Grand Canyon, Arizona – One of Seven Wonders

Nestled within the vast expanse of the American Southwest, the Grand Canyon, Arizona, stands as a testament to the raw power of nature and the enduring legacy of time. Designated as one of the oldest National Parks in the United States, the Grand Canyon is more than just a geological marvel; it is a living, breathing chronicle of the Earth’s history, etched in vibrant hues across its monumental cliffs. This colossal chasm, patiently sculpted by the relentless flow of the Colorado River over countless millennia, has earned its place among the major natural wonders of the world, drawing millions of visitors each year to its awe-inspiring vistas.

The Grand Canyon National Park is an expansive domain, encompassing over 1,900 square miles of intricate canyons and plateaus. Its dimensions are staggering: stretching 277 miles (446 km) in length, plunging to depths exceeding one mile (1.6 km), and varying in width from a mere 4 miles (6.4 km) to an expansive 18 miles (29 km). This immense scale is not merely a statistic but a tangible experience, an overwhelming sense of grandeur that washes over all who stand upon its rim.

The story of the Grand Canyon is not solely a geological one; it is also a human story, stretching back over ten millennia. Archaeological evidence indicates that the first human presence in the area dates back approximately 10,500 years. For at least the last 4,000 years, Native American cultures have thrived in and around the canyon, their lives intertwined with its rugged landscape.

The Ancestral Puebloans, often referred to as the Anasazi, were among the earliest inhabitants, constructing dwellings along the rim and within the inner canyon. They sustained themselves through hunting, gathering, and limited agriculture, skillfully adapting to the challenging environment. Later, the Cohonina tribe established settlements west of present-day Grand Canyon Village. However, by the late 13th century, both groups had abandoned the area, likely driven away by prolonged drought conditions.

For a century, the canyon area remained largely uninhabited until the arrival of the Paiute from the east and the Cerbat from the west. The Paiute settled the plateaus north of the Colorado River, while the Cerbat established their communities south of the river on the Coconino Plateau. In the 15th century, the Navajo, or the Dine, migrated to the region, further enriching the cultural tapestry of the Grand Canyon.

The first recorded encounter between Europeans and the Grand Canyon occurred in September 1540. Hopi guides led a detachment of 13 Spanish soldiers, under the command of Captain Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, in search of the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola, a mythical kingdom rumored to be rich in gold. Their quest was commissioned by the conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado.

Arriving at the South Rim, somewhere between Desert View and Moran Point, the Spanish soldiers gazed down into the immense chasm and saw the Colorado River flowing far below. Three soldiers, Pablo de Melgrossa, Juan Galeras, and an unnamed companion, attempted to descend into the canyon, managing to reach about a third of the way down before being forced to turn back due to a lack of water. It is believed that the Hopi guides, aware of the arduous route to the river, may have been reluctant to lead the Spanish further.

Disappointed in their search for gold, the Spaniards soon departed, and the Grand Canyon remained largely unexplored by Europeans for over two centuries.

In 1776, Fathers Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, accompanied by Spanish soldiers, embarked on an expedition to explore southern Utah. Their journey took them along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, specifically in the Glen and Marble Canyon areas, as they sought a viable route connecting Santa Fe, New Mexico, with Monterey, California.

The next Europeans to reach the canyon were James Ohio Pattie and a group of American trappers in 1826. However, scant documentation exists to corroborate their travels.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848, formally ceded the Grand Canyon region to the United States. In 1856, Jules Marcou of the Pacific Railroad Survey conducted the first geological observations of the canyon and its surrounding terrain.

Around the same time, Jacob Hamblin, a Mormon missionary, was dispatched by Brigham Young to locate suitable river crossing sites within the canyon. Through fostering positive relationships with local Native Americans and white settlers, Hamblin identified the locations that would later become Lee’s Ferry and Pearce Ferry, the only two sites deemed suitable for ferry operations.

In 1857, a U.S. War Department expedition, led by Lieutenant Joseph Ives, was launched to assess the region’s potential for natural resources, scout railroad routes to the west coast, and evaluate the feasibility of navigating the Colorado River upstream from the Gulf of California. The expedition employed a stern-wheeler steamboat named the Explorer. After two months and 350 miles of challenging navigation, the Explorer struck a rock in Black Canyon and was abandoned. The party then proceeded eastward along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Ives, reflecting the prevailing attitudes of his time, dismissed the canyon’s beauty, declaring it and its surroundings "altogether valueless" and predicting that his expedition would be "the last party of whites to visit this profitless locality."

However, geologist John Strong Newberry, a member of Ives’ expedition, held a starkly different view of the canyon. Upon his return, Newberry convinced fellow geologist John Wesley Powell that a boat journey through the Grand Canyon would be worthwhile to complete the survey. Powell, a major in the United States Army and a veteran of the Civil War, had lost his right forearm in the Battle of Shiloh.

More than a decade after the Ives Expedition, and with the support of the Smithsonian Institution, Powell led the first of the Powell Expeditions to explore the region and document its scientific attributes. On May 24, 1869, nine men embarked from Green River Station in Wyoming, navigating the Colorado River and traversing the Grand Canyon. This initial expedition was poorly funded, lacking a photographer or graphic artist. During their passage through the Canyon of Lodore, one of their four boats capsized, resulting in the loss of much of their food and scientific equipment. This incident shortened the expedition to 100 days. Weary of the constant cold, wet conditions, and hunger, three of Powell’s men climbed out of the great chasm in what is now called Separation Canyon, unaware that they had already passed the most challenging rapids. Upon exiting the canyon, they were killed by a band of Paiutes who mistook them for miners who had recently assaulted one of their women. Those who remained with Powell successfully navigated the majority of the canyon.

Two years later, a better-funded expedition, again led by Powell, returned with redesigned boats and a chain of supply stations along their route. This time, the expedition included photographer E.O. Beaman and 17-year-old artist Frederick Dellenbaugh. Beaman left the group in January 1872 due to a dispute with Powell. Beaman’s replacement, James Fennemore, resigned in August of the same year due to poor health, leaving boatman Jack Hillers as the official photographer. (Nearly one ton of photographic equipment was required on-site to process each shot.) After the river voyage, famed painter Thomas Moran joined the expedition in the summer of 1873, viewing the canyon solely from the rim. His 1873 painting "Chasm of the Colorado" was purchased by the United States Congress in 1874 and hung in the lobby of the Senate.

John D. Lee, notorious for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, was the first to cater to travelers to the Grand Canyon. In 1872, he established a ferry service at the confluence of the Colorado and Paria rivers. Lee was in hiding, having been accused of leading the Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857. He was tried and executed for this crime in 1877. During his trial, he hosted members of the Powell Expedition waiting for their photographer, Major James Fennemore, to arrive (Fennemore took the last photo of Lee sitting on his coffin). Emma, one of Lee’s nineteen wives, continued the ferry business after her husband’s death. In 1876, Harrison Pearce established another ferry service at the canyon’s western end.

The Powell expeditions systematically cataloged rock formations, plants, animals, and archaeological sites. The photographs and illustrations from these expeditions significantly popularized the canyon land region of the southwest United States, particularly the Grand Canyon. Powell later used these images in his lecture tours, which made him a national figure. Rights to reproduce 650 of the expeditions’ 1,400 stereographs were sold to help fund future Powell projects. In 1881, he became the second director of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Geologist Clarence Dutton continued Powell’s work in 1880-1881 with the newly formed U.S. Geological Survey. Painters Thomas Moran and William Henry Holmes accompanied Dutton, who was drafting detailed descriptions of the area’s geology. The report from the team’s effort was titled A Tertiary History of The Grand Canyon District with Atlas and published in 1882. This and later geologist studies uncovered the geology of the Grand Canyon area and helped advance that science. The Powell and Dutton expeditions helped increase interest in the canyon and the surrounding region.

In the 1870s and 1880s, miners began staking claims in the canyon, hoping that previously discovered deposits of asbestos, copper, lead, and zinc would be profitable. However, the difficulty of accessing the canyon and extracting the ore made the venture unprofitable. Nevertheless, the mining activities significantly improved the existing Indian trails within the canyon.

During these early years of exploration, the Indians lived in and near the great chasm until 1882. It was at this time that the United States Army began moving them onto reservations, bringing an end to the Indian Wars. The Havasupai and Hualapai are descended from the Cerbat and live in the immediate area. In the western part of the current park, Havasu Village is likely one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in the contiguous United States. Adjacent to the eastern part of the park is the Navajo Nation, the largest reservation in the United States.

The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad completed a rail line to Flagstaff, the largest city in the area, in 1882. The following year, stagecoaches began transporting tourists from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon on an eleven-hour journey.

The two-room Farlee Hotel opened in 1884 near Diamond Creek and operated until 1889, when the owner, Louis Boucher, opened a more prominent hotel at Dripping Springs. John Hance opened his ranch near Grandview to tourists in 1886, only to sell it nine years later and begin a long career as a Grand Canyon guide. In 1896, he became the local postmaster.

William Wallace Bass opened a tent house campground in 1890. Bass Camp had a small central building with shared facilities, including a kitchen, dining room, and sitting room. Located 20 miles west of the Grand Canyon Railway, the rates were $2.50 per day, and his stagecoach road carried patrons from the train station to the camp.

The Grand Canyon Hotel Company was incorporated in 1892 and charged with building services along the stage route to the canyon.

On February 20, 1883, President Benjamin Harrison established the Grand Canyon as a National Forest preserve, which offered some environmental protection, though logging and mining were still allowed.

In 1896, the same man who bought Hance’s Grandview ranch opened Bright Angel Hotel in Grand Canyon Village.

Tourism increased dramatically after a spur of the Santa Fe Railroad to Grand Canyon Village was completed from Williams, Arizona, in 1901. The 64-mile trip cost $3.95. The development of formal tourist facilities, especially at Grand Canyon Village, accelerated.

The first automobile was driven to the Grand Canyon in 1902 when Oliver Lippincott from Los Angeles, California, drove his car to the South Rim from Flagstaff. Lippincott, a guide, and two writers set out on the afternoon of January 4, anticipating a seven-hour journey. Two days later, the hungry and dehydrated party arrived at their destination; the countryside was simply too rough for the 10-horsepower automobile.

The Cameron Hotel opened in 1903, and its owner began charging a toll to use the Bright Angel Trail.

The Kolob Brothers, Emery and Ellsworth, built a photographic studio on the South Rim at the trailhead of Bright Angel Trail in 1904. Hikers and mule caravans intent on descending down the canyon would stop at the Kolob Studio to have their photos taken. The Kolob Brothers processed the prints before their customers returned to the rim. Later, the Kolob Brothers would be the first to make a motion picture of a river trip through the canyon.

The Fred Harvey Company developed the luxury El Tovar Hotel on the South Rim in 1905. The hotel was named after Don Pedro de Tovar, who, according to tradition, is the Spaniard who learned about the canyon from the Hopi and told Coronado about it. Charles Whittlesey designed the arts and crafts-styled rustic hotel complex, built with logs and local stone, for $250,000 for the hotel and another $50,000 for the stables. The El Tovar was owned by Santa Fe Railroad and operated by its chief concessionaire, the Fred Harvey Company.

In 1905, the Harvey Company hired Mary Colter to design and oversee the building of the Hopi House. In 1910, the Fred Harvey Company offered her a permanent position as an architect and interior designer of Harvey facilities. She served in that role for the next 38 years, often working in rugged conditions to complete 21 landmark hotels, commercial lodges, and public spaces for the Fred Harvey Company.

In the following years, Colter would design and oversee the building of more Fred Harvey establishments in the canyon, including the Lookout in 1914, Hermits Rest in 1914, the Phantom Ranch in 1922, the Watchtower in 1932, and the Bright Angel Lodge in 1935.

A cable car system spanning the Colorado River began operating at Rust’s Camp, located near the mouth of Bright Angel Creek, in 1907.

The Grand Canyon was designated a U.S. National Monument on January 11, 1908. Opponents, such as land and mining claim holders, blocked efforts to reclassify the monument as a U.S. National Park for 11 years. Grand Canyon National Park was finally established as the 17th U.S. National Park by an Act of Congress signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on February 26, 1919. The National Park Service declared the Fred Harvey Company the official park concessionaire in 1920 and bought William Wallace Bass out of business.

In the late 1920s, the North Kaibab suspension bridge over the Colorado River established the first rim-to-rim access. Paved roads did not reach the less popular and more remote North Rim until 1926, and that area, being higher in elevation, is closed due to winter weather from November to April.

The Grand Canyon Lodge opened on the North Rim in 1928. In the winter of 1932, a fire destroyed much of the lodge; however, it was rebuilt and reopened in 1937. Bright Angel Lodge and the Auto Camp Lodge opened on the South Rim in 1935.

Trains remained the preferred way to travel to the canyon until they were surpassed by the automobile in the 1930s. Finally, competition with the automobile forced the Santa Fe Railroad to cease operation of the Grand Canyon Railway in 1968. Only three passengers were on the last run. However, the railway was restored and reintroduced service in 1989 and has since carried hundreds of passengers a day.

Today, approximately five million people visit the more than 1,900 square miles of the Grand Canyon National Park annually. Visitors can enjoy its numerous hiking trails, mule rides down the Bright Angel Trail, river rafting, fishing, and camping. There are also approximately 2,000 known Ancient Puebloan archaeological sites within park boundaries. Numerous visitor centers provide information, and lodging and restaurants are located within the park.