By the end of the 19th century, the Grand Canyon had become a very popular tourist destination. Savvy entrepreneurs built several cheap hotels on the southern edge of the canyon, offering spectacular views. In 1901 a railroad line from Santa Fe was built to the Grand Canyon, thanks to which people could get to the famous canyon much faster than by stagecoach. In 1915, more than 100 thousand tourists arrived to admire the vastness of the Grand Canyon.
According to some reports, nowadays Grand Canyon National Park is visited by about 5 million tourists annually: Americans and visitors from other countries. It is one of the most hyped places not only in the country, but also in the world. Why do people come here, what will the curious traveler see here?
The main highlight of the park is the natural scenery. There are not enough words to describe the grandiose spectacle that a person sees when standing on the edge of the canyon. After all, this is not just a giant gorge, a scar on the body of the planet. In fact, the canyon is a complex, winding system, if I may say so, the largest ravines on the continent. Their slopes consist of a large number of bizarre erosion formations: towers, pyramids, cones. They resemble the walls of unprecedented fortresses, created and then destroyed by nature itself.
It is noteworthy that this exceptional diversity is not static. The sun, moving the sky, illuminates the picture from different angles, and it comes to life, appears as a fairy, changing canvas. The play of shadows, the depth of illumination lead to the fact that even the color of this natural scene changes: it is pink, or brown, or even bluish. Much depends on the state of the sky, on the time of year, on the dustiness of the atmosphere.
Deep below, at the bottom of the grandiose splendor, the Colorado River meanders. From above it seems like an insignificant rivulet, and one wonders how such a small waterway was able to carve this grandiose canyon in the thickness of the earth. Now the river has reached the very hard, basaltic rocks, and even they are yielding to its relentless pressure: slowly, at a rate of 0.4 mm per year. But before, when the water was gnawing into soft rocks, the rate of erosion was many times greater. However, if someone thinks that half a millimeter a year – not enough, calculate how much deeper the canyon will deepen in just a hundred thousand years. And that’s a tiny amount of time by geologic standards!
The vast majority of tourists view the canyon from above. Here, on the edge of the cliffs, there is an extensive network of roads, paths, observation platforms. The most famous is the so-called Grand Canyon Skywalk, a platform made entirely of glass. It is breathtaking when you stand on it, as if floating in the air above the huge hollow of Colorado!