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- The Grand Canyon Is Considered One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Although it is not the longest or the steepest canyon on earth, the Grand Canyon is considered one of the seven natural wonders because of its overall size and scale combined with its beautifully colored landscape.
- UNESCO World Heritage Site. Grand Canyon was designated a national park in 1919 by the U.S. Congress and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. Only three U.S. national parks are UNESCO World Heritage sites: Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Yellowstone.
- The Grand Canyon is among the World’s Greatest Geological Spectacles. The horizontal strata exposed in the Grand Canyon retrace geological history over 2 billion years ago.
- The Grand Canyon Is Considered One of The Earth’s Most Visually Powerful Landscapes. The Grand Canyon provides visitors with a variety of experiences and lookouts.
Learn about the Grand Canyon's age, weather, depth, fossils, fish, village, and more. Discover the secrets and surprises of this natural wonder and how to visit it.
- We Don't Really Know How Old It IsIt has long been believed that the Colorado River began carving the Grand Canyon about 6 million years ago, but a 2012 study contained a real shock...
- The Grand Canyon Creates Its Own WeatherOf all Grand Canyon facts, this one is pretty cool – no pun intended. Sudden changes in elevation have an enormous impact on temperature and precip...
- It's Not The Deepest Canyon in The WorldThe Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon in Tibet plummets to a depth of 17,567 feet, making it more than 2 miles deeper than the Grand Canyon's 6,093 feet...
- There Are No Dinosaur Bones in The Grand CanyonThe Grand Canyon might look like the perfect place to go looking for dinosaur bones, but none have ever been found there, and for good reason. The...
- There Are Lots of Other Fossils in The AreaWhile the dinosaurs might have missed out on seeing the Grand Canyon, lots of other fossils have been found that suggest other creatures frequented...
- Fish Are Relatively Uncommon in The Grand CanyonPrior to modern flood control measures, the Colorado River provided a uniquely difficult habitat for fish, with heavy silt, frequent floods, and te...
- There's A Town in The Grand CanyonLists of Grand Canyon facts don’t often include information about its human population, but surprisingly, it does have one. Supai Village is locate...
- We're Missing 950 Million Years’ Worth of RocksThe Grand Canyon offers one of the most visible examples of a worldwide geological phenomenon known as the Great Unconformity, in which 250 million...
- Overview
- Geologic history
Grand Canyon, immense canyon cut by the Colorado River in the high plateau region of northwestern Arizona, U.S., noted for its fantastic shapes and coloration.
The Grand Canyon lies in the southwestern portion of the Colorado Plateau, which occupies a large area of the southwestern United States and consists essentially of horizontal layered rocks and lava flows. The broad, intricately sculptured chasm of the canyon contains between its outer walls a multitude of imposing peaks, buttes, gorges, and ravines. It ranges in width from about 175 yards (160 metres) to 18 miles (29 km) and extends in a winding course from the mouth of the Paria River, near Lees Ferry and the northern boundary of Arizona with Utah, to Grand Wash Cliffs, near the Nevada state line, a distance of about 277 miles (446 km); the first portion of the canyon—from Lees Ferry to the confluence with the Little Colorado River—is called Marble Canyon. The Grand Canyon also includes many tributary side canyons and surrounding plateaus.
Although its awesome grandeur and beauty are the major attractions of the Grand Canyon, perhaps its most vital and valuable aspect lies in the time scale of Earth history that is revealed in the exposed rocks of the canyon walls. No other place on Earth compares to the Grand Canyon for its extensive and profound record of geologic events. The canyon’s record, however, is far from continuous and complete. There are immense time gaps; many millions of years are unaccounted for, owing to gaps in the strata that resulted either from vast quantities of materials being removed by erosion or because there was little or no deposition of materials. Thus, rock formations of considerably different ages are separated by only a thin distinct surface that reveals the vast unconformity in time.
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Briefly summarized, the geologic history of the canyon strata is as follows. The crystallized, twisted, and contorted unstratified rocks of the inner gorge at the bottom of the canyon are Archean granite and schist more than 2.5 billion years old. Overlying those very ancient rocks is a layer of Proterozoic limestones, sandstones, and shales that are more than 540 million years old. On top of them are Paleozoic rock strata composed of more limestones, freshwater shales, and cemented sandstones that form much of the canyon’s walls and represent a depositional period stretching over 300 million years. Overlying those rocks in the ordinary geologic record should be a thick sequence of Mesozoic rocks (about 250 to 65 million years old), but rocks dating from the Mesozoic Era in the Grand Canyon have been entirely eroded away. Mesozoic rocks are found nonetheless in nearby southern Utah, where they form precipitous butte remnants and vermilion, white, and pink cliff terraces. Of relatively recent origin are overlying sheets of black lava and volcanic cones that occur a few miles southeast of the canyon and in the western Grand Canyon proper, some estimated to have been active within the past 1,000 years. (See also Grand Canyon Series.)
The cutting of the mile-deep Grand Canyon by the Colorado River is an event of relatively recent geologic history that began not more than six million years ago, when the river began following its present course. The Colorado River’s rapid velocity and large volume and the great amounts of mud, sand, and gravel it carries swiftly downstream account for the incredible cutting capacity of the river. Before Glen Canyon Dam was built, the sediments carried by the Colorado River were measured at an average of 500,000 tons per day. Conditions favourable to vigorous erosion were brought about by the uplift of the region, which steepened the river’s path and allowed deep entrenchment. The depth of the Grand Canyon is the result of the cutting action of the river, but its great width is explained by rain, wind, temperature, and chemical erosion, helped by the rapid wear of soft rocks, all of which steadily widened the canyon. An experiment was conducted in March 2008, in which water equivalent to about 40 percent of the river’s original flow was released from Glen Canyon Dam for a period of 60 hours to measure the erosion and deposition of sediments along the river. Researchers monitoring the experiment noted additional sand deposition at numerous locations along the river following the release.
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- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Grand Canyon (Hopi: Öngtupqa, Yavapai: Wi:kaʼi:la, Navajo: Bidááʼ Haʼaztʼiʼ Tsékooh, Southern Paiute language: Paxa’uipi, Spanish: Gran Cañón or Gran Cañón del Colorado) 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 ...
- 5–6 million years
- 277 miles (446 km)
- United States
- Arizona
- Can't-miss experiences. Cruising the Colorado River in a dory instead of a rubber raft may seem like a stately way to travel, but in reality it’s a much wilder ride, not very different from how John Wesley Powell and his team first navigated through the Grand Canyon bottom in 1869.
- Grand Canyon Village. With its exhibits on the park’s natural and human history, Grand Canyon Visitor Center on the South Rim is an excellent starting point.
- The South Rim. During the slower winter months, you can drive all the way to Hermits Rest. But during the busy peak season (March 1 to November 30), Hermit Road is closed to private vehicles west of the village.
- The North Rim. From Desert View Tower, the drive to the Grand Canyon’s North Rim is nearly 200 miles. But it’s a journey into a different world. For starters, the North Rim averages a thousand feet higher than its southern counterpart.
Dec 2, 2009 · Learn about the Grand Canyon, a mile-deep gorge in northern Arizona that formed over millions of years by the Colorado River. Discover its ancient rock formations, native cultures, explorers, tourism and controversies.
May 15, 2024 · Located on ancestral homeland of 11 Tribal Communities, Grand Canyon is one of the most spectacular examples of erosion anywhere in the world—unmatched in the incomparable vistas it offers visitors from the rims.
