Before we get back to the chronology, here is one story, about TR's creation of the first Grand Canyon National Monument , as told by Hal Rothman in his 1989 America's National Monuments: The Politics of Preservation (Univ. of Illinois, ch 4. Find the book on the website nps.gov/history).
1903, TR visits the Canyon, and someone tells him that the railroad, the Santa Fe, having just recently brought its tracks almost to the rim, had decided to build a hotel back from the rim. TR says he is pleased at this restraint. A year later, El Tovar, on the rim, opened. Rothman notes there were no laws preventing such construction in a national forest. No surprise; as Rousseau pointed out, laws are necessary to protect those who would obey them even if they didn't exist from those who break them even when they do. It would have been the gentlemanly thing to do, leaving the rim in a natural condition, so visitors could see the Canyon in its primordial frame.
