The known
history of the Grand Canyon area stretches back 10,500 years when the first evidence for
humanHumans are bipedal primates belonging to the species Homo sapiens in Hominidae, the great ape family. They are the only surviving member of the genus Homo. Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving...
presence in the area started.
Native AmericansNative Americans in the United States is the phrase that describes indigenous peoples from North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of...
have been living at
Grand CanyonThe Grand Canyon is a steep-sided gorge carved by the Colorado River in the United States in the state of Arizona. It is largely contained within the Grand Canyon National Park, one of the first national parks in the United States...
and in the area now covered by
Grand Canyon National ParkGrand Canyon National Park is one of the United States' oldest national parks and is located in Arizona. Within the park lies the Grand Canyon, a gorge of the Colorado River, considered to be one of the major natural wonders of the world...
for at least the last 4,000 of those years. Anasazi, first as the Basketmaker culture and later as the more familiar Puebleoans, developed from the Desert Culture as they became less
nomadNomadic people are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but traditional nomadic behavior is increasingly rare in...
ic and more dependent on
agricultureAgriculture is the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and...
. A similar culture, the Cohonina, also lived in the canyon area.
DroughtA drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region...
in the late 13th century was the likely cause for both cultures to move on. Other cultures followed, including the
PaiutePaiute refers to two related groups of Native Americans — the Northern Paiute of California, Nevada and Oregon, and the Southern Paiute of Arizona, southeastern California and Nevada, and Utah...
s, Cerbat, and the
NavajoThe Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American homeland covering about 26,000 square miles , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...
, only to be later forced onto reservations by the United States Government.
Under direction by
conquistadorConquistador is the term widely used to refer to the Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th through the 17th centuries following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...
Francisco Vasquez de CoronadoFrancisco Vázquez de Coronado y Luján was a Spanish conquistador, who visited New Mexico and other parts of what are now the southwestern United States between 1540 and 1542...
to find the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, Captain
Garcia Lopez de CardenasGarcía López de Cárdenas, , is credited with the first European discovery of the Grand Canyon.- Life :Cárdenas was born in Llerena, Spain, son to Alonso de Cárdenas y doña Elvira de Figueroa and Maria García Osorio. He was the comendador of Caravaca.Lopez de Cardenas was a conquistador attached to...
led a party of Spanish soldiers with
HopiThe Hopi are American Indians people who primarily live on the 12,635 km² Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi Reservation is entirely surrounded by the much larger Navajo Reservation. The two nations used to share the Navajo-Hopi Joint Use Area...
guides to the Grand Canyon in September of 1540. Not finding what they were looking for, they left. Over 200 years passed before two Spanish priests became the second party of non-Native Americans to see the canyon. In 1869, U.S. Army Major
John Wesley PowellJohn Wesley Powell was a U.S. soldier, geologist, and explorer of the American West. He is famous for the 1869 Powell Geographic Expedition, a three-month river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers that included the first passage through the Grand Canyon.-Early life:Powell was born in Mount...
led the Powell Geographic Expedition through the canyon on the Colorado River. This and later study by geologists uncovered the
geology of the Grand Canyon areaThe geology of the Grand Canyon area exposes one of the most complete and studied sequences of rock on the planet. The nearly 40 major sedimentary rock layers exposed in the Grand Canyon and in the Grand Canyon National Park area range in age from about 200 million to nearly 2 billion...
and helped to advance that science. In the late 19th century there was interest in the region because of its promise of
mineralA mineral is a naturally occurring solid formed through geological processes that has a characteristic chemical composition, a highly ordered atomic structure, and specific physical properties. A rock, by comparison, is an aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids, and need not have a specific...
resources—mainly
copperCopper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29.It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is rather soft and malleable and a freshly-exposed surface has a pinkish or peachy color...
and
asbestosAsbestos is a naturally occurring silicate mineral with long, thin fibrous crystals. The word asbestos is a borrowed Greek adjective meaning inextinguishable. The Greeks termed asbestos the miracle mineral because of its soft and pliant properties, as well as its ability to withstand...
. The first pioneer settlements along the rim came in the 1880s.
Early residents soon discovered that
tourismTourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people who "travel to and stay in places outside their usual environment for more than twenty-four hours and not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other...
was destined to be more profitable than
miningMining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually from an ore body, vein or seam. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock salt and potash...
, and by the turn of the century Grand Canyon was a well-known tourist destination. Most visitors made the grueling trip from nearby towns to the South Rim by
stagecoachA stagecoach is a type of four-wheeled closed coach for passengers and goods, strongly sprung and drawn by four horses, usually four-in-hand. Widely used before the introduction of railway transport, it made regular trips between stages or stations, which were places of rest provided for stagecoach...
. In 1901 the
Grand Canyon RailwayThe Grand Canyon Railway , is a passenger railroad which operates between Williams, Arizona, and Grand Canyon National Park South Rim.-Santa Fe Ownership:...
was opened from
Williams, ArizonaWilliams is a city in Coconino County, Arizona, United States. Its population was 2,842 at the 2000 census; according to 2006 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 3,094. It lies on the route of Historic Route 66, Interstate 40, and the Southwest Chief Amtrak train route...
, to the South Rim, and the development of formal tourist facilities, especially at
Grand Canyon VillageGrand Canyon Village is a census-designated place located on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, in Coconino County, Arizona, United States. The population was 1,460 at the 2000 census. Located in Grand Canyon National Park, it is wholly focused on accommodating tourists visiting the canyon. Its...
, increased dramatically. The
Fred Harvey CompanyThe origin of the Fred Harvey Company can be traced to the 1875 opening of two railroad eating houses located at Wallace, Kansas and Hugo, Colorado on the Kansas Pacific Railway. These cafés were opened by Fred Harvey, then a freight agent for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad...
developed many facilities at the Grand Canyon, including the luxury
El Tovar HotelThe El Tovar Hotel, also known simply as El Tovar, is a former Harvey House situated just 20ft from the south rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA...
on the South Rim in 1905 and Phantom Ranch in the Inner Gorge in 1922. Although first afforded Federal protection in 1893 as a forest reserve and later as a
U.S. National MonumentA National Monument in the United States is a protected area or a historic site that is similar to a National Park except that the President of the United States can quickly declare an area of the United States to be a National Monument without the approval of Congress...
, Grand Canyon did not achieve U.S. National Park status until 1919, three years after the creation of the
National Park ServiceThe National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
. Today, Grand Canyon National Park receives about five million visitors each year, a far cry from the annual visitation of 44,173 in 1919.
Native American inhabitation
Current archaeological evidence suggests that
humanHumans are bipedal primates belonging to the species Homo sapiens in Hominidae, the great ape family. They are the only surviving member of the genus Homo. Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving...
s have inhabited the Grand Canyon area as far back as 4,000 years and at least were passers through for 6,500 years before that.
Radiocarbon datingRadiocarbon dating, or carbon dating, is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 60,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present"...
of artifacts found in
limestoneLimestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the mineral calcite . The deposition of limestone strata is often a by-product and indicator of biological activity in the geologic record...
caves in the inner canyon indicate ages of 3,000 to 4,000 years. In the 1930s artifacts consisting of split-twig
animalAnimals are a major group of mostly multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously...
figurines were found in the Redwall Limestone cliffs of the Inner Gorge that were dated in this range. These animal figurines are a few inches (7 to 8 cm) in height and made primarily from twigs of
willowWillows, sallows, and osiers form the genus Salix, around 400 species of deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere...
or cottonwood. This find along with other evidence suggests these inner canyon dwellers were part of Desert Culture; a group of seminomadic hunter-gatherer Native Americans.
The Basketmaker Anasazi (also called the Histatsinom, meaning "people who lived long ago") evolved from the Desert Culture sometime around 500 BCE. This group inhabited the rim and inner canyon and survived by
hunting and gatheringA hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either...
along with some limited agriculture. Noted for their basketmaking skills (hence their name), they lived in small communal bands inside
caveA cave or cavern is a natural underground void large enough for a human to enter. Some people suggest that the term cave should only apply to cavities that have some part that does not receive daylight; however, in popular usage, the term includes smaller spaces like sea caves, rock shelters, and...
s and circular mud structures called pithouses. Further refinement of agriculture and technology led to a more sedentary and stable lifestyle for the Anasazi starting around 500 CE. Contemporary with the flourishing of Anasazi culture, another group, called the Cohonina lived west of the current site of Grand Canyon Village.
Anasazi in the Grand Canyon area started to use
stoneIn geology, rock is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic...
in addition to mud and poles to erect above-ground houses sometime around 800 CE. Thus the Pueblo period of Anasazi culture was initiated. In summer, the Puebleoans migrated from the hot inner canyon to the cooler high plateaus and reversed the journey for winter. Large graineries and multi-room
puebloPueblos are traditional communities of Native Americans in the southwestern United States of America. The communities are recognized worldwide for their adobe buildings, which are sometimes called "pueblos"...
s survive from this period. There are around 2,000 known Anasazi archaeological sites in park boundaries. The most accessible site is Tusayan Pueblo, which was constructed sometime around 1185 and housed 30 or so people.
Large numbers of dated archaeological sites indicate that the Anasazi and the Cohonina flourished until about 1200 CE. Something happened a hundred years after that, however, that forced both of these cultures to move away. Several lines of evidence led to a theory that
climate changeClimate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather over periods of time that range from decades to millions of years. It can be a change in the average weather or a change in the distribution of weather events around an average...
caused a severe
droughtA drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region...
in the region from 1276 to 1299, forcing these agriculture-dependent cultures to move on. Many Anasazi relocated to the
Rio GrandeThe Rio Grande is a river that forms part of the border between the United States and Mexico. At long, it is the fourth-longest river system in the United States...
and the
Little Colorado RiverThe Little Colorado River is a tributary of the Colorado River, approximately 315 mi long, in the U.S. state of Arizona. The river provides the principal drainage for the Painted Desert....
drainages, where their descendants, the
HopiThe Hopi are American Indians people who primarily live on the 12,635 km² Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi Reservation is entirely surrounded by the much larger Navajo Reservation. The two nations used to share the Navajo-Hopi Joint Use Area...
and the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico, now live. The Hopi people believe they emerged from the canyon and that their spirits rest here.
For approximately one hundred years the canyon area was uninhabited by
humanHumans are bipedal primates belonging to the species Homo sapiens in Hominidae, the great ape family. They are the only surviving member of the genus Homo. Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving...
s.
PaiutePaiute refers to two related groups of Native Americans — the Northern Paiute of California, Nevada and Oregon, and the Southern Paiute of Arizona, southeastern California and Nevada, and Utah...
s from the east and Cerbat from the west were the first humans to reestablish settlements in and around the Grand Canyon. The Pauite settled the
plateauIn geology and earth science, a plateau, also called a high plain or tableland, is an area of highland, usually consisting of relatively flat terrain...
s north of the Colorado River and the Cerbat built their communities south of the river, on the
Coconino PlateauThe Coconino Plateau is found north and northwest of Flagstaff, Arizona, in the United States. It lies south of Grand Canyon Village in Coconino County and mostly north of Interstate 40 and east of Highway 64. The plateau has many hiking trails, including the Beale Road Historic Trail and Bull...
. Sometime in the 15th century the
NavajoThe Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American homeland covering about 26,000 square miles , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...
, or the Dine, arrived in the area.
All three cultures were stable until the
United States ArmyThe United States Army is the branch of the United States Military responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military and is one of seven uniformed services...
moved them to
Indian reservationAn Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs. Because Native American tribes have limited national sovereignty, laws on tribal lands vary from the surrounding area...
s in 1882 as part of the removal efforts that ended the
Indian WarsIndian Wars is the name used in the United States to describe a series of conflicts between the colonial or federal government and the native people of North America....
. The Havasupai and
HualapaiThe Hualapai are a tribe of Native Americans who live in the mountains of northwestern Arizona, United States. The name is derived from "hwal," the Yuman word for pine, "Hualapai" meaning "people of the tall pine"...
are descended from the Cerbat and still live in the immediate area. Havasu Village, in the western part of the current park, is likely one of the oldest continuously-occupied settlements in the
contiguous United StatesThe term contiguous United States refers to the 48 U.S. states located on the North American continent south of the border with Canada, plus the District of Columbia....
. Adjacent to the eastern part of the park is the
Navajo NationThe Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American homeland covering about 26,000 square miles , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...
, the largest reservation in the United States.
Spanish
The first Europeans reached the Grand Canyon in September 1540. It was a group of about 13 Spanish soldiers led by
García López de CárdenasGarcía López de Cárdenas, , is credited with the first European discovery of the Grand Canyon.- Life :Cárdenas was born in Llerena, Spain, son to Alonso de Cárdenas y doña Elvira de Figueroa and Maria García Osorio. He was the comendador of Caravaca.Lopez de Cardenas was a conquistador attached to...
, dispatched from the army of
Francisco Vásquez de CoronadoFrancisco Vázquez de Coronado y Luján was a Spanish conquistador, who visited New Mexico and other parts of what are now the southwestern United States between 1540 and 1542...
on its quest to find the fabulous Seven Cities of Cibola. The group was led by
HopiThe Hopi are American Indians people who primarily live on the 12,635 km² Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi Reservation is entirely surrounded by the much larger Navajo Reservation. The two nations used to share the Navajo-Hopi Joint Use Area...
guides and, assuming they took the most likely route, must have reached the Canyon at the South Rim, probably between today's Desert View and Moran Point.
The report indicates that they greatly misjudged the proportions of the gorge. On the one hand, they estimated that the Canyon was about three to four
leagueA league is a unit of length . It was long common in Europe and Latin America, but it is no longer an official unit in any nation. The league most frequently refers to the distance a person or a horse can walk in an hour...
s wide (13–16 km, 8–10 mi), which is quite accurate. At the same time, however, they believed that the river, which they could see from above, was only 2 m (6 ft) wide (in reality it is about a hundred times wider). Being in dire need of water, and wanting to cross the giant obstacle, the soldiers started searching for a way down to the Canyon floor that would be passable for them along with their horses. After three full days, they still hadn't been successful, and it is speculated that the Hopi, who probably knew a way down to the Canyon floor, were reluctant to lead them there.
As a last resort, Cárdenas finally commanded the three lightest and most agile men of his group to climb down by themselves (their names are given as Pablo de Melgosa, Juan Galeras, and an unknown, third soldier). After several hours, the men returned, reporting that they had only made one third of the distance down to the river, and that "what seemed easy from above was not so". Furthermore, they claimed that some of the boulders which they had seen from the rim, and estimated to be about as tall as a man, were in fact bigger than the
Great Tower of SevilleThe Giralda is the bell tower of the Cathedral of Seville in Seville, Spain, one of the largest churches in the world and an outstanding example of the Gothic and Baroque architectural styles. The tower's first two-thirds is a former Almohad minaret which, when built, was the tallest tower in the...
(which then was the tallest building in the world, measuring 82 metres, or 270 feet). Cárdenas finally had to give up and returned to the main army. His report of an insurmountable barrier squelched all interest in the area for the next two hundred years.
Only in 1776 did two Spanish Priests, Fathers
Francisco Atanasio DomínguezFrancisco Atanasio Domínguez, a native of Mexico City, was ordained a Franciscan priest and missionary and explorer of the Southwest United States. In 1776, he was sent to New Mexico in a supervisory role, for inspecting missions along the Santa Fe Trail...
and
Silvestre Vélez de EscalanteSilvestre Vélez de Escalante was a Franciscan missionary and explorer of the Southwest United States during the late 18th century. He is known for his journal, in which he described the expeditions he went on. These included a failed overland expedition in 1776...
travel along the North Rim again, together with a group of Spanish soldiers, exploring southern Utah in search of a route from
Santa Fe, New MexicoSanta Fe is the capital of the state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 62,203 at the April 1, 2000 census; the estimate for July 1, 2006, is 72,056...
to
Monterey, CaliforniaThe City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in Central California. Variants of the city's name are recorded as Monte Rey and Montery. Monterey lies at an elevation of 26 feet above sea level. As of 2005, the city population was 30,641...
. Also in 1776, Fray Francisco Garces, a Franciscan missionary, spent a week near Havasupai, unsuccessfully attempting to convert a band of Native Americans. He described the Canyon as "profound".
Americans
James Ohio Pattie and a group of American trappers and mountain men were probably the next Europeans to reach the Canyon in 1826. There is little in terms of documentation to support this, however.
The signing of the
Treaty of Guadalupe HidalgoThe Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is the peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico, that ended the Mexican-American War...
in 1848 ceded the Grand Canyon region to the United States.
Jules MarcouJules Marcou was an eminent Swiss-American geologist.He was born at Salins, in the département of Jura, in France....
of the Pacific Railroad Survey made the first geologic observations of the canyon and surrounding area in 1856.
Jacob HamblinJacob Hamblin was a Western pioneer, Mormon missionary, and diplomat to various Native American Tribes of the Southwest and Great Basin. During his life, he helped settle large areas of southern Utah and northern Arizona where he was seen as an honest broker between Mormon settlers and the Natives...
(a
Mormon