Grand Canyon

South Rim View

It's a sight that has inspired awe for thousands of years.

The canyon is both a lesson in time and scale. The chasm is 277 long, up to 18 miles wide in some places, and up to a mile deep. It has taken the Colorado River over six million years to cleave through the Colorado Plateau, revealing a geology that tells a story two billion years old.

Canyon layers include the Vishnu Basement Rocks, formed by the collision of two tectonic plates approximately two billion years ago; the red shale, limestone, and dark lava of the Grand Canyon Supergroup; and the Paleozoic Sedimentary Rocks, which are all that remains of the marine life, swamps and deltas, and dunes of a vanished ocean.


Visitors Marvel at the Canyon's Vastness


A Tree With a View