!!!Grand Canyon West

by Dmitry Moiseenko,
member of the [AirPano Team|Geography/About/Consortium/AirPano,_Team] that is a member of the [global-geography Consortium|Geography/About/Consortium]. \\

16 May 2012

with kind permission of [AirPano|http://www.AirPano.com]

The deepest canyon in the world is one of the most famous US tourist
attractions. And it's respectively called the Grand Canyon of Colorado
Plateau: "grand" means "big, magnificent, enormous, great" and so on and
so forth. The Grand Canyon was added to the famous UNESCO World Heritage
List in 1979. The list itself was created in 1972, which makes the Grand
Canyon one of its first entries.

The width of the canyon ranges between 20 and 6 kilometers. However,
there is one spot where it narrows down to 800 meters. As it narrows
down, the walls pull closer together reaching 100 meters gap at the rock
bottom.

The canyon has been in the making for 10 million years. 4 different
geological eras of Earth are represented in the canyon. Underground
forces pushed the Colorado River bed up, forcing the water to gradually
cut into the plateau and wash out the canyon's soft rocks. This process
is still active: the Colorado River washes out about half a million tons
of rock a day, so that even the hardest granite walls of the canyon
surrender about quarter of a millimeter each year to this "filing".

[{Image src='01_Grand Canyon.jpg' caption='Grand Canyon' alt='' width='900' popup='false' height='288'}]

The canyon doesn't look like a long narrow hole in the ground at all.
It's randomly filled with rocks and cliffs of different shapes: giant
pagodas, pyramids, towers, fortified walls and other incredible
formations made by nature... Having been thoroughly studied by modern
scientists, and being the most famous US tourist attraction, the Grand
Canyon receives a lot of visitors. Many of the Grand Canyon cliffs now
have their own original names. Such as, Vishnu Temple, Shiva Temple, and
Wotan's Throne.

Of course these names are fairly new. Native Americans knew about Grand
Canyon thousands of years ago and probably gave those rocks different
names. However there is no written evidence of it, only petroglyphs.

The modern human history knows two Grand Canyon discoveries: first one
happened in 1540 when a group of Spanish soldiers stumbled upon it in
their search for gold. Greedy Spaniards found no gold and no water
there, and admiring Grand Canyon scenery wasn't in their plans, so they
left and never mentioned this location.

[{Image src='02_Grand Canyon.jpg' caption='Grand Canyon' alt='' width='900' popup='false' height='447'}]

After this incident Europeans have forgotten about the canyon for
several centuries. In 1869 professor John Wesley Powell organized first
scientific expedition to Grand Canyon. Powell explored and described the
canyon. By the way, another US tourist attraction was named after him —
Lake Powell.

But let us go back to our canyons. Nowadays a trip to Grand Canyon is on
top of the list for almost every tourist coming to the USA. And not so
long ago (in the 1940th and 1950th) one could take a picture of the
Grand Canyon without actually going there. The thing is that many
passenger airlines, flying in this area, intentionally took a scenic
route so their passengers could admire the view of the Grand Canyon. It
was also common for pilots to make several circles and roll the plane to
give the passengers the best view. This was permitted until the
collision of 2 passenger aircrafts in 1956. Since then the "dancing"
over the Grand Canyon has been prohibited.

Nevertheless, there are several other options for those who want to see
the Grand Canyon landscapes: you can take a trip to the USA; or you can
enjoy our virtual aerial photo tour. The length of the Grand Canyon is
about 450 kilometers. Earlier we published the aerial panoramas' shot at
the beginning of the Grand Canyon (link to the Horseshoe), and now we
would like to show the West end of the Grand Canyon — which is
approximately 100 kilometers from Las Vegas. Let's see!

[{Image src='03_Grand Canyon.jpg' caption='Grand Canyon' alt='' width='900' popup='false' height='455'}]

\\ \\
[6 Panoramas of Grand Canyon West|Geography/America/United_States/Pictures/Panoramas_of_Grand_Canyon_West]










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