Discover the Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon was carved by the Colorado River cutting through a slowly uplifting plateau over roughly the last 5-6 million years, exposing rock layers far older than the canyon itself -- some at the bottom date back nearly two billion years.

The canyon stretches about 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide, and around a mile deep at its most dramatic points -- a scale that makes the whole formation genuinely difficult to grasp from any single viewpoint.

Elevation change across the park creates unusual ecological diversity for one location -- desert scrub near the river gives way to piñon-juniper woodland partway up, and dense conifer forest at the highest rim elevations, so that a single descent into the canyon can pass through several distinct climate zones in the course of a single hike.