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Article: Grand Canyon
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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GRAND CANYON
GRAND CANYON,
a gorge of the Colorado River, from four to eighteen miles wide and in places more than
a mile deep, winding some 280 miles from Marble Canyon, near the Arizona-Utah line, to Grand Wash Cliffs in northern Mohave County of Arizona.
The first written description of the canyon is Pedro de Casta
ñ
eda's account of a small group of Spanish explorers who found it after hearing stories of a large canyon during a visit to the Hopis in 1540. The canyon was little known until Lt. Joseph C. Ives and Dr. J. S. Newberry visited its lower end in April 1858 and brought back the first geological description of the region. Maj. John Wesley Powell made the first ...