The fully interactive virtual tour in 10803 images
About Grand Canyon
Grand Canyon National Park boasts a canyon eclipsing any other canyon on earth. Carving to the depth of a mile through the Colorado Plateau, the Colorado River breached layer after layer of the earth's crust in its quest for the low road. Distinctive colors of gray, red, yellow and white characterize each layer of rock, sitting like a stack of pancakes along the entire length of the canyon. While the canyon walls are broken by tributary canyons often stretching out far into the distance, the colored layers of rock continue whether at a great distance or a closer one, creating a spectacular visual effect. Canyons at odd angles frequently intersect one another, outlining immense cathedral-like stone formations, sculpted from one or more layers of the colored rock.
Looking down into the Grand Canyon, the bottom of the cliffs finally come into view in a sagebrush-covered slope of rock leading to the center of the canyon. Just where the river ought to be, a dark crack twists through the middle of the canyon. This is the Granite Gorge, a canyon within a canyon. Capped by a layer of extra hard rock, this resistant layer, called the Tonto Platform, in ages past would have been the bottom of the canyon, but was finally breached and the Colorado River has now excavated another 1,500 feet deeper.
The entire 277-mile length of the Grand Canyon from the mouth of the Paria River near the Utah border, to Lake Mead is included within Grand Canyon National Park, although the western portion only includes from the Colorado River northward to the rim of the canyon, the southern side being part of the Hualapai Indian Reservation. Most of the canyon is remote to an extreme. No road crosses the canyon between Hoover Dam on the California border and Marble Canyon, near the opposite end of the canyon. The many side canyons are also lined with cliffs, cutting up vast areas of terrain where few roads lead, and few people follow. Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim, along with some forty miles of road along the rim receives most of the visitors to the park. Most of the rest of the visitors visit at North Rim, just across the canyon from Grand Canyon Village. Some twenty miles of road access the rim on that side. The rest of the canyon has but a few dirt roads been visited by few humans.
Behind the rim, the ground is largely flat, stretching away to a great distance in most directions. Forests of evergreen and Juniper trees, with little undergrowth, line the rim, and cover the Kaibab Plateau to the north. Otherwise, desolate deserts surround the park.
The Grand Canyon was designated a National Park on February 26, 1919. It covers 1,180,862 acres of land and received 4,102,541 visitors in 2003.
The Colorado River can be reached by a strenuous all-day hike on various trails, and it can be crossed on footbridges. Plateau Point is a popular hiking destination overlooking the Colorado River from the Tonto platform.
Many miles of roads and trails can traveled online in the UntraveledRoad virtual tour, built from thousands of images photographed over a number of years. Choose any one of the links on this page to begin your explorations.
ViewPoints
Numerous viewpoints lay along the rim of the canyon where it projects further out over the canyon. Accessed by road or trail, these are popular stops to take in the view. Visit these viewpoints along the south rim, listed from east to west:
Lipan Point
Moran Point
Grandview Point
Yaki Point
Yavapai Point
Maricopa Point
Hopi Point
Mojave Point
Pima Point
Read more about the Grand Canyon in John Muir's short book, The Grand Cañon of the Colorado and Georges James' The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It.
