The Hualapai, meaning "People of The Tall Pines," are native people of the Southwest. Traditionally hunter-gatherers, they inhabited an area of more than 5 million acres. Their homeland stretched from the Grand Canyon southward to the Santa Maria River and from the Black Mountains eastward to the pine forests of the San Francisco peaks. Today, the Hualapai American Indian Reservation, created in 1883, is nearly 1,000,000 acres that includes 108 miles of the Colorado River and Grand Canyon. There are approximately 2,100 enrolled members of the Hualapai Tribe and nearly half live in Peach Springs, the capital of the Hualapai Nation, on Historic Route 66.
Years of social and economic hardship led Hualapai Leaders to take measures that would lead to an independent future for the generations to come. As a result, the Hualapai decided to open their land to visitors in 1988, creating Grand Canyon West as a tourism destination. Currently, multiple improvements – including a "Boys and Girls Club" facility, a "Head Start" facility and a Social Services building – have been built in Peach Springs. Many more projects are planned for the future, all made possible by Hualapai Tourism.