The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in northwestern Arizona is one of the earth's greatest natural wonders. It became a national park in 1919. So famous is this landmark to modern Americans that it seems surprising that it took more than thirty years for it to become a national park. President Theodore Roosevelt visited the rim in 1903 and exclaimed:
"The Grand Canyon fills me with awe. It is beyond comparison--beyond
description; absolutely unparalleled throughout the wide world .... Let
this great wonder of nature remain as it now is. Do nothing to mar its
grandeur, sublimity and loveliness. You cannot improve on it. But what you
can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and all
who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should
see."
Despite Roosevelt's enthusiasm and his strong interest in preserving land for
public use, the Grand Canyon was not immediately designated as a national park.
The first bill to create Grand Canyon National Park had been introduced in 1882
and again in 1883 and 1886 by Senator Benjamin Harrison. As President, Harrison
established the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve in 1893. Theodore Roosevelt created
the Grand Canyon Game Preserve by proclamation in 1906 and Grand Canyon National
Monument in 1908. Senate bills to establish a national park were introduced and
defeated in 1910 and 1911; the Grand Canyon National Park Act was finally signed
by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919. The National Park Service, which had been
established in 1916, assumed administration of the park.
Before the middle of the nineteenth century, very little was known about the geography of the Grand Canyon. Because of its remote location, the area in and around the canyon was not explored or mapped in detail by Europeans, although it was probably visited in 1540 by the Spanish expedition of Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, who searched with Vasques de Coronado for the seven legendary cities of Cibola. In 1776, two Spanish priests, Francisco Dominguez and Silvestre de Escalante, crossed the Colorado River while exploring the area, but little knowledge of the region was passed down in written form to later generations.
The primary source of information about the magnificent canyon was an oral tradition sustained by the reports of fur trappers and traders and so-called "mountain men," most of whom were escorted through the rugged terrain by Native American guides
Only one early visitor, Warren Augustus Ferris, is known to have produced a map showing the Grand Canyon. Drawn in 1836, it was not published until 1940, too late to be of use to the geographers and explorers who first traveled to the Colorado River and the canyon during the late nineteenth century. Ferris did, however, write and publish several articles in the 1840s, one of which described the canyon.
