Grand Canyon National Park – South Rim, Arizona

The History of Grand Canyon National Park

The Grand Canyon is one of the most studied and written about landscapes on earth, and it is still not fully understood. The Colorado River has been carving through the Colorado Plateau for somewhere between five and six million years, cutting down through layer after layer of rock to expose nearly two billion years of geological history in the canyon walls. A mile deep at its deepest point, up to eighteen miles wide, and 277 miles long from end to end. The numbers are accurate and they mean almost nothing until you are standing on the rim looking at them.

Early Human History

People have lived in and around the Grand Canyon for at least 12,000 years. The earliest known inhabitants left small split-twig figurines in the caves along the canyon walls, artifacts that date back roughly 4,000 years. The Ancestral Puebloans built granaries and dwellings along the cliffs, some of which are still visible today. The Havasupai, Hualapai, Navajo, Paiute, and Zuni peoples all have deep historical and cultural connections to the canyon. For the Havasupai, whose reservation sits within the canyon itself, this has been home for centuries and remains so today.

European Exploration

The first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon were members of a Spanish expedition led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1540. A small detachment was sent to find the river that the Hopi people had described, and they reached the South Rim after several days of travel. They spent three days attempting to descend to the river and never made it. The canyon defeated them completely. After that encounter, the Grand Canyon largely disappeared from European records for more than two centuries.

John Wesley Powell and the River

The canyon did not get its first thorough scientific exploration until 1869, when John Wesley Powell led a crew of nine men on a three-month journey through the canyon by boat. Powell had lost his right arm in the Civil War and completed the entire expedition with one arm. The journey was dangerous, underfunded, and frequently chaotic, and it produced the first detailed maps and descriptions of the river and the canyon. Powell named many of the geological formations that still carry those names today. His 1875 account of the expedition remains one of the great documents of American exploration.

National Park Designation

Theodore Roosevelt visited the Grand Canyon in 1903 and gave a speech on the South Rim urging Americans to leave it alone. “Leave it as it is,” he said. “You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.” He used the Antiquities Act to designate it a National Monument in 1908. Congress established Grand Canyon National Park in 1919, making it the 17th national park in the country. Today it receives more than six million visitors a year, the majority of whom see it from the South Rim.

Know Before You Go

• Region: American Southwest / Northern Arizona / Colorado Plateau
• Location: Grand Canyon Village, Arizona — approximately 80 miles north of Flagstaff, 280 miles north of Phoenix
• Address: 20 South Entrance Road, Grand Canyon Village, AZ 86023 (South Rim Visitor Center)
• Coordinates: 36.0544° N, 112.1401° W
• Cost: $35 per vehicle / $20 per person on foot or bicycle. America the Beautiful pass accepted.
• Hours: South Rim open year-round, 24 hours a day. Visitor Center hours vary by season.
• Phone: (928) 638-7888
• Managed By: National Park Service
• Attraction Type: National Park
• Activities: Rim walking, canyon hiking, ranger programs, mule rides, river rafting, stargazing, cross-canyon corridor trails
• Notes:
  • The South Rim is accessible year-round. The North Rim is open mid-May through mid-October and is a much longer drive from most points of origin.
  • Parking at the South Rim fills quickly in summer. The park operates a free shuttle system with multiple routes. Use it.
  • Hiking into the canyon is a serious undertaking. The NPS strongly discourages hiking from the rim to the river and back in a single day. Heat, elevation change, and the uphill return trip catch a lot of people off guard.
  • Permits are required for overnight backcountry camping below the rim. Apply well in advance.
  • Mather Campground accepts reservations and fills months ahead during peak season.
• Additional Resources: NPS Official Site

My Visit

It was the first full day of a week-long drive through six states with my brother. We had left Prescott that morning, come through Oak Creek Canyon, and pulled into the South Rim around midday. The drive had already surprised me. I had no idea Arizona looked like that.

I grew up in northwest Missouri. River bluffs, rolling hills, open farmland. I had been to Colorado, traveled through the Alps. I had a framework for what big landscape meant. The Grand Canyon does not fit any framework you already have.

You can read the dimensions beforehand. A mile deep. Eighteen miles wide in places. 277 miles long. The numbers are real and they do not help at all. Standing on the South Rim looking down, your eyes take in the scale and your brain quietly refuses to process it. It is too much. You just stand there and let it happen to you.

We were not there to hike. We walked the rim for a while, not saying much. My brother had been out that way before and knew what it did to a person seeing it for the first time. He gave me the time to stand there without rushing any of it. That was the right call.

I lived in Arizona for seven years after that trip. Havasupai, the Salt River, the Mogollon Rim, a lot of country covered in a lot of different seasons. The Grand Canyon was where it all started. The first thing that broke whatever picture of the world I had carried with me out of the Midwest.

Worth the Stop

There is no version of a Southwest road trip where the Grand Canyon is not worth the stop. Walk to the rim. Stand there. Let it work on you. If you have more time, the Bright Angel Trail offers the best introduction to what the canyon looks like below the rim. The first mile down is accessible to most visitors and gives you a completely different sense of the scale than any overlook does.

Twenty years on, I’m retelling that trip day by day, starting with Day 1, the road to the Grand Canyon.