"At 8,000 feet above sea level, the North Rim's broad plateaus that drop into the canyon are thickly forested with pine trees. Businesses of any kind are few and far between, making places like the Jacob Lake Inn a sort of beacon in the wilderness. It offers the only fresh cookies for at least 25 miles in any direction, and on a recent bustling Sunday morning visitors lined up at the counter for these famous delicacies."
"Melinda Rich Marshall's great-grandparents opened the inn more than 100 years ago. The business, which also includes a restaurant and a gift shop filled with Native American jewelry and other curios, largely depends on visitors to the national park. Over the years it has seen its share of wildfires. "In my lifetime, I can think of, like, six that have created economic problems for our family and for Jacob Lake," says Rich Marshall."
The Grand Canyon's remote North Rim sits at about 8,000 feet with broad pine-forested plateaus and far fewer visitors than the South Rim. Jacob Lake Inn functions as a lone hub offering lodging, a restaurant and a gift shop stocked with Native American jewelry, and it attracts visitors with fresh-baked goods. A fast-moving wildfire prompted urgent evacuations, and a later Dragon Bravo Fire expanded, closing the North Rim indefinitely. The inn has refunded roughly $350,000 in reservations and faces severe financial uncertainty for the coming winter as nearby gateway communities absorb repeated wildfire-driven economic harm.
Read at www.npr.org
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]