"The Grand Canyon fills me with awe. It is beyond comparison--beyond description; absolutely unparalleled throughout the wide world .... Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is. Do nothing to mar its grandeur, sublimity and loveliness. You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see."

Despite Roosevelt's enthusiasm and his strong interest in preserving land for public use, the Grand Canyon was not immediately designated as a national park. The first bill to create Grand Canyon National Park had been introduced in 1882 and again in 1883 and 1886 by Senator Benjamin Harrison. As President, Harrison established the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve in 1893. Theodore Roosevelt created the Grand Canyon Game Preserve by proclamation in 1906 and Grand Canyon National Monument in 1908. Senate bills to establish a national park were introduced and defeated in 1910 and 1911; the Grand Canyon National Park Act was finally signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919. The National Park Service, which had been established in 1916, assumed administration of the park.

Bright Angel Canyon after snowfall

Before the middle of the nineteenth century, very little was known about the geography of the Grand Canyon. Because of its remote location, the area in and around the canyon was not explored or mapped in detail by Europeans, although it was probably visited in 1540 by the Spanish expedition of Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, who searched with Vasques de Coronado for the seven legendary cities of Cibola. In 1776, two Spanish priests, Francisco Dominguez and Silvestre de Escalante, crossed the Colorado River while exploring the area, but little knowledge of the region was passed down in written form to later generations.

Redwall, clouds, snow from South Kaibab Trail

 The primary source of information about the magnificent canyon was an oral tradition sustained by the reports of fur trappers and traders and so-called "mountain men," most of whom were escorted through the rugged terrain by Native American guides.

Only one early visitor, Warren Augustus Ferris, is known to have produced a map showing the Grand Canyon. Drawn in 1836, it was not published until 1940, too late to be of use to the geographers and explorers who first traveled to the Colorado River and the canyon during the late nineteenth century. Ferris did, however, write and publish several articles in the 1840s, one of which described the canyon.