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Grand Canyon National Park
In northwestern Arizona, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River is one of the world's most outstanding spectacles. In form, glowing color and geological significance, it is unsurpassed. The canyon is 277 miles long and averages 10 miles in width from rim to rim; the canyon bottom is 5,700 feet below the North Rim, which averages about 1,200 feet higher than the South Rim.
The park's eastern border is bounded by lofty, multicolored walls; beyond lies the Painted Desert. The western portion of the canyon includes the broad Havasu Canyon, part of the Havasupai Reservation. This small agricultural tribe was present before the first European explorers arrived in 1540. Some 250 tribal members still live in the canyon.
The region possesses five of the seven life zones ascribed to the Northern Hemisphere. The geological aspect of the Grand Canyon is of great scientific importance. At no other place in the world is such a vast view of time displayed so clearly. Each stratum of rock distinctly marks a period of the Earth's history from 2 billion to 250 million years ago.
The first recorded viewing of the canyon by a European was in 1540 when a member of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's expedition in search of the Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola were guided by Native Americans to the great gorge. Centuries later Maj. John Wesley Powell led the first expedition to explore the length of the canyon. He and his party of nine boatmen left Green River, Wyo., in late May of 1869; on Aug. 30 six of them emerged into open country at the Virgin River on the western end of the canyon.
With the exception of the Tioga Pass Road portion of SR 120, the Glacier Point Road and the Mariposa Grove Road, all of which are closed late fall through early summer, all roads are open year round; chains may be needed in winter.
The road to Mirror Lake and Happy Isles, at the eastern end of Yosemite Valley, is closed to most cars but is served by a free shuttle bus. Southside Drive is one-way eastbound from Bridalveil Fall to Curry Village; Northside Drive is one-way westbound from Yosemite Lodge; and the road between Curry Village and Yosemite Village also is one-way westbound.
Glaciers transformed the rolling hills and meandering streams of pre-Pleistocene Yosemite into the colossal landscape of the present. To preserve it for posterity, Abraham Lincoln set aside the Mariposa grove of giant sequoias in the Yosemite Valley as the nation's first state park on June 30, 1864. Twenty-six years later Yosemite became a national park.
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