Brighty of the Grand Canyon
by Marguerite Henry
Category: Juvenile Nonfiction

Brighty was a real live burro who lived in the Grand Canyon. He is believed to have been brought from Flagstaf Arizona down to the Colorado River in the bottom of the Grand Canyon in 1890-1892. Whomever brought him there is believed to have drowned in the Colorado River. That persons body was never found. After that, Brighty spent the next thirty years as essentially an independent contractor. He would carry loads and passengers up and down the Bright Angel Trail in return for food. Nobody ever owned him. If the payment he received in food was not satisfactory, he would just leave and go to work for somebody else. Brighty was given his name by a prospector who found him after his original owners had died. Brighty became famous when US President Theodore Roosevelt used him to hunt mountain lions. An old prospector living in the canyon found the burro running wild along Bright Angle Creek and named him Brighty and held him not with ropes but with friendship. When the prospector mysteriously died, Brighty once again roamed free. On his trips up and down the canyon wall he hobnobbed with map-makers, artists and geologists and soon they were following his trail from rim to river.