0891, 0892, 0911, 0912, 0943, 1000, 2370-2381 UNITED STATES (Arizona) - Grand Canyon National Park (UNESCO WHS)

The park's central feature is the Grand Canyon, a gorge carved out by the Colorado River (nearly 1,500m deep, 445.8km long), which is often considered one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Its horizontal strata retrace the geological history of the past 2 billion years, and there are also prehistoric traces of human adaptation to a particularly harsh environment. The primary public areas of the park are the North Rim and South Rim of the Grand Canyon itself. The rest of the park is extremely rugged and remote, although many places are accessible by pack trail and backcountry roads. Only the Navajo Bridge near Page connects the rims by road in Arizona.

2371 Grand Canyon - Point Imperial overlooks Mount Hayden

"The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance af time..." writted the poet Henry David Thoreau nearly 200 years ago. And the President Theodore Roosevelt said in 1903 after he visited visited the site: "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."

2372 Grand Canyon - Sunset

Marble Canyon is the section of the Colorado River canyon from Lee's Ferry to the confluence with the  Little Colorado River, which marks the beginning of the Grand Canyon, and also the western boundary of the Navajo Nation. Lee's Ferry is a common launching point for river runners starting their journey through the Grand Canyon. Marble Canyon is also well known for the Navajo Bridge. Its name is a misnomer because there is no marble there. Although John Wesley Powell, the first known European who passed through the Grand Canyon (1869), knew this when he named the canyon, he  thought the polished limestone looked like marble.

The floor of the valley is accessible by foot, muleback, or by boat or raft from upriver. Hiking down to the river and back up to the rim in one day is discouraged by park officials because of the distance, steep and rocky trails, change in elevation, and danger of heat exhaustion from the much higher temperatures at the bottom. The most used are the corridor trails, of which perhaps the best known is the Bright Angel, originally built by the Havasupai Native American tribe for access to the perennial water source of present day Garden Creek. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt ordered them to leave the area, to make way for a park, but however, it was not until 1928 that the last Havasupai left, forced out by the National Park Service.

0911 Grand Canyon - Desert View Watchtower, at the far eastern end of the South Rim

One of the most interesting historic buildings located along the South Rim is the Desert View Watchtower, one of Mary Colter's best-known works, built in 1932. Situated at the far eastern end of the South Rim, 43km from Grand Canyon Village, the tower stands 21m tall. The top of the tower is 2,293m above sea level, the highest point on the South Rim. It offers one of the few full views of the bottom of the Canyon and the Colorado River. It was designed to mimic Anasazi watchtowers, though, with four levels, it is significantly taller than historical towers.

0943 Grand Canyon - Krishna Temple, Vishnu Temple and Freya Castle seen from Cape Royal

Where the North Rim is wild and remote, the South Rim is teaming with activities, sites, lodging and more. Most who visit the Grand Canyon come here because it’s much more accessible, many roads leading here from major cities like Las Vegas or Phoenix, while to the North Rim leads just one road. The most popular, first-time views of Grand Canyon occur at either Mather Point (named after the park’s first superintendent, Stephen Mather) or Yavapai Point. Other lookout points are Moran Point (named after the painter and etcher Peter Moran), Yaki Point, Grandview Point, Lipan Point and Lookout Studio.

2374 Grand Canyon - Brahma and Zoroaster Temples

The North Rim has also many named points, but comparatively few are easy to reach, as the terrain is much more uneven, split by deep side canyons. Of the ten points which are either next to a paved road or reachable on an easy day hike, in some cases the views are of Bright Angel Canyon rather than the main gorge, and others overlook the easternmost section of the Grand Canyon where the cliffs and ravines are not quite so extensive. Point Imperial is the highest of the North Rim overlooks, and the northernmost, presenting a rather different panorama than that from the other two popular viewing locations further south (Cape Royal and Bright Angel Point).

2375 Grand Canyon - Zoroaster Temple

Many of the canyon's landmarks were named by geologist Clarence Dutton who published one of the earliest detailed geologic studies of the canyon in 1882, The Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District. It was first in the Geological Survey's new series of monographs, "the inaugural big book of arguably the most significant scientific bureau of nineteenth century America," in one historian's view. Interspersed amongst the geology were reflections on the play of light and shade on cliffs, or comparisons to the landscape art of Europe or Japan, or suggestions for coming to imaginative terms with the many strange forms erosion had left.

0891 Grand Canyon - Bright Angel Canyon on North Rim seen from Mather Point

In his musings, Dutton festooned the myriad spires and buttes with outrageous and fanciful names/Hindoo temple, Vishnu’s Throne, and the like, concluding that the whole ensemble amounted to "the sublimest thing on earth." The Tertiary History featured 40 plates and was accompanied by a beautiful atlas featuring the work of the photographer Jack Hillers and the artists Thomas Moran and William Henry Holmes. In its combination of science and art, it was received enthusiastically, and "quickly established itself as a model of modern natural history." He believed that the canyon was such an important feature on the planet, that the names of its features should reflect all the world's cultures and thus he chose many names from mythologies from around the world.

0892 Grand Canyon - North Rim at twilight

The Greek and Roman gods are represented with temples to Jupiter, Apollo and Diana, which stand somewhat incongruously beside Solomon's Temple. The Viking paradise of the gods is found also in the Grand Canyon, on Walhalla Plateau. Nearby, Wotan sits enthroned. England's medieval mythology is represented, with King Arthur's Castle nestled beside the Holy Grail Temple. The Egyptian gods are clustered in temples to Isis, Osiris, Horus and the Tower of Set. Nor is Asia's mythology neglected. Hindus have temples to their trinity of Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva, as well as a shrine to Rama, one of the legendary incarnations of Vishnu.

1000 Grand Canyon - Angels Gate and Deva Temple, on North Rim seen from  the near of Moran Point

"The grandest of all the buttes, and the most majestic in aspect" is Shiva Temple, in the opinion of Dutton. He records, "All around it are side gorges sunk to a depth nearly as profound as that of the main channel. It stands in the midst of a great throng of cluster-like buttes. In such a stupendous scene of wreck, it seemed as if the fabled Destroyer might find an abode not wholly uncongenial." Even preeminent philosopher-prophets such as Confucius, the Buddha of India and the Persian Zoroaster received temples. This poetic mythos of the Grand Canyon reminds us that the mechanistic interpretations of science need not destroy the sacred mystery of the cosmos.

2376 Grand Canyon - Deer Creek

Deer Creek, like its neighbor, Thunder River, originates from springs in the Redwall Limestone of the Norther Rim, that are a result of extensive faulting and fracturing. Because of this, it flows year round and is an oasis in an area so dry and barren. In the spring, water levels increase because of snow melt so on can expect more flow then. The water in Deer Creek is cold year round, even in the summer months. It culminates in a high waterfall that flows from the slot canyon almost directly into the Colorado River. Access to Deer Creek is the main reason the Bill Hall and Thunder River Trail were built, when tracer gold was found along the edges of Deer Creek back in 1876.

0912 Grand Canyon - Havasu Falls

Located on Havasu Creek, within Havasupai tribal lands, the Havasu Falls consists of one main chute that drops over a 27m to 30m vertical cliff into a large pool. Due to the high mineral content of the water, the configuration of the falls is ever-changing and sometimes breaks into two separate chutes of water. The falls are known for their natural pools, created by mineralization, although the configuration of the falls and the pools are damaged or destroyed repeatedly by large floods that wash through the area. High calcium carbonate concentration in the water creates the vivid blue-green color and forms the natural travertine dams that occur in various places near the falls.

2377 Grand Canyon - South Rim limestones

The Colorado River has carved the Grand Canyon into Colorado Plateau, a large area characterized by nearly-horizontal sedimentary rocks. As a result, the geology of the Grand Canyon area includes one of the most complete and studied sequences of rock on Earth. The nearly 40 major sedimentary rock layers exposed range in age from about 200 million to nearly 2 billion years old. Most were deposited in warm, shallow seas and near ancient, long-gone sea shores in western North America. Both marine and terrestrial sediments are represented, including fossilized sand dunes from an extinct desert.

2379 Grand Canyon - Ancestral Puebloan granaries at Nankoweap Creek

The first people known to live in the Grand Canyon area were the Ancestral Puebloans, it seems from around 1200 BCE. They evolved, becoming the Pueblos, who lived in the Grand Canyon for at least 100 years before they migrated away from the area. They were farmers as well as hunters. More than one-hundred farm sites of the Ancestral Puebloan were found at Walhalla Glades at the North Rim. Over 2,000 sites have been studied to date. Unkar Delta, an area along the water, seen from the Walhalla Point, seems to be the place where they lived. A granary, where they stored food can be seen on the short, Cliff Spring Trail, at the North Rim.

2380 Grand Canyon - Dasylirion

Differences in elevation and the resulting variations in climate are the major factors that form the various life zones and communities in and around the canyon. The five life zones represented are the Lower Sonoran, Upper Sonoran, Transition, Canadian, and Hudsonian. This is equivalent to traveling from Mexico to Canada. Grand Canyon boasts a dozen endemic plants, while only ten percent of the Park's flora is exotic. The Mojave Desert influences the western sections of the canyon, Sonoran Desert vegetation covers the eastern sections, and ponderosa and pinyon pine forests grow on both rims.

2381 Grand Canyon - Desert Bighorn Sheep

Home to reptiles, fish, and mammals, birds and more, the Grand Canyon is teeming with wildlife and the abundant vegetation that helps support the entire ecosystem. The animals found there are vast and some of them can be found on the endangered species lists. Of the 34 mammal species found along the Colorado River corridor, 18 are rodents and eight are bats. Bighorn Sheep, the largest native animal in the park, love rocky terrain and canyon walls. They are sure-footed animals and it is amazing how they can climb, walk and jump around sheer cliffs. Rams have large curved horns that can reach one meter in length.

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