
Viewing Infinity

by Brenda Kean
Title
Viewing Infinity
Artist
Brenda Kean
Medium
Photograph - Photographs
Description
The Grand Canyon National Park was one of the first national parks in the United States. The canyon was created by the Colorado River over a period of 6 million years, but research released in 2008 suggests a 17 million year time span. The canyon is 277 miles (446 km) long, ranges in width from 4 to 18 miles (6.4 to 29 km) and attains a depth of more than a mile (1.6 km). Nearly 2 billion years of the Earth's history have been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channels through layers of rock while the Colorado Plateau was uplifted. The "canyon started from the west, then another formed from the east, and the two broke through and met as a single majestic rent in the earth some six million years ago. The merger apparently occurred where the river today, coming from the north, bends to the west, in the area known as the Kaibab Arch. During prehistory, the area was inhabited by Native Americans the Anasazi who built settlements within the canyon and its caves. The Pueblo people considered the Grand Canyon a holy site.The first European known to have viewed the Grand Canyon was Garc�a L�pez de C�rdenas from Spain in 1540. In 1869, Major John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran made the first recorded journey through the canyon on the Colorado River. Powell referred to the sedimentary rock units exposed in the canyon as "leaves in a great story book".
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December 5th, 2015
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