Grand Canyon National Park

HOW TO GET TO Grand Canyon National Park BY AUTOMOBILE National Monument, and Zion National Park. To South Rim.-State Route 64 leads from U S 66, main east and west highway through BY BUS northern Arizona, to park headquarters To SouthRim.- Transcontinental buses of at Grand Canyon Village. The Navahopi the Pacific Greyhound Lines and the Santa Road, from Desert View, east entrance to Fe Trails System go to both Flagstaff and the park, connects with U S 89 a mile and Williams, Ariz. The Navahopi Tours oper- a half south of Cameron, Ariz. U S 66 and ates between Flagstaff and the south en- 89 connect Cameron and Flagstaff, Ariz. trance to the park. The Fred Harvey Line These roads are open all year. has service between Williams and the park. To North Rim.-From Cedar City, Utah, To North Rim.-The Burlington Trans- U S 91 leads to Zion National Park. From portation Co. and the Interstate Transit Zion a new road extends via Pine Creek to Lines serve Cedar City from Salt Lake Mount Carmel, passing through a mile of City and Los Angeles. In addition, the tunnels in Zion Canyon and connecting at Santa Fe Trails System delivers passengers Mount Carmel with U S 89, extending from Salt Lake 'City at Jacob Lake, Ariz., northward toward Bryce Canyon National where transportation to the park is available. Park and southward via Kanab, Utah, and The Utah Parks Co. provides bus service Fredonia, Ariz., to Grand Canyon. Another from Cedar City to the park. good road from Cedar City leads over Cedar Mountain, via Cedar Breaks, to Cedar BY AIRPLANE Junction and the Grand Canyon rim. Roads To SouthRim.- Trans World Airline to the North Rim are closed from October 15 (TW A) serves Grand Canyon through the to May 15. Valle Airport (30 miles south), and limou- BY RAILROAD sine service is available to the park. TW A, To SouthRim.-A branch line of the Atchi- United Air Lines, and Western Air Lines son, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway runs deliver passengers at Las Vegas, Nev., and from Williams, Ariz., direct to the park. On TW A and American Airlines at Phoenix, certain trains through Pullmans are operated Ariz. From both of these points one may directly to Grand Canyon. For other trains continue on via TW A, or change to TW A, regular and frequent motor-stage service is for the park. Grand Canyon Airlines main- maintained between Williams and Grand tains an airport about 18 miles from the Canyon. South Rim, with hangar space 'and service . To North Rim.-Travelers by rail may for visiting planes . reach the park over the Union Pacific Rail- To North Rim.-TheNorth Rim landing road to Cedar City, Utah, the gateway to field at De Motte Park (VT) is 18 miles Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Grand Canyon from Grand Canyon Lodge. Trans-Canyon National Parks and Cedar Breaks National service is maintained in the summer by Monument. Buses of the Utah Parks Co. Grand Canyon Airlines. Western Air Lines operate to the canyon's North Rim. Visitors provides twice-daily service to Cedar City, to the North Rim may conveniently include where connections are made with Utah Parks Bryce Canyon National Park, Cedar Breaks Co. motor-stages to the the North Rim. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION Any travel bureau, railroad, bus line, airline ticket office, or local automobile club can furnish information concerning transportation and routes to Grand Canyon National Park. Detailed information regarding the park may be obtained by writing to the Superintendent, Grand Canyon National Park, Grand Canyon, Ariz. 2 Grand Canyon NATIONAL PARK SOUTH RIM OPEN ALL YEAR Arizpna NORTH RIM OPEN SUMMER SEASON ONLY The world's most wonderful spectacle, ever-changing, alive with a million moods-that is the Grand Canyon.-JoHN BURROUGHS. ~-"",,""-l HE GRAND CANYON denly outlined in golden light, against NATIONAL PARK is which their shapes loom in hazy blues. part of that priceless Down in the gorge, here and there, heritage of the United stretches of the Colorado River reflect States preserved "for the sunlight. the benefit and enjoy- An hour later all is changed. The ment of the people" in the National dark capes are brilliant-hued and well- Park System. That System constitutes defined. Scores of new temples have less than three-fourths of one percent emerged from the purple gloom. of the total area of the country and is At midday the opposite walls have retained inviolate from commercial flattened and the capes and temples exploitation on the theory that thus have lost their definite shadows. But preserved it serves its highest purpose. as the afternoon wears on the spec- The canyon is a titanic gorge, 4 to 18 tacles of the morning creep back, now miles wide, 217 miles long, cut by the reversed and strangely altered in out- mighty Colorado River as it has line. rushed to the sea. Rising from its Just after sunset, the reds deepen to depths are whole ranges of mountains, reaching a mile toward the sky. Over dim purples and the grays and yellows the rock temples and into the depths of and greens change to magical blues. the chasm spreads a veil of ever-chang- Then night falls, and in the dark the ing colors. canyon suggests unimaginable mys- Watching from the South Rim in the teries. But should there be a moon, the morning, when the light slants length- outlines of the great abyss revive in wise from the Painted Desert, one sees silver light, a thousand spectral forms the great capes of the opposite rim sud- projected from inscrutable gloom. Cover: Looking across the Canyon from the North Rim. Union Pacific R. R. photo. 3 The most picturesque section of the rated by the cutting of branch canyons Grand Canyon is within the bounda- and stand as solitary pinnacles capped ries of Grand Canyon National Park. by remnants of a hard bed of rock. The area of the park is 1,008 square These remnants are the buttes and miles. Beyond its eastern boundary temples. The great height of the pla- lies the Painted Desert. Its western teau gives rapid fall to the streams that boundary includes Havasu Canyon, are tributary to the Colorado River, in whose depths live the Havasupai enabling them to cut deeply and to Indians. West of the park is Grand carve rock forms that are fashioned on Canyon National Monument, which a gigantic scale. The erosion accom- includes Toroweap Point, affording plished by these streams, though spas- a remarkable view of the Colorado modic because the streams are fed River locked in sheer depths of over mainly by intermittent rainstorms in 2,900 feet. an arid climate, is nonetheless effec- tive. The desert plants grow sparsely, Geology of the Canyon so the slopes are partly bare of vegetation. The concentrated energy of a The Grand Canyon has been formed single torrential shower, therefore, by the work of running water as the re- may wreak more havoc than would be gion has been slowly elevated. As the caused by a season's rainfall on a plant- formations of the upper canyon walls covered slope in a humid region. It is lie in orderly horizontal layers like this prevailing aridity that, by retard- beds of masonry, they have been ing the growth of vegetation and the carved into definite architectural formation of soil, keeps sharp and forms which are everywhere compa- fresh profiles that in a moist region rable in profile though varied and ir- would soon be dulled or obscured. regular in plan. As they vary in their Exposed in the canyon is one of the resistance to erosion, some being hard most complete sections of rocks known, and some soft, every part of the canyon Forming the wall of a narrow inner walls, every pinnacle and butte, is gorge in the lower part of the canyon characterized by its own steplike alter- are some of the oldest rocks (Archean) nation of step, slope, and shelf. Each known to geologists. Originally largely resistant bed stands forth as a cliff, and sedimentary, they have been so altered each weak bed is marked by a slope. by the great heat and pressure of Each shelf, or platform, is made by the mountain-making movements that the wasting back of a weak stratum that original character has been entirely lies upon a resistant, cliff-making lost. No traces oflife have survived the stratum, and the greater the thickness great metamorphism of the rocks of of the weak stratum, the broader the this first era. shelf. The plateaus that border the Here and there in the lower part of canyon are themselves simply great the Grand Canyon may be seen groups terraces developed on a resistant for- of tilted rock layers of the second geo- mation, a thick limestone, from which logic era (Algonkian), remnants of a overlying beds have been eroded away. second series of mountains that existed As erosion goes on, parts of the can- in this region. These rocks are the old- . yon wall, or plateau, become sepa- est to retain their original character, 4 for in them may be recognized peb- ians. During the growing season both bles, sand grains, mud, and lime, as rims and the canyon slopes are covered well as the oldest definite traces of life. with a great variety of wild flowers. The horizontal rock strata that form Among the larger mammals are the the upper canyon walls, and which lie mule deer, mountain sheep, antelope, on the erosion-truncated edges of the cougar, coyote, and bobcat.

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