Getting to the South Rim used to be a bone-rattling nightmare. Passengers endured an eight-hour stagecoach ordeal from Flagstaff. Brutal. Then, in September 1901, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe completed a 64-mile steel ribbon from Williams. This changed everything. Steam locomotives did not just bring wealthy Victorian tourists to the rim they kept them alive by hauling millions of gallons of fresh water in massive tank cars across the dry plateau. Without those daily water deliveries, the massive El Tovar Hotel, built in 1905, could never have operated.

But then cars took over. The postwar boom of the 1950s made the family road trip king, which quickly choked the life out of passenger rail. The line died in 1968. For twenty-one years, the tracks just rusted. A couple named Max and Thelma Biegert bought the whole operation and poured their own money into resurrecting it. They rebuilt the old steam engines and tracked down vintage 1920s Harriman passenger cars, restarting service in 1989. Today, the railway runs daily. It pulls thousands of tourists out of their rental cars, keeping tons of exhaust out of the canyon's fragile air. Pure, heavy-metal history in motion.