Its hangar and building now abandoned and nearly forgotten in the Kaibab National Forest, the Red Butte Airfield was the Grand Canyon’s original airport, and it hosted some notable guests in its time. Retired army pilot J. Parker Van Zandt and engineer B. Russell Shaw, who had worked with aviation pioneers the Wright Brothers, opened the airfield in 1927 as Scenic Airlines, Inc. Soon after it opened, the stock market crash that sparked the Great Depression forced them to sell the airfield. The new owners renamed the airfield “Grand Canyon…
