Frommer's National Parks of the American West - Don Laine [173]
The canyon not only inspires reverence but tells the grandest of stories. Half the earth's history is represented in its rocks. The oldest and deepest rock layer, the Vishnu Formation, began forming 2 billion years ago, before aerobic life forms even existed. The layers of sedimentary rock that piled atop the Vishnu Formation tell of landscapes that changed like dreams. They speak of mountains that really did move, eroding into nothingness; of oceans that poured forth across the land before receding; of deserts, swamps, and rivers the size of the Mississippi—all where the canyon now lies. The fossils in these layers illustrate the very evolution of life.
Many of the latest products of evolution—more than 1,500 plant and 400 animal species—survive at the canyon today. If you include the upper reaches of the Kaibab Plateau (on the canyon's North Rim), this small area of northern Arizona includes zones of biological life comparable to ones found as far south as Mexico and as far north as Alaska. The species come in every shape, size, and temperament, ranging from tiny ant lions dwelling in the canyon floor to 1,000-pound elk roaming the rims. And for every species, there is a story within
a story. Take the Douglas fir, for example. Once part of a forest that covered both rims and much of the canyon, the tree has endured since the last ice age on shady, north-facing slopes beneath the South Rim—long after the sun-baked rim itself became too hot and inhospitable.
A number of Native American tribes have lived in or around the canyon, and the Navajo, Havasupai, Kaibab Paiute, Hopi, Zuni, and Hualapai tribes still dwell in this area. The Hopi still regard the canyon as their place of emergence and the place to which their dead return. Their predecessors left behind more than 3,000 archaeological sites and artifacts as much as 10,000 years old.
In the 1500s Spanish missionaries and gold-greedy explorers passed through the area, but it wasn't until the 1800s that white people began settling here. Prospectors clambered through the canyon in search of precious minerals, and some of them stayed after their mines, plagued by high overhead costs, shut down. The first tourists followed, and vacationers began flooding the area after the railroad linked Grand Canyon Village to Williams, Arizona, in 1901.
When Pres. Theodore Roosevelt visited in 1903, the canyon moved him to say, "Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children . . . as the one great sight which every American . . . should see." Roosevelt did his part to back up his words, using the Antiquities Act to declare Grand Canyon a national monument in 1908. Congress established Grand Canyon National Park in 1919.
Although designated a "park," Grand Canyon has a daunting, even ominous side. Visitors, no matter how many times they enter it, must negotiate with it for survival. One look at the clenched jaw of
a river guide as he or she rows into Lava Rapids will remind you that the canyon exacts a heavy price for mistakes. The most common mistake is to underestimate it. Try to escape, and it becomes a prison, with walls 4,000 feet high. The canyon's menace reminds us that we still haven't completely conquered nature. It even has its own symbols: the rattlesnake's warning; the elegant symmetry of the black widow; the seductive, lilylike flower of the deadly sacred datura.
Clearly, you can suffer here, but reward is everywhere.