Today In History: Grand Canyon National Park

 

"Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been
 at work on it, and man can only mar it."
-President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt,
after visiting the Grand Canyon in 1903.

The Grand Canyon

Image courtesy/Wikipedia

Today marks the 106th anniversary of the establishment of  Grand Canyon
National Park.   In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson signed an act of Congress
establishing the Grand Canyon National Park, which covers 1,217, 262 acres
in Arizona, to protect and to preserve one of America's and the world's
most beautiful natural wonders.  Grand Canyon National Park
is the second most visited national park each year.

Just how grand is the Grand Canyon?

According to Joe Yogerst, writing for National Geographic: "The massive gash in
the Earth's surface stretches 277 miles from east to west, measures 18 miles across at
its widest point, and plunges around one mile from the rim to the Colorado River.
As the elevation descends, the park transitions from pristine evergreen forest
to stark desert landscape with 1.8 billion years of geology."

At least 11 American Indian tribes claim the Grand Canyon as their ancestral home,
including the Hualapai tribe, or "People of the Tall Pines."  Today most of the tribe's
income comes from tourism and their reservation manages tours and runs the Skywalk,
a glass and steel horseshoe walkway that juts out 70' over the canyon rim.

Another tribe with close ties to the great Canyon includes the Havasupai Indians,
 the "People of the Blue-Green Water". Other tribes which live in the vicinity
of the Grand Canyon are the Navajo, the Hopi, and the Southern Paiute.

Indigenous peoples had lived in and around the Grand Canyon for at least 12,000 years
before Spanish conquistadors discovered the area the Paiute Indians called, "Kaibab"
which translated means,  "Mountains Lying Down".  In 1869, American geologist, explorer,
 Civil War veteran, and later, the director of the Bureau of American Ethnology at the
 Smithsonian Institute, Major John Wesley Powell, became famous for his three
month river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers, including the first
official government -sponsored passage through the Grand Canyon.

 Powell's account of the trip, "The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Tributaries"
published in 1875, was later dramatized in the 1960 Walt Disney film,  "Ten Who Dared."