1. What is the tourism potential of the Nineteenth Century area, expressed both in terms of dollars and in terms of local employment? It may make sense to develop alternative answers to this question, assuming different sizes for the towns and different means of public transportation for reaching them. (On the other hand, the answers should probably all assume that towns are within the general size range specified in the proposal, and should take as a given that automobile access will not be available.) How would this visitation break down between people visiting for a day, and for a week or longer? Between domestic and foreign visitors? Between summertime and other seasons? What mix of activities would visitors engage in? How would these activities affect the probable mix between lower- and higher-wage jobs? These issues are important to many people involved in western land-use issues, but are probably particularly important to the governments of the rural counties, where wages and employment are primary issues.

2. Are there forms of light manufacturing that would prosper in the towns of the Nineteenth Century rings, so that the economy of this area need not be wholly dependent on tourism? Suitable businesses are presumably "clean" ones where transportation and energy costs are not important components of the final product, where labor costs are now well above minimum wage, but where workers might accept a reduction in wages in exchange for the perceived higher quality of life in these areas. Arts and crafts are obvious candidates, but are there other likely businesses more suited to volume production and employment? Could some assembly of high-tech components be carried out with low-tech methods? Would farmers find it profitable to raise crops using higher-cost Nineteenth Century technology? Would it become profitable to raise food for local consumption if transportation costs for food grown elsewhere rose above a certain level?

3. Are we right in assuming that the scattered towns and connecting roads of the Nineteenth Century area will have no substantial adverse effects on wildlife?

4. What are the economics of constructing a steam railroad to serve the principal towns in the outer Nineteenth Century ring? What are the construction costs, on various assumptions (single track, double track, etc.)? What are the operating costs? Can the costs be reduced by running the railroad as part of a museum such as the Smithsonian? Will the railroad be self-sustaining, or will it have to be subsidized? Can it be self-sustaining with respect to operating costs once the construction has been paid for? Is there a threshold of industrial traffic (see question 2, above) beyond which it becomes self-sustaining?

5. To what degree would the answers to the above questions be different for the towns of the inner Nineteenth Century ring, which would not be served by public transportation, as the frontier area continues to thin out toward the central wilderness, and would therefore be harder to reach?

6. To what extent would people in the relevant constituency groups support the Bright Angel Frontier once they become familiar with the idea? Here it would be useful to have separate polls covering people now living in the rural counties involved, people living elsewhere who are members of wildernesss advocacy organizations, people living elsewhere who are regular visitors to historic sites and national parks, and members of the public at large. The best data would be sufficiently valid to be persuasive to politicians and to advocacy groups formulating their agendas. This data might also be useful in formulating an answer to question 1, above, by giving a sense for probable visitation rates.

7. Will there be sufficient water available, in the right places, to support the proposed development in the Nineteenth Century rings? A study of this topic should consider the proposed uses of water, including the size and possible locations of towns, the size and possible locations of irrigated valleys, and the nature of the crops to be grown. A study should also consider a variety of possible sources of water for different locations, including presently unclaimed surface water, purchases of water rights at market value, deep-well drilling, and purchase and pumping of water (using inconspicuous modern power) from Lake Powell.

We are, of course, suggesting these issues with some ulterior motives: they are among the key issues in the Bright Angel proposal, and ones on which really convincing data does not now seem to exist. We would love to have the benefit of independent thinking on them.

These are also difficult questions, if only because some important features of the plan, such as the Nineteenth Century rings, do not exist today anywhere in the world. This feature will make the questions much harder for students or others to research, but, at the same time, will give them the satisfaction of working with novel, cutting-edge issues. Hopefully, people will think that, on balance, this will make for a more interesting project.

Readers may notice that most of the questions posed here involve the "development" rather than the "wilderness" aspects of the Bright Angel Frontier.  This does not imply that the proposal as a whole has a similar bias.  Rather, the development approaches proposed here are substantially novel, and so raise many new questions on which knowledge is presently lacking, while the wilderness components of the proposal involve issues that are by now considerably better understood.

No doubt there are other questions also, and we would be pleased to discuss them if anyone wishes.

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