The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [331]
V
The president’s arrival at the Grand Canyon (or the Big Ditch, as locals called it) on the morning of May 6 would, in retrospect, become one of the greatest days in environmental history. The Grand Canyon seemed as if it had been born of a cataclysm, with no eyewitnesses or reliable records. Amaranth in color, with a weird purple-orange glow, it also seemed cosmic, full of yearnings and teachings. In A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open Roosevelt called the Grand Canyon “the most wonderful scenery in the world.” He also declared that “to all else that is strange and beautiful in nature the Canyon stands as Karnak and Baalbec, seen by moonlight, stand to all other ruined temples and palaces of the bygone ages.” 76
Many Rough Riders were there that May to stand and gaze at the canyon with him. David Warford was among them.77 It is not hyperbole to say that Roosevelt’s jaw dropped in disbelief. The geologist Clarence Dutton—whose Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District Roosevelt had recently read—called this dynamic chasm of the earth’s surface “a great innovation in modern ideas of scenery,” adding that “its full appreciation is a special culture, requiring time, patience, and long familiarity for its consummation.”78 Roosevelt now understood what Dutton meant. He had long suspected that the Grand Canyon was the premier natural wonder in America, and now his hunch had been confirmed. He was dying to learn more of its geological secrets. Staring over the ledge of the Grand Canyon made the heart stop at the immensity of it all.
What disturbed Roosevelt, however, was that the Arizona territory was debating whether to preserve the canyon or mine it for zinc, copper, asbestos, etc. Preservation in this case was so obvious that even engaging in debate seemed almost criminal. To Roosevelt, the Grand Canyon was beyond debate by the locals: it must become the exclusive property of the United States to be saved for future generations. Roosevelt immediately resolved to make it a national park following the 1904 election. Thereafter, only horse trails would be allowed. “In a few places the forest is dense,” Roosevelt wrote, “[but] in most places it is sufficiently open to allow a mountain-horse to twist in and out among the tree trunks at a smart canter.”79
Roosevelt’s attitude toward the Grand Canyon was uncompromising: he flat-out refused to let corporate avarice or citizens’ ineptitude desecrate the greatest American treasure. He’d go through all the proper motions of getting Congress to designate the Grand Canyon a national park, and if it refused, an executive order would prevail. Roosevelt vowed to make sure that Arizona’s developers never drilled an inch of the Grand Canyon. He hoped his presidential visit would start a widespread grassroots movement to preserve it all—every damn acre in the 1,904 square miles—for perpetuity. Public education in Arizona had to be initiated at once. Too many Arizonans simply looked at the Grand Canyon, Roosevelt scolded, instead of living within its geological essence. The Rough Riders who greeted Roosevelt—by and large the most popular public figures in Arizona—were his first line of preservationist defense. They would ride over any ridge for their beloved colonel. Now, in a public forum, Roosevelt suddenly found himself asking them to crusade with him again, this time on behalf of preserving the magnificent Grand Canyon, which developers denigrated as useless, like Death Valley.
“I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it,” Roosevelt, at the rim, urged the crowd of Arizonans. “In your own interest and the interest of all the country keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you won’t have a building of any kind to mar the grandeur and sublimity of the cañon. You cannot improve upon it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. Keep it for your children and your children’s children and all who come after you as one of the great sights for Americans to see.”80
This speech, for which all the leading