THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO RIVER IN ARIZONA
From Williams, on the Santa Fe’s transcontinental line, a branch runs
due north across 65 miles of the great Colorado Plateau and lands the
traveler at the very rim of the Grand Cañon—one of the most enjoyable,
most novel, most awakening sights among the Southwest’s marvels. Even if
your arrival be at darkest midnight, you will _feel_ the nearness of
that awful void in the unseen—a strange and humbling experience. For
accommodations you have the choice of American plan and what passes in
the wilderness for luxury at the big El Továr Hotel,[77] or of lodging
yourself more economically but comfortably enough in cabin or tent at
the nearby Bright Angel Camp with meals _á la carte_ at the Harvey Café.
Then you will want to know what to see.
The Grand Cañon is among those stupendous natural wonders that the
traveler needs time to adjust himself to; and I am inclined to believe
that his first act in wisdom is to sit down at the rim with a
comprehensive map before him and spend a leisurely hour studying
geography. Fortunately a very good practical map is included in the
Santa Fe’s folder that describes the Cañon, and this may be had of any
agent for the asking. The names, taken from all sorts of mythologies and
philosophies—Hindu, Chinese, Norse, British, Greek, Egyptian, with a
dash of Aztec and latter day American—and given to the various prominent
shapes simulating temples, pagodas, castles, towers, colonnades and what
not, are rather bewildering and indeed seem out of place in mid-Arizona.
In better taste, I think, are the more simply named spots that
commemorate adjacent native tribes as Hopi, Walapai, Zuñi; old white
dwellers by the rim like Bass, Rowe and Hance; and explorers associated
with the Cañon, such as Powell, Escalante and Cárdenas. Cárdenas, it may
not be amiss to state, was the officer dispatched by Coronado from Zuñi
to learn the truth about the great gorge and river, the report of which
Tovar had brought him from the Hopis. It was Cárdenas and his little
company of a dozen soldiers, who, one autumn day of 1540, were the first
white men to look into the mighty chasm. At the bottom they could detect
the great river flowing, seemingly a mere thread of a rivulet; but their
attempts to reach it were fruitless, so precipitous they found the Cañon
walls.[78] The stream that first received the name of Colorado, is the
one we now call Little Colorado. Oñate dubbed it so—Spanish for
red—because of the color of its turbid waters. The greater river in
Cárdenas’s day was known as _el Rio del Tizón_, the river of the
Fire-brand—a name given it by explorers of its lower waters because of
certain Indians on its bank whom the Spaniards saw warming themselves
with brands taken from the fire. The Colorado River as we now know it,
and including its tributaries the Grand and the Green, drains a region
only secondary to the basin of the Mississippi. Its length from the
headwaters of the Green in Wyoming to the outlet into the Gulf of
California is about 2000 miles. The Grand Cañon (including 65 miles
above the junction with the Little Colorado and known as Marble Cañon)
is 283 miles in length, the walls varying from 3000 to nearly 6000 feet
high and rising from the river in a series of huge steps or terraces, so
that the width, which at the river is from about 100 to 600 feet,
increases to several miles at the rim. The deepest part of the chasm is
near the hotels, and the river there flows over a mile below them.[79]
The Cañon walls are the delight of geologists, who find there in orderly
arrangement (stratum upon stratum in banded colors) the deposits of the
successive ages of the earth from the archaean granite to the lava flows
of recent geologic time. A succinct and readable account of the
geological features of the Cañon will be found in the United States
Geological Survey’s admirable Guide Book of the Western United States,
Part C—a book of especial value to the car-window observer on the Santa
Fe route.
Trains to the Cañon are arranged so that travelers may reach it in the
early morning and leave the same evening. In a way this is unfortunate,
for it offers a temptation, almost irresistible to an American tourist,
to “do” the place in a day and go on to some other sight. Of course no
one _can_ do it in a day, but he can do certain things, and he can get a
notion of the general scheme. Three days at least would best be planned
for, and of course more still would be better. The principal features
that should not be missed, may be summed up as follows: A horseback trip
down into the Cañon by either Bright Angel Trail or the Hermit Trail;
the drive (15 miles the round) over the Hermit Rim road; the auto trip
(26 miles the round) to Grand View Point. There are, moreover, several
short drives of four or five miles by public coach to vantage points
along the rim, costing a dollar or two per passenger; and of course
walks innumerable, among which that to Hopi Point, about 2 miles
northwest from the railway terminus, is particularly to be recommended
for its sunset view of the Cañon. Another pleasant short rim walk is to
Yavapai Point, 1½ miles to the eastward. From both these points the view
is superb.
The trip down the Bright Angel[80] trail to the river and back is an all
day jaunt. To the tenderfoot it is a somewhat harrowing experience to be
borne downward at an angle of 45 degrees more or less on the back of a
wobbling animal, whose head at times hangs over eternity, and whose only
footing is on a narrow shelf scratched out of a precipitous wall of the
Cañon. However, as nothing tragical happens, and as there is no escape
once you are started on the _descensus Averni_, you soon find enjoyment
in the novel trip, zigzagging ever downward through successive geologic
ages marked by rock strata in white, red, brown and blue.
Something over half way down there is a grateful let-up, when the trail
runs out upon a plateau watered by a musical little brook. This place is
known as “The Indian Garden.” It is enclosed on three sides by lofty
reddish walls, and here some Havasupai Indians are said to have had in
comparatively recent times a village, and to have cultivated the land.
Long before them, however, _en el tiempo de cuanto ha_, as the Pueblo
story tellers say in poetic Spanish (“in the time of how long ago”),
another race must have tilled the same soil, as the near-by cliffs
maintain numerous remains of rock dwellings and other evidences of human
occupancy. It is a pleasant, flowery, romantic spot, this Indian Garden,
in the Cañon’s crimson heart, with its fascinating environment of rock
sculpturings that seem the towers, palaces and temples of an enchanted
city awaiting the lifting of a spell. At the plateau’s outer edge you
have a stupendous view of the colossal gorge and the muddy torrent of
the river, leaping and roaring 1300 feet below. You may make the Indian
Garden the limit of your descent, or you may continue to the river
itself, corkscrewing down among the crevices and rockbound ways and
echoes of the inexorable wall until you come out upon a little beach,
past which, more terrible than beautiful, the savage torrent thunders
and cascades and tears its course to freedom. You will be glad to get
into the blessed upper world again, but you would not have missed the
experience for a greater cost of clambering.
The Hermit Rim road is a first-class modern highway (so far barred,
thank heaven, to automobiles), extending about 7½ miles westward from El
Tovar by way of Hopi Point to the Hermit Basin. Part of it passes
through beautiful stretches of park-like forest, emerging upon the dizzy
brink of the Cañon with magnificent outlooks over chasm and river to
distant mountains and cloud-piled sky. If you enjoy walking, it is
pleasant to do this trip one way in the public coach and the other afoot
by way of Rowe’s Well. The Hermit Rim Road ends at the head of a
comparatively new trail to the river, a sort of trail _de luxe_, 4 feet
wide and protected by a stone wall very reassuring to the apprehensive.
As on the Bright Angel trail, there is a plateau midway. Here a public
camp is maintained, where accommodations for an over-night stay may be
had. From this camp to the river must be done afoot—an easy grade, it is
said, but I cannot speak from personal knowledge. There is a trail
connecting the lower portions of Hermit and Bright Angel trails, so that
one may go to the river by one route and return by the other. This
consumes 3 days ordinarily, and must be taken as a camping trip with its
concomitant ups and downs. It is hardly to be recommended to any but the
reasonably robust—and good natured!
Grand View Point, 13 miles east of El Tovar—a beautiful drive that may
be done by motor car through the Coconino Forest—is the terminus of the
old-time stage route from Flagstaff. The view at the point is perhaps
the finest of all—quite different from that at El Tovar and more
extended: owing to the greater width between the main walls of the
Cañon; to the fact that the river here makes a sharp turn to the north;
and the further fact that the relative lowness of the eastern wall of
the bend opens up a vista towards the desert, which at El Tovar is
hidden. The Grand View round trip with a look-around at Grand View Point
may be done in half a day from El Tovar, but if one can afford to give a
day or two to it, the material is here to be worth the extra time. Here
is a hotel to care for you. Particularly of interest is the trail to
Moran Point, some half dozen miles to the east, an exquisite outlook and
the view point of Thomas Moran’s famous picture of the Cañon which
occupies a place in the Capitol at Washington. There is a trail down to
the river from Grand View Point, and another by way of Red Cañon,
heading a little to the west of Moran Point. A connecting trail at the
bottom of the Cañon makes it possible to descend by one trail and return
by the other, if one goes prepared to camp by the river. There are, by
the way, several varieties of fish in the Colorado, one, the so-called
Colorado salmon,[81] being a good table fish, though the catching
involves no sport, as it is not gamey.
The Grand Cañon may be visited at any season, though in winter there is
often snow upon the rim and upper levels. Usually there is not enough to
interfere seriously with reaching the various points of interest; and as
one descends into the gorge, one soon passes out of wintry into warmer
and still warmer conditions. Even in December some flowers will be
blooming in the bottom of the Cañon. July and August constitute the
usual summer rainy season, when frequent thunderstorms are to be
expected, particularly in the afternoons. They are usually of short
duration. The atmospheric effects accompanying and succeeding them are
often magnificent.[82]