The Book of the National Parks Part 26

The descent into the canyon is usually made from El Tovar down the Bright Angel Trail, so called because it faces the splendid Bright Angel Canyon of the north side, and by the newer Hermit Trail which starts a few miles west. There are trails at Grand View, eight miles east, and at Ba.s.s Camp, twenty-four miles west of El Tovar, which are seldom used now. All go to the bottom of the Granite Gorge. The commonly used trails may be travelled afoot by those physically able, and on mule-back by any person of any age who enjoys ordinary health. The Bright Angel trip returns the traveller to the rim at day's end. The Hermit Trail trip camps him overnight on the floor of the canyon at the base of a magic temple. The finest trip of all takes him down the Hermit Trail, gives him a night in the depths, and returns him to the rim by the Bright Angel Trail. Powell named Bright Angel Creek during that memorable first pa.s.sage through the Canyon. He had just named a muddy creek Dirty Devil, which suggested, by contrast, the name of Bright Angel for a stream so pure and sparkling.

The Havasupai Indian reservation may be visited in the depths of Cataract Canyon by following the trail from Ba.s.s Camp.

The first experience usually noted in the descent is the fine quality of the trail, gentle in slope and bordered by rock on the steep side. The next experience is the disappearance of the straight uncompromising horizon of the opposite rim, which is a distinctive feature of every view from above. As soon as the descent fairly begins, even the smaller bluffs and promontories a.s.sume towering proportions, and, from the Tonto floor, the mighty elevations of Cheops, Isis, Zoroaster, s.h.i.+va, Wotan, and the countless other temples of the abyss become mountains of enormous height.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a photograph copyright by Fred Harvey_

CAMPING PARTY ON THE SOUTH RIM

This is within a few hundred feet of the Grand Canyon abyss]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a photograph copyright by Fred Harvey_

DOWN HERMIT TRAIL FROM RIM TO RIVER

Grand Canyon National Park]

From the river's side the elevations of the Granite Gorge present a new series of precipitous towers, back of which in places loom the tops of the painted palaces, and back of them, from occasional favored view-spots, the far-distant rim. Here, and here only, does the Grand Canyon reveal the fulness of its meaning.

IV

The Grand Canyon was discovered in 1540 by El Tovar, one of the captains of Cardenas, in charge of one of the expeditions of the Spanish explorer, Diaz, who was hunting for seven fabled cities of vast wealth.

"They reached the banks of a river which seemed to be more than three or four leagues above the stream that flowed between them." It was seen in 1776 by a Spanish priest who sought a crossing and found one at a point far above the canyon; this still bears the name Vado de los Padres.

By 1840 it was probably known to the trappers who overran the country.

In 1850 Lieutenant Whipple, surveying for a Pacific route, explored the Black Canyon and ascended the Grand Canyon to Diamond Creek.

In 1857 Lieutenant Ives, sent by the War Department to test the navigability of the Colorado, ascended as far as the Virgin River in a steamboat which he had s.h.i.+pped in pieces from Philadelphia. From there he entered the Grand Canyon afoot, climbed to the rim, and, making a detour, encountered the river again higher up. In 1867 James White was picked up below the Virgin River lashed to floating logs. He said that his hunting-party near the head of the Colorado River, attacked by Indians, had escaped upon a raft. This presently broke up in the rapids and his companions were lost. He lashed himself to the wreckage and was washed through the Grand Canyon.

About this time Major John Wesley Powell, a school-teacher who had lost an arm in the Civil War, determined to explore the great canyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers. Besides the immense benefit to science, the expedition promised a great adventure. Many lives had been lost in these canyons and wonderful were the tales told concerning them. Indians reported that huge cataracts were hidden in their depths and that in one place the river swept through an underground pa.s.sage.

Nevertheless, with the financial backing of the State inst.i.tutions of Illinois and the Chicago Academy of Science, Powell got together a party of ten men with four open boats, provisions for ten months, and all necessary scientific instruments. He started above the canyons of the Green River on May 24, 1869.

There are many canyons on the Green and Colorado Rivers. They vary in length from eight to a hundred and fifty miles, with walls successively rising from thirteen hundred to thirty-five hundred feet in height. The climax of all, the Grand Canyon, is two hundred and seventeen miles long, with walls six thousand feet in height.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a photograph by A.J. Baker_

THROUGH THE GRANITE GORGE SURGES THE MUDDY COLORADO]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a photograph by Fred Harvey_

WHEN MORNING MISTS LIFT FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GRAND CANYON]

On August 17, when Powell and his adventurers reached the Grand Canyon, their rations had been reduced by upsets and other accidents to enough musty flour for ten days, plenty of coffee, and a few dried apples. The bacon had spoiled. Most of the scientific instruments were in the bottom of the river. One boat was destroyed. The men were wet to the skin and unable to make a fire. In this plight they entered the Grand Canyon, somewhere in whose depths a great cataract had been reported.

The story of the pa.s.sage is too long to tell here. Chilled, hungry, and worn, they struggled through it. Often they were obliged to let their boats down steep rapids by ropes, and clamber after them along the slippery precipices. Often there was nothing to do but to climb into their boats and run down long foaming slants around the corners of which death, perhaps, awaited. Many times they were upset and barely escaped with their lives. With no wraps or clothing that were not soaked with water, there were nights when they could not sleep for the cold.

So the days pa.s.sed and the food lessened to a few handfuls of wet flour.

The dangers increased; some falls were twenty feet in height. Finally three of the men determined to desert; they believed they could climb the walls and that their chances would be better with the Indians than with the canyon. Powell endeavored to dissuade them, but they were firm.

He offered to divide his flour with them, but this they refused.

These men, two Howlands, brothers, and William Dunn, climbed the canyon walls and were killed by Indians. Two or three days later Powell and the rest of his party emerged below the Grand Canyon, where they found food and safety.

Taught by the experience of this great adventure, Powell made a second trip two years later which was a scientific achievement. Later on he became Director of the United States Geological Survey.

Since then, the pa.s.sage of the Grand Canyon has been made several times.

R.B. Stanton made it in 1889 in the course of a survey for a proposed railroad through the canyon; one of the leaders of the party was drowned.

V

The history of the Grand Canyon has been industriously collected. It remains for others to gather the legends. It is enough here to quote from Powell the Indian story of its origin.

"Long ago," he writes, "there was a great and wise chief who mourned the death of his wife, and would not be comforted until Tavwoats, one of the Indian G.o.ds, came to him and told him his wife was in a happier land, and offered to take him there that he might see for himself, if, upon his return, he would cease to mourn. The great chief promised. Then Tavwoats made a trail through the mountains that intervene between that beautiful land, the balmy region of the great West, and this, the desert home of the poor Numa. This trail was the canyon gorge of the Colorado.

Through it he led him; and when they had returned the deity exacted from the chief a promise that he would tell no one of the trail. Then he rolled a river into the gorge, a mad, raging stream, that should engulf any that might attempt to enter thereby."

VI

The bill creating the Grand Canyon National Park pa.s.sed Congress early in 1919, and was signed by President Wilson on February 26. This closed an intermittent campaign of thirty-three years, begun by President Harrison, then senator from Indiana, in January, 1886, to make a national park of the most stupendous natural spectacle in the world.

Politics, private interests, and the deliberation of governmental procedure were the causes of delay. A self-evident proposition from the beginning, it ill.u.s.trates the enormous difficulties which confront those who labor to develop our national-parks system. The story is worth the telling.

Senator Harrison's bill of 1886 met an instant response from the whole nation. It called for a national park fifty-six miles long and sixty-nine miles wide. There was opposition from Arizona and the bill failed. In 1893 the Grand Canyon National Forest was created. In 1898, depredations and unlawful seizures of land having been reported, the Secretary of the Interior directed the Land-Office to prepare a new national-park bill. In 1899 the Land-Office reported that the bill could not be drawn until the region was surveyed. It took the Geological Survey five years to make the survey. The bill was not prepared because meantime it was discovered that the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, now the Santa Fe, owned rights which first must be eliminated.

Failing to become a national park, President Roosevelt proclaimed the Grand Canyon a national monument in 1908. In 1909 a bill was introduced ent.i.tling Ralph H. Cameron to build a scenic railway along the canyon rim, which created much adverse criticism and failed. In 1910 the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society proposed a bill to create the Grand Canyon a national park of large size. The Geological Survey, to which it was referred, recommended a much smaller area. By the direction of President Taft, Senator Flint introduced a national-park bill which differed from both suggestions. The opposition of grazing interests threw it into the hands of conferees. In 1911 Senator Flint introduced the conferees' bill, but it was opposed by private interests and failed.

Meantime the country became aroused. Patriotic societies pet.i.tioned for a national park, and the National Federation of Women's Clubs began an agitation. The Department of the Interior prepared a map upon which to base a bill, and for several years negotiated with the Forest Service, which administered the Grand Canyon as a national monument, concerning boundaries. Finally the boundaries were reduced to little more than the actual rim of the canyon, and a bill was prepared which Senator Ashurst introduced in February, 1917. It failed in committee in the House owing to opposition from Arizona. It was the same bill, again introduced by Senator Ashurst in the new Congress two months later, which finally pa.s.sed the House and became a law in 1919; but it required a favoring resolution by the Arizona legislature to pave the way.

Meantime many schemes were launched to utilize the Grand Canyon for private gain. It was plastered thickly with mining claims, though the Geological Survey showed that it contained no minerals worth mining; mining claims helped delay. Schemers sought capital to utilize its waters for power. Railroads were projected. Plans were drawn to run sightseeing cars across it on wire cables. These were the interests, and many others, which opposed the national park.

XVII

THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT

ZION NATIONAL MONUMENT, SOUTHERN UTAH. AREA, 120 SQUARE MILES

When, in the seventies, Major J.W. Powell, the daring adventurer of the Grand Canyon, faced Salt Lake City on his return from one of his notable geological explorations of the southwest, he laid his course by a temple of rock "lifting its opalescent shoulders against the eastern sky." His party first sighted it across seventy miles of a desert which "rose in a series of Cyclopean steps." When, climbing these, they had seen the West Temple of the Virgin revealed in the glory of vermilion body and s.h.i.+ning white dome, and had gazed between the glowing Gates of Little Zion into the gorgeous valley within, these scenery-sated veterans of the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert pa.s.sed homeward profoundly impressed and planning quick return.

No wonder that Brigham Young, who had visited it many years before with a party of Mormons seeking a refuge in event of Indian raids or of exile from their Zion, Salt Lake City, had looked upon its glory as prophetic, and named it Little Zion.

Geologists found the spot a fruitful field of study. They found it also a masterpiece of desert beauty.

"Again we are impressed with the marvellous beauty of outline, the infinite complication of these t.i.tanic b.u.t.tes," wrote F.S. Dellenbaugh, topographer of the Powell party, on his second visit. "It is doubtful if in this respect the valley has its equal. Not even the Grand Canyon offers a more varied spectacle; yet all is welded together in a superb ensemble."