyon. He would start his run at Tusayan and build up speed, kick off the South Rim in a great leap, and land light as a feather on the North Rim. I often rode him to enjoy the view. But one day Old Roany was off his feed, and he only jumped half way. Down we fell. The hoss was kilt. But I saved myself by dismounting, three feet from the bottom."

In some accident or other Hance had lost an index finger, and holding the stump aloft, he would declare, "Folks, I wore this finger plumb off, a-pointing out the scenery."

With his repertoire of tall tales, Hance illuminated the spectrum of Canyon superlatives: thunderstorms you can look down on; rock formations 2 billion years old; mountains rearing from the Canyon floor; days when the Canyon fills to the brim with white opaque fog, resembling a vast vessel of hard-packed snow. Hance seized upon suchoccasions to act out his most famous skit. Carrying snowshoes, he would sidle up to a knot of tourists and allow, "Fog's about right to cross." Then he'd go to the Rim and stick out a foot, as if testing. "Yep, just right. But it's short-erto the North Rim if I start from Yaki Point. Watch tonight and you'll see my campfire over there." And many a faithful dude would stay up late to peer into the gloom.

The force of the sculptor Colorado River naturally stimulated the Hance imagination. But as Hance would have it, "Too thick to drink and too thin to plow that's how muddy the river got. One day I stooped to drink, and the mud was thick! I tried to bite the water off, but my teeth were bad. Finally, I managed to pull my hunting knife out of my boot and cut off the water."

Many believed him. Once Hance described his irrigation procedure, "I have a pair of powerful binoculars which I focus on the river. When I see the water drawn to within six inches of the Rim, I siphon it into my garden."

Of course, he said, his garden was so fertile, his huge melons were only seven to the dozen. One tragic day, Hance with his spyglass watched a tourist who had fallen off the Rim. "He was wearing rubber boots, and he landed on his feet, only to bounce back up, only to fall down again. Finally, we had to shoot him to keep him from starving to death."

Hance himself died on January 6, 1919, revered, famous, and eulogized: "Consciously, he is a teller of whopping lies a career fraught with risk, as he said, 'I caught myself telling the truth one terrible day, but I lied my way out of it."