THE bed of Hermit or Shinumo Creek, with its tributaries, is more or less typical of every canyon in the Plateau Country. The creeks are fed by the small arroyos, and the arroyos, in turn, by side swales and washes. At its head the arroyo derives from a watershed and it is only after it […]

EVERY one in the southwest knows that the first white people to come into the Plateau Country were the Spaniards. They came up from Mexico, led by Coronado, and are sometimes referred to as the “conquistadores.” They were on conquest bent, and toiled across the southern wastes with a determination and an energy quite unparalleled. […]

THE unexpected happens at the Canyon. Surprise, wonder, amazement are looked for, but one hardly counts upon fear. In common with the average visitor, upon arrival you hurry up the steps from the station, pass along the front of the hotel, and go out at once to the Rim for a first view. You are […]

IT seems rather odd that looking over the lip one cannot see the inside of the cup, that standing on the Rim one cannot see into the Inner Canyon. From certain outstanding points one hears the River’s voice and knows that it is cutting and grinding down deeper and deeper into its Archaean bed, and […]

THE lower platforms with the Granite Gorge and the River may prove interesting playgrounds for a few hours, but as the days pass by you begin to cast longing eyes at the Rim. You miss the horizon line, the lift of the sky, the broad expanse of light. After all, the depth is something of […]

MOVING east along the Rim from El Tovar brings one, in half an hour, to Yavapai Point—the other horn of the hotel crescent. It is almost directly opposite the Bright Angel Canyon, and from it one has an excellent view of the great buttes across the River (Plate 12). You can also see down the […]

DAYS and weeks can be given to Desert View without exhausting the scene or the interest. You are away from the hotel and the crowd, and can see things like a lone eagle from your point of rock. Both the rock and the eagle are here (an eagle usually has a nest every summer not […]

A WEEK at the Canyon may suffice to exhaust not only one’s adjectives but also the keenness of one’s appreciation. The imagination perhaps lags and does not rise along the perpendicular walls as on the first day. The aesthetic sense becomes a little dulled and we cease to wonder or stand amazed or lose ourselves […]

ALONG the Rim, and back from it in the Tusayan Forest, one frequently sees at the present time mounds of scattered stones, with perhaps indications of old walls, or trenches now half-filled with earth, leaves, and pine-needles. Near them one may turn up bits of broken pottery, arrow-heads, stone hammers, old mealing-stones. Elsewhere about the […]