The Grand Canyon was declared a national monument in 1908 and made a national park in 1919. The protected area spans 1,900 square miles.
Vast, windswept, water-sculpted, multi-colored vistas are transformed as clouds shadow and leave the canyon and sunrise gives way to sunset. For generations artists, writers, and photographers have tried to capture the wild beauty of the Grand Canyon.
Perhaps naturalist John Muir described it best:
The colors, the living, rejoicing colors, chanting morning and evening in chorus to heaven! Whose brush or pencil, however lovingly inspired, can give us these? In the supreme flaming glory of sunset the whole canyon is transfigured, as if the life and light of centuries of sunshine stored up in the rocks was now being poured forth as from one glorious fountain, flooding both earth and sky."
