Monday, August 30, 2010

Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon is a steep cliff-cliffs, carved by the Colorado River, in northern Arizona. The canyon is one of the Seven Wonders of the World and are mostly located in the Grand Canyon National Park, one of the first national parks in the United States. President Theodore Roosevelt was a major supporter of the Grand Canyon area, visiting on numerous occasions to hunt mountain lions and enjoy the incredible natural scenery.



The canyon, created by the Colorado River cutting a channel over millions of years, its length is approximately 446 km, a width ranging from 6 to 29 km and with a depth of more than 1600 m. Nearly 2000 million years of Earth history has been truncated by the Colorado River and its tributaries layers upon layers of sediment as the Colorado Plateau began to rise.


Grand Canyon was first seen by Europeans in 1540, García López de Cárdenas from Spain. The first scientific expedition to the canyon was led by U.S. Major John Wesley Powell in the late 1870s. Powell pointed to the sedimentary rocks exposed in the cliff as "leaves in a great story book." However, long before that time, this area has been inhabited by Native Americans who built a residence in the walls of this chasm.

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