IX
THE GRAND CAÑON
John Muir strongly urged that a National Park be made of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado. In commenting on this Titan of cañons, he said:—
No matter how far you have wandered hitherto, or how many famous valleys and gorges you have seen, this one, the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, will seem as novel to you, as unearthly in the color and grandeur and quantity of its architecture, as if you had found it after death, on some other star; so incomparably lovely and grand and supreme is it above all the other cañons.
It is hoped that Congress will early create a Grand Cañon National Park. The territory most seriously considered embraces a hundred-mile stretch of the cañon with a narrow bit of each rim. This would extend about fifty miles up and an equal distance down the river from Grand Cañon Station. It would thus include only about half the length of the Grand Cañon, and no part of any other cañon. I should like to see it extended another hundred miles up the river. It would then embrace not less than two hundred miles of the river, and would include Marble Cañon and a part of Glen Cañon. But, whatever its length, it should include a broad forest border all the way, on both rims of the cañon.
To enable the public to see this titanic gorge in the most comfortable manner and from the best points of view, it is necessary to have more public roads and trails. There is great need that this unmatched wonder have National Park protection and development. At present the main trail to the bottom of the cañon is a private toll trail!
Visitors to almost any great scene are wont to compare it with some other scene; it reminds them of this place or that place. But when one first views Crater Lake, or while one is in the presence of the Big Trees for the first time, memory is suspended; and when one first beholds the Grand Cañon, it does not remind him of this or that—it completely possesses the observer, sweeps other scenes and places out of mind. Presently comes desire for a thousandfold capacity of feeling and comprehension. The thing is too vast and splendid for ordinary faculties.
By permission of the National Park Service, Department of the Interior
I have boated in many of the cañons of the Colorado and have camped and tramped along their rims. Often I have looked down into them when they were filled with mists; when broken clouds hung over them; when sunshine or moonlight illumined their depths, from which I have looked forth under like conditions. But to me, whether in summer or when snow piles the rim, the Grand Cañon never loses its intense impressiveness.
The Walhalla Plateau is an extraordinary cañon view-point and is likely to become one of the most famous places on the earth. This narrow plateau thrusts ten miles out into the vast, deep, airy Grand Cañon. It extends from the north rim, between Bright Angel Cañon and the inside bend of the main cañon opposite the Cañon of the Little Colorado. A most commanding peninsula it is, with wide and enormous depths sweeping almost entirely around it. Other commanding view-points on the north rim are Point Sublime and Bright Angel Point. Three excellent view-points on the south rim are Grand View, Hopi Point, and the El Tovar. Grand View is a few miles up the river from the El Tovar Hotel, and opposite Cape Royal of the Walhalla Plateau.