The Grand Canyon's First Superhero Duo

SOMETIMES IT TAKES TWO

The early legislative/political history of the Grand Canyon is indebted to some of the giants of our West: John Wesley Powell, of course, but also Gifford Pinchot and John Muir.

Because of destroyed archives, Powell’s collaboration with Benjamin Harrison over the Canyon has been largely lost. Their efforts were in 1882-5 and 1893, while the Muir-Pinchot efforts came later, in the 1890’s. 

This post covers the earlier, first, Powell-Harrison effort; a second will review Muir-Pinchot.

John Wesley Powell — The Procreator Of The Park

Walking the Walk...You Do Best With A Map

 Pete McBride’s The Grand Canyon: Between River and Rim is a book of 1-2 page spreads and many intimate close-ups, 236 pages celebrating Canyon views photographed during whats called a “Grand Canyon traverse”, that is, a combination of hikes/backpacks where the protagonists start at the junction with the Paria River and walk the length of the Canyon, coming out at Lake Mead. (The Canyon and its National Park differ in their, in the first instance, topographic boundary, and in the second, politically constituted line.) 

draft -- UNM PROFESSOR KARL KARLSTROM ON THE GRAND CANYON'S AGE -- draft

THE WEST END: DOES ITS YOUTH SETTLE AN OLD CONTROVERSY?

Following the paper trail of University of New Mexico Professor Karl E Karlstrom led me to some recent work that highlights the singular importance of the western Grand Canyon in wrestling with that most important of Grand Canyon chesnuts: How old is it? When did it take shape? Is it one big dig or a collection of ditches? 1964 saw elder geology statesman, E. McKee, take a lead in a significant symposium. Sixty years later, Dr. Karlstrom, an intimate and expert researcher and analyst of the Canyon, is leading the debate in marshaling the evidence for a young Canyon, and using, which is what interests me, data from the western end.

 The least-publicly known is the youngest geologically? Fascinating! There are several papers for the brave curious to search out. I have freely, but I hope not stupidly, cut and pasted pieces in order to focus in on the importance of the western end of the Grand Canyon as its youngest section and thus determiner of "how old" the Canyon is.

A Grand Canyon Golden Anniversary Is Approaching

A FABULOUS GRAND CANYON DOUBLE-50TH ANNIVERSARY

January 3 1975. President Ford puts his signature on Public Law 93-620 and at a stroke doubles the Grand Canyon National Park, extending it to include the Grand Canyon's entire length from the Paria River junction through mile 277 to its western end at the Grand Wash Cliffs, marked by a Paiute Butte on the north, and a Hualapai on the south.

Simultaneously, that Law repatriated to the Havasupai, millenial residents of the Grand Canyon, 195,000 acres of its ancestral lands, while securing their traditional rights to 100,000 more such acres in the adjacent National Park.

Here is a representation of the official map of P.L. 93-620. It shows the Park being extended upstream to the Paria, and downstream from the 1932 Monument. On the south, in the center, the cross-hatching shows the Havasuapai lands, repatriated and traditional use.

This was a huge step toward the recognition of the Greater Grand Canyon that reached another climax in 2023 when President Biden proclaimed Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni National Monument in conjunction with the Associated Tribes of the Grand Canyon: Hopi, Havasupai, Hualapai, Southern Paiute, Navajo, Zuni, Yavapai-Apache.

This Golden Anniversary pre-eminently deserves to be celebrated for righting the century-old Havasupai dispossession while educating the American nation to the rights, and a major, long grievous wrong done to one of the First Peoples of our continent.

During the 1972-75 legislative effort -- right up to the day of Ford's action--, the Havasupai struggle had to continue -- a struggle I have personal knowledge of and experience in. Over the decades since, the Havasupai have made clear (at least to me, a Park defender) the correctness of finally recognizing in national law their ancestral homeland as their permanent property.

Moreover, that 1975 action finalized a signficant turning point in our continuing great national environmental endeavor: to shift our views and actions about how to live on, not just the Greater Grand Canyon, but the entire Earth; -- this planet that even today we cannot bring ourselves whole-heartedly and whole-headedly (much less with our whole pocketbook) to protect from the ravages of human civilizing activities culminating in our times in the intensifying unpredictability and variation in the world-wide climate.

Exploring how the Grand Canyon ends

draft - EXPLORING HOW THE GRAND CANYON ENDS - draft

From the Westernmost High Point, the view sweeps down and out, over the Sanup Plateau, reaching its farther edge some seven miles west where it drops 3500' in 1 1/2 - 2 miles to the water surface (of the reservoir or river, depending). That drop is a geological lesson, as shown in this piece of the 1982 edition of the stupendous, irreplaceable map done in the 1970's by Peter Huntoon and George Billingsley. (For orientation, keep track of that triangular flat in the middle at the top.)