The Grand Canyon, in the northwestern corner of Arizona, is one of the most remarkable landscapes on Earth. The national park that protects it covers about 1.2 million acres (roughly 4,900 square kilometers).
It is not the longest canyon in the world, and it is not the deepest. What sets it apart is the combination: sheer scale, staggering depth, and bands of multicolored rock laid bare by millions of years of erosion and weathering.
Few places on the planet display so much of Earth’s history at once, and few illustrate the work of erosion so clearly. AdmiGram.com looks at why the Grand Canyon leaves such a lasting impression on nearly everyone who stands at its edge.
The Epic and Majestic Grand Canyon
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The canyon itself is roughly 6 million years old, but the rock at its base formed nearly 2 billion years ago. Geologists read those layers the way the rest of us read chapters, tracing how the continent was built, flooded, buried, and lifted again.
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The canyon runs 277 miles (446 kilometers) long, widens to 18 miles (29 kilometers), and drops more than a mile — up to about 6,000 feet (1,800 meters). Numbers like these don’t mean much on the page. They mean a great deal when you’re standing on the rim.
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Because the canyon spans thousands of feet of elevation, it packs several climate zones into a single landscape. The park is home to more than 1,700 plant species, 91 species of mammals, 58 species of reptiles and amphibians, and roughly 450 species of birds — enough to earn it recognition as a Globally Important Bird Area.
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That range of elevation shows up in the weather, too. Winter temperatures on the rim drop well below freezing, while summer readings at the bottom of the canyon regularly climb past 104°F (40°C). Hikers who set out in cool morning air on the rim can find themselves in desert heat by afternoon.
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Two footbridges span the Colorado River deep in the canyon. The better known is the Kaibab Suspension Bridge — the “Black Bridge” — which carries hikers and mule trains across the river near Phantom Ranch.
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Above it run the canyon’s most famous trails, Bright Angel and South Kaibab. Both descend from the South Rim toward the river, and both come with the same warning from park rangers: going down is the easy half.
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The canyon is sacred ground for eleven associated tribes, among them the Havasupai, Hualapai, Hopi, and Navajo. These communities have lived in and around the canyon for centuries, and their histories and spiritual traditions are bound up with the landscape.
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At Grand Canyon West, on the Hualapai reservation outside the national park, a horseshoe-shaped glass walkway juts 70 feet (21 meters) past the rim. The Skywalk is often advertised as hanging 4,000 feet above the Colorado River — that figure describes the drop to river level rather than the cliff directly underfoot, which falls away some 500 to 800 feet. Either way, the glass floor does its job.
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The canyon has turned up in National Lampoon’s Vacation, Into the Wild, Forrest Gump, Maverick, and Transformers, among others. One famous exception: the cliff that Thelma and Louise sail off is supposed to be the Grand Canyon, but Ridley Scott shot the scene at Dead Horse Point in Utah.
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The best show, though, needs no crew. At sunrise and sunset, low light rakes across the canyon walls and turns them red, orange, and pink, and the shadows shift by the minute. Plenty of visitors plan their whole trip around those twenty minutes.
image on top: Sojy John / Unsplash
