Wayne Ranney - Carving Grand Canyon: Evidence, Theories, and Mystery, Second Edition

CARVING
GRAND CANYON

View west from Yaki Point. Photograph by George H. H. Huey

CARVING
GRAND
CANYON

Evidence, Theories,
and Mystery

Wayne Ranney

Grand Canyon, Arizona

Copyright 2005, 2012 by the Grand Canyon Association
Text copyright 2005, 2012 by Wayne Ranney
All illustrations are the property of their respective artists and are protected by copyright law.

First edition published 2005. Second edition published 2012.

All Rights Reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part, by any means (with the exception of short quotes for the purpose of review), without permission of the publisher.

Cover: Sunrise from Mohave Point on the South Rim, with Colorado River in view.

Photograph by Mike Buchheit

Back cover: Butte Fault. Photograph by Wayne Ranney

Half title page: Sunset on the Colorado River near Nankoweap. Photograph by Larry Lindahl

Edited by Todd Berger, Faith Marcovecchio, and Andrea Rud

Designed by Jamison Spittler, Jamison Design

Maps and diagrams by Bronze Black

Indexed by Sandi Schroeder, Schroeder Indexing Services

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ranney, Wayne.

Carving Grand Canyon : evidence, theories, and mystery / Wayne Ranney. -
2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print ISBN 978-1-934656-36-5 (alk. paper)

ePub ISBN 978-1-934656-42-6

Kindle ISBN 978-1-934656-43-3

1. Geology--Arizona--Grand Canyon--Popular works. 2. Geology--Colorado River (Colo.-Mexico)--Popular works. 3. Grand Canyon (Ariz.)--Discovery and exploration--Popular works. I. Title.

QE86.G73R36 2012

557.9132--dc23

2012015001

The mission of the Grand Canyon Association is to help preserve and protect Grand Canyon National Park by cultivating support through education and understanding of the park. Proceeds from the sale of this book will be used to support research and education at Grand Canyon National Park.

Grand Canyon Association
P.O. Box 399
Grand Canyon, AZ 86023-0399
(800) 858-2808
www.grandcanyon.org

GRAND
CANYON
ASSOCIATION
INSPIRE, EDUCATE, PROTECT.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO two institutions that I support very muchthe Museum of Northern Arizona and the Grand Canyon Association. In 1976 they co-published the Geologic Map of the Eastern Part of the Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona (with revisions in 1986 and 1996). This colorful map has served to remind me every day that the Grand Canyon and all that it represents is there always to inspire and enchant. A unique blend of science and art, this map has been the primary motivator for my interest in Grand Canyons origin, and without its publication, this book might never have seen the light of day. Both the Museum of Northern Arizona and the Grand Canyon Association, whose missions are to increase and share knowledge about the Grand Canyon region, deserve every ounce of support we can give them.

Detail from Point Sublime by William H. Holmes, 1882.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

Site and Insight: The Deep History of an Idea

Even the most casual observer soon recognizes that the Grand Canyon is the outcome of an uplift and a river. The uplift is the series of plateausfour in all, the Shivwits, the Uinkaret, the Kanab, the Kaibabthat rise like steps from the cliffs at Grand Wash to the Kaibab monocline. The river is the Colorado. Somehow river and uplift cut down and rose up through one another. Those gorges subsequently widened, with each plateau displaying a distinctive variant on that common theme. Collectively, the cascade of resulting canyons made the Grand Canyon.

The outcome has long been celebrated as a testimony to deep history. To understand the canyon requires an imagination that can see the earths ancient past in its exposed rocks; to explain the canyon is to tell a story that reaches back to times before todays continents existed, that narrates the ascent and decline of geologic empires, each rising on the eroded ruins of its predecessor. The strata in the canyons cliffs seemingly describe that text for all with eyes to read.

But deep history is an idea, and ideas, too, have their history. The rocks could not be viewed as a geologic spectacle until the science of geology was invented. You cant read without knowing the language and its written alphabet. The exposed rocks of the inner gorge may be nearly 2,000 million years old, but geology as a science capable of deciphering them is little more than two hundred. The earth sciences furnished the spectacles by which to view a supremely visual scene.

Even so, a space becomes a scene only when there is someone present to see it. The special value of Carving Grand Canyon is that it matches viewer with view. It not only lays out the geologic processes that are believed to account for the landscape but also describes those geologists who reconciled place with idea, who saw deep history in its gorge, ideas in its rocks, and meaning in the collision of culture with canyon. They made space into scene and scene into spectacle.

________

The geographic place that is Grand Canyon has been known to Western civilization since Capt. Garca Lpez de Crdenas of the Coronado expedition stood on the rim in 1540. The canyon, in fact, was the earliest of North Americas natural wonders to be discovered, and the Colorado River the first of its great rivers to be mapped. The canyon predates Hennepins discovery of Niagara Falls by 148 years and Meeks encounter with Yosemite by 293. The Colorado was explored 147 years before LaSalle ventured down the Mississippi. It was rediscovered in the eighteenth century and again in the early nineteenth. But it had no obvious value. It housed no wealthy peoples ready for conquest or conversion, held no gold placers or beaver pelts, and could not serve as a corridor of travel (on the contrary, it was a barrier). It was, according to standard geopolitical calculus, worthless. That assessment was repeated by visitor after visitor through 185758, when the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers sponsored an expedition under Lt. Joseph Ives, who pronounced it altogether valueless. It was simply the Big Caon. The smart money said it would always remain of little worth.

Geologyan emerging discipline that only got its name in 1783said otherwise. For anyone curious about earth history, the Grand Canyon was a paradise. That was the verdict of John Strong Newberry, physician-naturalist with Ives. The chasm between the perspectives of Ives and Newberry was as wide as the distance between rims. Others visitors followedgeologists most prominently, but also landscape artists, litterateurs, cultural commentators, nationalists. In 1875 John Wesley Powell, leader of the first party through the canyon, published The Exploration of the Colorado River of the West . That expedition unveiled the last unknown river and mountain range in the United States and transfigured a Big canyon into a Grand one. In 1882 Clarence Dutton published the Tertiary History of the Grand Caon District as the first monograph of the fledgling U.S. Geological Survey. Together, those two books gave the canyon its foundational views from river and rim. Twenty-one years later, President Teddy Roosevelt rode a spur line of the Santa Fe Railroad to the South Rim and declared the scene the one great sight every American should see.