This single-volume encyclopedia examines the Grand Canyon in depth, from the native peoples who have survived there for centuries to the explorers who charted its vast expanses and to the challenges that Grand Canyon National Park faces. The Grand Canyon is one of the most internationally recognized landscapes and symbols of nature in North America. In this one-volume encyclopedia, readers can dive into the many people, places, stories, and issues associated with the Grand Canyon as well as the scientific, religious, and social contexts of events that have made the Grand Canyon what it is. At the front of the encyclopedia are thematic essays that examine the Grand Canyon's history, geography, and culture. Essays cover topics including John Wesley Powell, to whom the Grand Canyon "belongs," the Native Americans who live at the Grand Canyon, and the future of the Grand Canyon. Following the thematic essays are approximately 150 topical entries focusing on more specific aspects of the Grand Canyon, such as trails and camps, natural formations, and courageous heroes as well as shameless profiteers who have influenced the Grand Canyon's history. The encyclopedia is rounded out by a chronology of human history at the Grand Canyon, a Grand Canyon "at a glance" section, and multiple fact-based sidebars. Through the people, places, and stories explored in this work, readers will gain a better understanding of how the history of the Grand Canyon is relevant to the world today.

"A virtual tour of Grand Canyon National Park, with chapters devoted to the history of this region, history of the park, plant and animal life, environmental problems facing the park, and activities in the area"--Provided by publisher.

A Bibliography covering one half century of Southwest literature; a sequel to Farquhar's "The Books of the Colorado River & the Grand Canyon."

2020 Winner of the Southwest Book Awards 2020 Spur Awards Finalist Contemporary Nonfiction, Western Writers of America The Grand Canyon has been saved from dams three times in the last century. Unthinkable as it may seem today, many people promoted damming the Colorado River in the canyon during the early twentieth century as the most feasible solution to the water and power needs of the Pacific Southwest. These efforts reached their climax during the 1960s when the federal government tried to build two massive hydroelectric dams in the Grand Canyon. Although not located within the Grand Canyon National Park or Monument, they would have flooded lengthy, unprotected reaches of the canyon and along thirteen miles of the park boundary. Saving Grand Canyon tells the remarkable true story of the attempts to build dams in one of America’s most spectacular natural wonders. Based on twenty-five years of research, this fascinating ride through history chronicles a hundred years of Colorado River water development, demonstrates how the National Environmental Policy Act came to be, and challenges the myth that the Sierra Club saved the Grand Canyon. It also shows how the Sierra Club parlayed public perception as the canyon’s savior into the leadership of the modern environmental movement after the National Environmental Policy Act became law. The tale of the Sierra Club stopping the dams has become so entrenched—and so embellished—that many historians, popular writers, and filmmakers have ignored the documented historical record. This epic story puts the events from 1963–1968 into the broader context of Colorado River water development and debunks fifty years of Colorado River and Grand Canyon myths.

Everett Ruess was twenty years old when he vanished into the canyonlands of southern Utah, spawning the myth of a romantic desert wanderer that survives to this day. It was 1934, and Ruess was in the fifth year of a quest to record wilderness beauty in works of art whose value was recognized by such contemporary artists as Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston. From his home in Los Angeles, Ruess walked, hitchhiked, and rode burros up the California coast, along the crest of the Sierra Nevada, and into the deserts of the Southwest. In the first probing biography of Everett Ruess, acclaimed environmental historian Philip L. Fradkin goes beyond the myth to reveal the realities of Ruess’s short life and mysterious death and finds in the artist’s astonishing afterlife a lonely hero who persevered.