John Muir strongly urged that a National Park be made of the Grand
Cañon of the Colorado. In commenting on this Titan of cañons, he
said:--
No matter how far you have wandered hitherto, or how many famous
valleys and gorges you have seen, this one, the Grand Cañon of the
Colorado, will seem as novel to you, as unearthly in the color and
grandeur and quantity of its architecture, as if you had found it
after death, on some other star; so incomparably lovely and grand
and supreme is it above all the other cañons.
It is hoped that Congress will early create a Grand Cañon National
Park. The territory most seriously considered embraces a hundred-mile
stretch of the cañon with a narrow bit of each rim. This would extend
about fifty miles up and an equal distance down the river from Grand
Cañon Station. It would thus include only about half the length of
the Grand Cañon, and no part of any other cañon. I should like to see
it extended another hundred miles up the river. It would then embrace
not less than two hundred miles of the river, and would include Marble
Cañon and a part of Glen Cañon. But, whatever its length, it should
include a broad forest border all the way, on both rims of the cañon.
To enable the public to see this titanic gorge in the most comfortable
manner and from the best points of view, it is necessary to have more
public roads and trails. There is great need that this unmatched
wonder have National Park protection and development. At present the
main trail to the bottom of the cañon is a private toll trail!
Visitors to almost any great scene are wont to compare it with some
other scene; it reminds them of this place or that place. But when one
first views Crater Lake, or while one is in the presence of the Big
Trees for the first time, memory is suspended; and when one first
beholds the Grand Cañon, it does not remind him of this or that--it
completely possesses the observer, sweeps other scenes and places out
of mind. Presently comes desire for a thousandfold capacity of feeling
and comprehension. The thing is too vast and splendid for ordinary
faculties.
I have boated in many of the cañons of the Colorado and have camped
and tramped along their rims. Often I have looked down into them when
they were filled with mists; when broken clouds hung over them; when
sunshine or moonlight illumined their depths, from which I have looked
forth under like conditions. But to me, whether in summer or when snow
piles the rim, the Grand Cañon never loses its intense impressiveness.
[Illustration: LOOKING WEST FROM NORTH SIDE OF GRAND CAÑON
Point Sublime to right in distance. Isis Temple on left.
_By permission of the National Park Service, Department of the
Interior_]
The Walhalla Plateau is an extraordinary cañon view-point and is
likely to become one of the most famous places on the earth. This
narrow plateau thrusts ten miles out into the vast, deep, airy
Grand Cañon. It extends from the north rim, between Bright Angel Cañon
and the inside bend of the main cañon opposite the Cañon of the Little
Colorado. A most commanding peninsula it is, with wide and enormous
depths sweeping almost entirely around it. Other commanding
view-points on the north rim are Point Sublime and Bright Angel Point.
Three excellent view-points on the south rim are Grand View, Hopi
Point, and the El Tovar. Grand View is a few miles up the river from
the El Tovar Hotel, and opposite Cape Royal of the Walhalla Plateau.
The Colorado River in Arizona flows through a series of twenty vast
cañons that have a length of about one thousand miles. Most of them
are end to end with only a mere break between. Of these, the Grand
Cañon is the cañon of cañons. Counting downstream, it is the
eighteenth of the series; counting upstream, the third. The cañon is
from seven to fifteen miles wide, and from four thousand to six
thousand feet deep. It is an enormous gulf two hundred miles long, in
solid rock. Less than one thousand feet across at the bottom, and
eight to ten miles across at the top, it may be called a rough
V-shaped gorge; or, together with its tributary cañons, it might be
called an inverted hollow mountain-range. This range, if turned out
upon the plateau, would measure in places more than two hundred miles
in length and nearly forty miles in width, with summits rising nearly
seven thousand feet; and it would be diversified with ridges, gorges,
plateaus, spurs, and peaks.
The Grand Cañon of the Colorado is a masterpiece of erosion--a
wonderful story carved in rock. It was excavated and washed out by the
river. It is not an ordinary mountain cañon, for it lies in a
comparatively level plain or plateau. During the ages, the
débris-laden water sliding over its inclined bed of solid rock dug,
sawed, and cut the cañon to the bottom. The river not only carried
away all the material worn from the bottom, but the thousandfold more
that tumbled into it from the ever-caving walls.
Here is color in magnificent array. Most of the strata are perfectly
horizontal and of great thickness, and each has an individual color.
Many of the walls are brown or red, and there are strata of gray,
yellow, grayish brown, and grayish green. All these are massed and
arranged in vast and broken color pictures and landscapes, some of
which are a mile high and several miles in length.
The top, or rim, of the cañon is in an extensive arid region. Water is
extremely scarce; in a number of places not a drop is available within
miles. If a boatman is wrecked in the cañon, he has little opportunity
of escaping. If he should manage to climb out on the desolate, almost
uninhabited plateau, he would be likely to perish for lack of water.
The cañon has a climate of its own. In the bottom, the temperature
frequently shows a range of one hundred degrees inside of twenty-four
hours. Its great depth and peculiar wall exposure give it a climatic
variety. The walls that face the north are much cooler than those
facing the south. The temperature at the top differs from that at the
bottom, and midway on the walls is a temperature distinct from either
of the others. On the rim at El Tovar it may be a winter day; you
descend to the river and there find a mild climate, with birds singing
and flowers in bloom. The six thousand feet of descent to the river
gives a climatic change that approximates a southern journey of two
thousand miles. This plateau is forested and on the northern rim of
the cañon the tree-growth is heavy.
Flowers bloom in the cañon every month in the year. In the niches and
on the terraces are the columbine, lupine, stonecrop, kinnikinnick,
dandelion, thistle, and paintbrush. Sagebrush and greasewood occur in
many places. The Douglas spruce is found upon the southern wall, the
cottonwood and willow in the bottom. Beavers, a few deer, many
rabbits, wildcats, and wolves are found in a few places in the bottom
of the cañon, and sheep and lions upon the terraces. But the larger
part of the unbroken and terraced walls is barren and lifeless.
Among the birds that gladden this gorge are the mockingbird, piñon
jay, robin, quail, hummingbird, kingfisher, swallow, and owl. Here,
too, you will hear that melodious and hopeful singer the cañon wren.
Over this vast gulf butterflies with daintily colored wings float in
lovely laziness.
In a number of the cañons, ruined cliff houses are numerous, and a few
of these are found far north in Glen Cañon. The walls, in places, are
marked with picture writing. This probably was the work of the cliff
dwellers or of the Indians.
Much of the cañon region may well be called the "No Man's Land" of the
continent. In it are a numerous and assorted lot of men with unknown
histories. Mingling with these are Indians, miners, health-seekers,
and strange and interesting characters, among whom are aged trappers
and prospectors and real cowboys who have survived the days of
adventures.
Water is the great sculptor of the face of nature. The gentle raindrop
grapples with mountains of solid rock, and with never-ending
persistence drags them piecemeal into the sea. Here the material is
redeposited in sedimentary strata, and this may emerge into the light
in the ages yet to be.
A narrow ditch in the earth will widen by the caving-in of its sides.
If the ditch be deepened, the caved-in matter being removed, it will
continue to widen. And so it is with this cañon; the weathering or the
caving-in of these walls goes ever on. The sharpness of the walls, and
many of their striking features, are due to the peculiar climatic
conditions that exist in this region--the short rainy seasons and long
dry periods. Had there been a more even and abundant precipitation,
it is probable that more vegetation would have been produced, which
would have had a marked influence upon the walls, giving them a more
rounded and less interesting form.
The cañon broadens with the years. Cut narrow by the river, it has
gradually widened by the caving-in of the walls. If it had remained as
the river cut it, it would now be as narrow at the top as it is in the
bottom--a cañon about a mile deep, only a few hundred feet wide, and
with perpendicular walls. As it is, the walls rise through a series of
shattered inclines, precipitous slopes and terraces, with here and
there a vertical section.
Well may the Cañon of the Colorado be called the greatest inanimate
wonder in the world. Written in the exposed and remaining rock-strata
through which the river has cut its way is a wonderful story of the
past, a marvelous and splendid romance. At an enormously remote time
the Grand Cañon plateau rose from the primeval sea. After long
exposure and great weathering it sank back, remained submerged for
ages, and thousands of feet of strata were deposited upon it. Again it
emerged, was exposed "a million years and a day," during which æon
thousands of feet of strata were eroded away. Again it went down into
the sea, and upon it were piled thousands of feet of additional
strata. A fourth time it rose slowly above the water. As this plateau
was rising, its surface was acted upon by the elements. The part of
the plateau surrounding the Grand Cañon proper was the scene of
repeated volcanic action and earthquake disturbance. Here the strata
have been subjected to repeated faultings, heavings, tiltings, and
lava-flows. This uplift imprisoned an enormous Eocene lake that
occupied much of what is now the Colorado River basin. This lake the
river drained. The drainage was quite probably caused by the fact that
the eastern part of the territory was uplifted higher than the
western. The drainage-system of the Colorado River, as we now know it,
began at that time to take on form and its waters started to cut the
cañon. This crude outline covers cycling ages, and probably represents
millions of years.
Through several thousand years the plateau slowly rose, and all this
time the river was gradually cutting its way down into it. Finally the
plateau ceased to rise and long remained at a standstill. After
cutting down to its first base level, the river had so little fall
that its waters, overladen with débris, ceased deepening the channel.
The widening of the cañon went steadily on. Again the plateau slowly
rose, perhaps two thousand feet. This uplift increased the fall of the
river and again set it to deepening its channel, a work it is still
doing.
The waters of the Colorado River are heavily laden with sediment.
During the ages it has transported an inconceivable bulk of eroded
material to the ocean. Much of this has come from its three hundred
thousand square miles of mountainous drainage basin and all the
material which formerly occupied the vast spaces of its numerous
cañons. Continual caving of the walls compels the river to spend most
of its time and energy in breaking up this débris and carrying it
forward to the sea. This condition has existed for thousands of years.
It should be borne in mind that the transporting capacity of running
water varies as the sixth power of its velocity. Therefore when a
stream doubles its velocity it is competent to move particles
sixty-four times greater than before. If its rate of flow is trebled,
its transporting power is increased seven hundred and twenty-nine
times. This goes to explain the frightful havoc of streams at times of
flood.
The tributary streams of the Colorado come from arid regions and from
the deserts, and are subject to sudden violent cloud-bursts and
enormous floods. Though these are of short duration, they are of
tremendous force. Earthy matter, rocky débris, and ofttimes hundreds
of trees are swept along by the waters that rush in from side cañons
like an awful avalanche. Lodged driftwood over one hundred feet above
normal river-level tells of the magnitude of these wild floods.
Where a stream has all the load of any given degree of fineness that
it is capable of carrying, the entire energy of the descending water
is consumed by the transportation of the water and its burden, so that
none is applied to erosion. If it has an excess of load, its velocity
is thereby lessened and its power to transport is diminished;
consequently a part of its load is dropped. If it has less than a full
load, it is in a condition to receive more, which it eagerly does.
Thereby its bed is swept clean, and then only does erosion become
possible. Thus it is seen that the work of transportation may at times
monopolize the entire energy of a stream to the exclusion of erosion;
or the two works may be carried forward at the same time.
The rapidity of erosion depends upon the hardness, size, and number of
the fragments in the flowing water, upon the durability of the
stream-bed, and upon the velocity of the current, the element of
velocity being of double importance, since it determines not only the
size but the speed of the particle with which it works. Transportation
is favored by an increased water-supply as much as by increased
declivity, because when a stream increases in volume the increase in
its velocity outruns the increase in volume, and its transporting
power is correspondingly augmented. It is due to this that a stream
which is subject to floods--periodical or otherwise--has a much
greater transporting power than it could possess were its total
water-supply evenly distributed throughout the year.
During one period of volcanic activity the focus of lava-flows into
the cañon was at Lava Falls. A number of lava-streams burst directly
into the cañon through the walls, while several flows poured their
fiery floods over the brink. What a wild and spectacular condition
existed while the river, deep in the cañon, received these tributaries
of liquid fire! When the flow ceased, the cañon for sixty miles was
filled with lava to the depth of about five hundred feet. The lava
cooled, and in time was eroded away. The records of this spectacular
story are still easily read.
Through these thousand miles of cañon, more than one fifth of which is
the Grand Cañon, the river has a fall of about five thousand feet,
unevenly divided. There are long stretches of quiet water, but in the
Lodore, Cataract, Marble, and Grand Cañons are numerous and turbulent
currents flowing amid masses of wild, rocky débris. There are about
five hundred bad rapids and many others of lesser power. Most of these
rapids are caused by rock-jams--dams formed by masses of rocky débris
that have fallen from the walls above or have been swept into the
main cañon by tributary streams. A few rapids are caused by ribs of
hard, resistant rock that have not been worn down to the level of the
softer rock.
The cañon was discovered by Spaniards in 1540. A government expedition
visited it in 1859. The report of this expedition, printed in 1861, is
accompanied with a picture of an ideal cañon. It is shown as narrow,
with appallingly high vertical walls. Lieutenant Ives, who was in
charge, thus closes his account:--
Ours has been the first and will doubtless be the last party of
Whites to visit this profitless location. It seems intended by
Nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its
lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and
undisturbed.
Ten years later Major John W. Powell explored the series of cañons
from end to end. Hundreds of expeditions that have attempted to go
through them have failed. Of the half-dozen that succeeded, one was
organized and conducted by Julius F. Stone, a manufacturer of
Columbus, Ohio.
"Why," I asked Mr. Stone, "did you take the hazard and endure the
acute hardship of this expedition?" His reply was:--
To photograph consecutively the entire cañon system of the Green
and Colorado Rivers, which, so far as the upper cañons are
concerned, had not yet been done. We also wished to determine the
accuracy of some statements heretofore made which seemed
reasonably open to question.
Mr. Stone went all the way through the cañon, took hundreds of
photographs, and made numerous measurements. He made a thorough study
of this cañon, added greatly to our knowledge of it, and corrected a
number of misconceptions concerning it.
But [continued Mr. Stone] it was also to get away from work! For
the fun of the thing! Year after year the voice of many waters had
said: "Come join us in our joyous, boisterous journey to the sea,
and you shall know the ecstasy of wrestling with Nature
naked-handed and in the open, as befits the measure of a man." It
takes on many forms and numberless variations, this thing called
play. Its appealing voices come from far and near, in waking and
in dreams; from quiet, peaceful places they allure with the
assurance of longed-for rest; from the deeps of unfrequented
regions they whisper of eager day- and night-time hours brimming
with the fullness of heart's desire, while bugle-throated, their
challenge sounds forever from every unsealed height.
I presume it is quite true that the chance of disaster (provided
we consider death as being such) followed us like the eyes of the
forest that note every move of the intruder but never reveal
themselves. But somehow or other the snarling threat of the rapids
did not creep into the little red hut where fear lives, and so
burden our task with irresolution or the handicap of indecision;
therefore, whatever dangers may have danced invisible attendance
on our daily toil, they rarely revealed themselves in the form of
accident, and never in the shape of difficulties too great to be
overcome, though sometimes the margin was rather small.
Looking back now at the chance of our having been caught, a shade
of hesitation flits over the abiding desire to see it all again,
but the free, buoyant life of the open, unvexed by the sedate and
superfluous trifles of conventionality, the spirit of fair
companionship vouchsafed by the wilderness, and the river that
seemed to take us by the hand and lead us down its gorgeous aisles
where grandeur, glory, and desolation are all merged into
one--these still are as a voice and a vision that hold the
imagination with singular enchantment.
Any one interested in the geology of the Grand Cañon will find much in
the books of Powell and Dellenbaugh, but best of all are the recent
reports of the Geological Survey. For glimpses of the interesting
characters who frequent this region, and for a sober account of an
array of Grand Cañon adventures, nothing equals the narrative in
"Through the Grand Cañon from Wyoming to Mexico," by Ellsworth L.
Kolb.
Professor John C. Van Dyke, author of "The Desert," has most ably
summed up the Grand Cañon in three monumental sentences: "More
mysterious in its depth than the Himalayas in their height.... The
Grand Cañon remains not the eighth but the first wonder of the world.
There is nothing like it."
The land of form, the realm of music and of song--running, pouring,
rushing, rhythmic waters; but preëminently a land of color: flowing
red, yellow, orange, crimson and purplish, green and blue. Miles of
black and white. This riot and regularity and vast distribution of
color in continual change--it glows and is subdued with the shift of
shadows, with the view-point of the sun.
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