GRAND CANYON, Ariz., also called the grand canyon of the Colorado River in. Ari zona to distinguish it from the grand canyon of the Yellowstone (see YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK), from the profound gorges cut by the Green and Grand rivers, from Marble Canyon, etc. It was set aside 11 Jan. 1908 as one of the "national monuments* administered by the Agricultural Department; the area of the res ervation is 806,400 acres; the gorge is 217% miles in length, 4,000 to 6,000 feet deep, and in width at the top varies between one or two miles and quite 15 miles. If we include the Marble Canyon, its less profound neighbor, the chasm's total length is increased to 283 miles. A publication of the Department of the Inte rior contains an excellent account of Major Powell's famous adventure which culminated here. For hundreds of miles the Colorado and its tributaries form a mighty network of mighty chasms which few had ventured even to enter. Of the Grand Canyon, deepest and hugest of all, tales were current of whirlpools, of hundreds of miles of underground passage and of giant falls. The Indians feared it. Even the hardiest of frontiersmen refused it.
It remained for a geologist and a school teacher, a one-armed veteran of the Civil War, John Wesley Powell, to dare and to accom plish. That was in 1869. Nine men accom panied him in four boats. There proved to be no impassable whirlpools in the Grand Canyon, no underground passages and no cataracts.
But the trip was hazardous in the extreme. The adventurers faced the unknown at every bend, daily embarking upon swift rapids with out guessing in what great falls such rapids might terminate. Four men deserted, hoping to climb the walls, and were never heard from again — and this happened the very day before Major Powell and his faithful half dozen floated clear of the Grand Canyon into safety. Charles Dudley Warner called the chasm "by far the most sublime of all earthly spectacles. Professor Van Dyke wrote: More mysterious in its depth than the Himalayas in their height, the Grand Canyon remains not the eighth but the first wonder of the world?' To geologists it seems primarily a masterpiece of erosion. See NATIONAL PARKS AND MONUMENTS.