The Discovery of Grand Canyon

After introducing the train tours of Grand Canyon Railway and the Grand Canyon Trails for hiking enthusiasts, do you ever wonder how this wonder of the world is discovered? – The Discovery of Grand Canyon.

Nothing quite prepares the first-time visitor for his first disconcerting look into the Grand Canyon. Only such clichés as “awe-inspiring” seem appropriate. Nineteenth-century geologist Clarence Dutton called it “the most sublime of the earthly spectacles.” A common reaction is to jerk one’s head from side to side, marveling at the vastness, a gesture that has been met with the quite comment of a forest ranger – “If you keep your head still, you will see everything that moves” A metaphor for life in general.

Only in 1919 did the region become a national park, but it had been widely known well before that “discovered” by a member of Coronado’s 1540 expedition. A certain army lieutenant, Joseph Ives, claimed in 1857 to have been the first and he said “will doubtless be the last, party of whites to visit this profitless locality”. He declared the region “valueless” and said that after entering there was nothing left to do but leave.

Nevertheless, in 1869, geologist John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran, led a four-boat flotilla on an exploration of the Green and Colorado rivers. Three members of the party bailed out when they reached the canyon and struck out overland for a Mormon settlement, but where killed by Indians en route. On a subsequent expedition, Powell, who later went on to head the Bureau of Ethnology was accompanied by photographer John K. Hillers and it was his pictures of the canyon that first captured the world’s imagination.