The Big Canyon
Monday, October 28, 2013 at 1:14PM 
Grand CanyonThe first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon, members of Coronado’s expedition in 1540, were annoyed that this vast chasm prevented them from continuing their search for the fabled riches of the Seven Cities of Cibola. When they returned to Spain they were court-martialed for coming back empty handed.
It was another 300 years before more white people ventured into this huge desolate area. The war victory over Mexico gave the US new Southwest territories and the US Army surveyors in 1857 wrote, “The region is altogether valueless…Ours has been the first, and doubtless the last, party of whites to visit this profitless locality.”
But just ten years later, 1869, John Wesley Powell, the first white man to take a boat down the 900 miles of Green and Colorado Rivers through the canyon area, wrote, “The maps read ‘Big Canyon,’ but I believe it should be called The Grand Canyon.”
This week I am one of 5 million annual visitors to this National Park. Our summer Back Road Café road trip across America is back for a brief reprise. I’ll probably write next week about the rest of my trip, to Canyon de Chelley on a Navaho reservation, and Zion National Park in Utah.
As soon as we got in the rental car in Phoenix and started seeing exits like “Horse Thief Road” and “Bloody Gulch Highway” I knew I was in the old cowboy west, even though these exits featured Home Depots and In & Out Burgers.
But Northern Arizona is indeed desolate and remote and surprisingly unimpacted by all those 5 million visitors. This morning’s sunrise over the canyon, I saw twenty other people in an hour. I gather only 5% of all visitors stay over night. It’s like visiting majestic temples or cathedrals; get there early before the tour busses, take a nap midday, stay as late as you can, savor the quiet beauty.
Indeed the Grand Canyon is very much like a cathedral, and its grandeur inspired early explorers and surveyors like Powell to assign surprisingly religious names to various buttes and points. Some of my favorites: Wotan’s Throne, Krishna Shrine, Zoroaster Temple, Buddha Temple, Isis Temple, Tower of Set, Point Sublime, Cape Solitude, Sheba Temple.
John Wesley PowellTurns out Powell had studied the classics in college (at Oberlin College in the 1850’s, before serving in the Civil War where he lost an arm –made those Colorado River rapids even more challenging) and could easily imagine powerful gods inhabiting and ruling this almost mythological realm.
He also honored with place names the native folks whom he met and who aided his explorations: Nankoweep, Coconimo, Havasu and Matakatamiba. No doubt those folks already had their own names for these places, but at least their legacy lives on on our modern maps.
Powell’s dramatic and deathly ride down the Colorado rapids in 1869 is legendary, but rarely do we hear about his important government service. He worked for two major agencies in Washington. He was the second director of the US Geological Service, and he was the first director of the Ethnology Department at the Smithsonian Institution (later the American Indian Dept.) He hoped to preserve and protect the land he had helped to open up, from the inevitable western expansion and destruction. At the Smithsonian he helped publish an important study recording over 100 Indian languages. And he lobbied Congress tirelessly, and ultimately unsuccessfully, to allot western land parcels, with their crucial rights to scarce water, not by the traditional 40 acre plots but instead to follow watersheds contours, along rivers and springs. Eastern legislators could not comprehend a land of limited rainfall. Railroad robber barons wanted towns along the rails, including agriculture development, even asserting that “rain follows crops.” Mercifully our environmentalist President Teddy Roosevelt fell in love with the Grand Canyon and helped protect it as one of the first National Parks.
Wallace StegnerI learned about Powell’s science and advocacy in a fascinating book by iconic American writer Wallace Stegner, best known for novels, but whose non-fiction is as important. It was on my last trip to the Grand Canyon ten years ago that I bought and read Stegner’s Beyond the 100th Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. Today I admired the Powell Memorial overlooking the Tower of Set and the Bright Angel Trailhead.
At an evening program around a campfire a ranger said that since we were lucky enough to be here for more than one day, “find your special Grand Canyon place, and just sit there as long as you can, hours, watch the light change, the sounds and smells, the animals, the colors.” I found my special place and thanked Powell in my heart for his search for knowledge, his love of mythology and his attempt to protect our country, and our west.
Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter
Reader Comments (1)
Deborah, thank you so much for this wonderful post about the Grand Canyon and Powell's work. I have only been there once and I was in 2nd grade. A Navy family of five, we were piled in our Chevy station wagon and headed from Rhode Island to Coronada, California. There were limited guardrails installed at the rim in those days. I remember constant drama about keeping my 3 year old brother from the edge. Mom finally tied a rope around his waist and we all relaxed into the utter spaciousness and grandeur of the place. Well, as much as a 2nd grader, on the move to California, was able to absorb. Clearly, I need to go there again. Thanks for the enouragement!