The Grand Canyon (Hopi: Ongtupqa,[2] Yavapai: Wi:kaʼi:la, Navajo: Bidááʼ Haʼaztʼiʼ

Tsékooh,[3][4] Spanish: Gran Cañón) is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado

River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is 277 miles (446 km) long, up to 18
miles (29 km) wide and attains a depth of over a mile (6,093 feet or 1,857 meters). [5]

The canyon and adjacent rim are contained within Grand Canyon National Park, the Kaibab
National Forest, Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, the Hualapai Indian
Reservation, the Havasupai Indian Reservation and the Navajo Nation. President Theodore
Roosevelt was a major proponent of preservation of the Grand Canyon area, and visited it
on numerous occasions to hunt and enjoy the scenery.

Nearly two billion years of Earth's geological history have been exposed as the Colorado
River and its tributaries cut their channels through layer after layer of rock while
the Colorado Plateau was uplifted.[6] While some aspects about the history of incision of
the canyon are debated by geologists,[7] several recent studies support the hypothesis
that the Colorado River established its course through the area about 5 to 6 million years
ago.[1][8][9] Since that time, the Colorado River has driven the down-cutting of the
tributaries and retreat of the cliffs, simultaneously deepening and widening the canyon.
For thousands of years, the area has been continuously inhabited by Native Americans,
who built settlements within the canyon and its many caves. The Pueblo people considered
the Grand Canyon a holy site, and made pilgrimages to it. [10] The first European known to
have viewed the Grand Canyon was García López de Cárdenas from Spain, who arrived in
1540.[11]
In 1858, John Strong Newberry became probably the first geologist to visit the Grand
Canyon.[30]
In 1869, Major John Wesley Powell led the first expedition down the canyon. Powell set out
to explore the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. Powell ordered a shipwright to build
four reinforced Whitewall rowboats from Chicago and had them shipped east on the newly
completed Continental railroad. He hired nine men, including his brother Walter, and
collected provisions for ten months. They set out from Green River, Wyoming on May 24.
Passing through (or portaging around) a series of dangerous rapids, the group passed
down the Green River to its confluence with the Colorado River, near present-day Moab,
Utah. Most of their food spoiled after getting wet in the waves or by heavy rains. Beaten
up by ferocious whitewater and nearly out of food, three men left the expedition in the
Grand Canyon, electing to walk 75 miles out across a desert to a Mormon settlement.
Never seen again, their disappearance remains one of the most enduring mysteries of
American western history. The remaining members completed the journey through the
Grand Canyon on August 13, 1869.[31][32] In 1871 Powell first used the term "Grand
Canyon"; previously it had been called the "Big Canyon".[33]
In 1889, Frank M. Brown wanted to build a railroad along the Colorado River to carry coal.
He, his chief engineer Robert Brewster Stanton, and 14 others started to explore the Grand
Canyon in poorly designed cedar wood boats, with no life preservers. Brown drowned in an
accident near Marble Canyon: Stanton made new boats and proceeded to explore the
Colorado all of the way to the Gulf of California.[34]
The Grand Canyon[35] became an official national monument in 1908 and a national park
in 1919.