The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is one of the greatest spectacles on the face of the earth. One of the most amazing things about it is that the Grand Canyon was made by a river! The waters of the Colorado River cut out this great gorge in the course of thousands of years.

When you consider that it was cut out of solid rock in many places, you begin to appreciate the tremendous force of these waters. Even now, year by year, the rushing Colorado continues to cut deeper into the bottom of the gorge. As the river cut deep into the plateau to form the canyon, it laid bare on the rock walls of the canyon the story of hundreds of millions of years of the earth’s history.

On the base of this buried mountain range are beds of quartzite, sandstone, and limestone. Proof of the fact that great seas once rushed over these rocks is to be found in the fossils that turn up here. There are fossil remains of seaweed, sea shells, and fishes! Thousands of visitors come every year to marvel at it, and it is even possible to go by mule down to the Colorado River at the bottom.