View from the South Rim

The Grand Canyon 5,280 feet 7,920 stairs Keep track of your stairs. (1 stair equals approximately 8 inches) Each box equals 25 stairs. If you climb to the top you will burn approximately 5,650 calories.

west, then another formed from the View from the South Rim east, and the two broke through and met as a single majestic rent in The Grand Canyon is a steep- the earth some six million years sided gorge carved by the ago. The merger apparently Colorado River in the U.S. state occurred where the river today, of Arizona, and parts of Nevada. coming from the north, bends to It is largely contained within the the west, in the area known as the Grand Canyon National Park — “Kaibab Arch." one of the first national parks in the United States. President During prehistory, the area Theodore Roosevelt was a major was inhabited by Native proponent of preservation of the Americans who built Grand Canyon area, and visited settlements within the canyon on numerous occasions to hunt and its many caves. The and enjoy the scenery. Pueblo people considered the Grand Canyon ("Ongtupqa" Longstanding scientific consensus has in Hopi language) a holy site been that the canyon was created by the and made pilgrimages to it. Colorado River over a period of six The first European known to million years, but research released in have viewed the Grand 2008 suggests a much longer 17 million Canyon was García López de year time span. The canyon is 277 Cárdenas from Spain, who miles (446 km) long, ranges in width arrived in 1540. In 1869, from 4 to 18 miles (6.4 to 29 km) and Major John Wesley Powell, a attains a depth of more than a mile, one-armed Civil War veteran (5,280 feet). Nearly two billion with a thirst for science and years of the Earth's history have been adventure, made the first exposed as the recorded journey through the canyon on the Colorado Colorado River and its tributaries cut River. Powell referred to the their channels through layer after layer sedimentary rock units of rock while the Colorado Plateau was exposed in the canyon as uplifted. The "canyon started from the "leaves in a great story book".