Grand Canyon National Park

Grand Canyon National Park, established in 1919, protects the most famous stretch of the Colorado River's great gorge in northern Arizona — a mile-deep, layered chasm that ranks among the most visited and most recognizable landscapes on Earth. Most of its roughly 4.9 million annual visitors gather along the South Rim, peering into a canyon so vast that its scale is genuinely hard to grasp from the edge.

The park spans both rims and the rugged inner canyon between them, where the river runs a mile below through some of the oldest exposed rock on the continent. The cooler, higher North Rim, open only part of the year, draws far fewer people. From rim to river the park passes through several climate zones, and its overlooks reveal a banded record of geologic time stretching back nearly two billion years.

• The Colorado River
  The river that carved the Grand Canyon features
• Arizona
  The Grand Canyon State, admitted 1912 located in
• The Grand Canyon
  A mile-deep gorge carved by the Colorado River protects