Grand Canyon And Monument Valley - Nature Video - Travel & Discover

Nevada is one of the largest states in the U.S. The entire state of Nevada is known as Indian Territory, and for good reason. Native peoples have dwelled in the state's valleys, deserts, and mountains for thousands of years. The region now covered by the state of Nevada was inhabited by the Goshute, Mojave, Paiute, Shoshone, and Washoe Indians. The Valley of Fire derives its name from red sandstone formations formed from great shifting sand dunes during the age of the dinosaurs 150 million years ago. Complex uplifting and faulting in the region, followed by extensive erosion, created the present landscape. The multi-shaded red and golden-yellow sandstone cliffs and rocks in the Valley of Fire are part of the Navajo sandstone formation that is found throughout southern Nevada and in many areas of the southwest. The red colors of the sandstone is a by-product of the minerals in the rock, principally iron oxides. Valley of Fire is a place of rare beauty which has attracted people for thousands of years. The North Shore Road is another name for State Highway 159 from the Lake Mead Boulevard intersection up to the Valley of Fire intersection. It's also the road to take to go to the Grand Canyon. This 45-mile drive along the western shore of the northern part of Lake Mead is one of the most scenic rides in southern Nevada. This area was inhabited by early desert Indian tribes, adventurous explorers, ambitious pioneers looking for cheap land, and religious freedom, and prospectors seeking riches. Lake Mead gets its name from Elwood Mead, who was the Commissioner of the United States Bureau of Reclamation during the construction of the famous Boulder Canyon Project, which would eventually be called the Hoover Dam. Lake Mead was the first of four fantastic lakes created by man on the Colorado River by building the Hoover Dam. Lake Mead National Recreation Area is known for its mild winters, hot summers, and spectacular scenery. Many people come to relax and recreate in this land of sun. The lake is home to a number of hot, warm, and cold springs. Water is the lifeblood of desert ecosystems. These springs provide habitat for unique wildlife and plant species. The quiet, stark beauty of the Mojave Desert, with its dramatically exposed geology and surprising abundance of specially adapted plants and animals, offers a variety of experiences for everyone. Several hours by car separate Lake Mead from the Grand Canyon. The physical features of the state of Arizona may be described as a series of elevated plateaus. It has an altitude that ranges from 30 meters in the southwest up to over 2,000 meters above sea level in the north. Mountain ranges extend over this lofty plateau, running the entire length of the state. The central portion of the state, with its striking panorama of mountains, valleys, mesas, and canyons, is home to some of the most spectacular scenery on the continent. One of Arizona's most incredible natural features is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. The most stupendous chasm found on the North American continent, it has no equal anywhere else on the globe. Vast, magnificent, and spectacularly beautiful, the Grand Canyon is easily Arizona's most distinguishable landmark and a natural wonder. Its story tells of geologic processes played out over unimaginable time spans, forming a unique combination of size, color, and dazzling erosion. It is a tremendous gorge, 446 kilometers long, up to 29 kilometers wide, and 1.6 kilometers deep. The Grand Canyon displays an incredible sequence of rock layers that provide a window onto past geological eras. The carving of the canyon is only the most recent chapter, a geologic blink of an eye in a long story. The long story includes rock nearly 2 billion years old in the bottom of the canyon, land masses colliding and drifting apart, mountains forming and eroding away, sea levels rising and falling, and relentless forces of moving water. Several factors make the Grand Canyon's geology remarkable. The canyon sits incised into an elevated plateau while the surrounding desert landscape exposes the geology to view. The strata revealed preserve a lengthy record of the Earth's history. The formation of the canyon began with tectonic plates moving slowly across the Earth's surface. Almost 2 billion years ago, a plate-carrying island archipelagos collided with the plate that became North America. Heat and pressure from this process changed those existing rock layers into dark, metamorphic rock, which would become the basement of the canyon, which would be called the Vishnu Basement Rocks. The red shale, fossil-bearing limestone, and dark lava that Grand Canyon's supergroup are revealed in only a few areas. The many strata of the supergroup accumulated in basins formed as the landmass pulled apart. The expansion caused blocks to rotate, tilting the supergroup layers. The same process caused Nevada's alternating basins and mountain ranges. It took as long as 400 million years, and a great deal of uplift and erosion, to remove 21 kilometers of rock and expose the Precambrian crystalline basement in the Grand Canyon region. Nearly 40 identified rock layers form the Grand Canyon's walls. They have attracted students of Earth history since 1858. Because most layers are exposed throughout the canyon's length, they afford the opportunity for detailed studies of environmental changes from place to place in the geologic past. The best way to understand the importance of this site is to fly over the canyon in an airplane. The tour departs from the south rim of the Grand Canyon, taking people over the beautiful Kaibab National Forest, home to the world's largest ponderosa pine forest. Upon reaching the edge of the canyon, the south rim gently drops away as the north rim and eastern end of the canyon come into view, one of the most spectacular views in the entire canyon. Grand Canyon National Park has three distinct forest communities. From 1,280 meters up to 1,890 meters, there is a woodland consisting of pinyon pine and Utah junipers. Other species in this woodland include big sagebrush, snakeweed, mormon tea, cliff rose, Apache plume, Utah agave, narrowleaf, and banana yucca, snakeweed, winter fat, Indian ricegrass, dropseed, and needlegrass. Above the woodland, between elevations of 1,980 and 2,500 meters on both the north and south rims, is a ponderosa pine forest. Other typical plants include gamble oak, New Mexico locust, mountain mahogany, elderberry, creeping mahonia, and fescue. Another forest type is found on the north rim above 2,500 meters. This is a spruce fir forest characterized by engelmann spruce, blue spruce, douglas fir, white fir, aspen, and mountain ash. To visit the Grand Canyon National Park, the only road that can be taken is the Desert View Drive, which starts from Grand Canyon Village and continues to the east entrance. Few observation stations are present along the road that follows the south rim of the canyon. Yavapai Point and Yaqui Point are near the canyon information station. Grandview Point and Morin Point are in the middle of the park. Lippin Point and the Navajo Point are found near the east entrance to the park. There is no one best place for watching sunrise, just many good places. Look for a viewpoint that juts into the canyon with views both east and west. Sunrise offers a clear view of the canyon before breezes stir dust into the atmosphere. Colder morning temperatures and the difficulty of rising early frequently result in fewer people at canyon viewpoints. To catch the sunrise, it's better to arrive 30 minutes before the sun clears the horizon and stay an hour or longer after. The sun illuminating from a lower angle highlights color, texture, and silhouettes. The warm yellows, golds, and reds contrast with the deep dancing shadows, a spectacular display that cannot be seen under the harsh light of the midday sun. Changes in the position of the sun and variations in the sky transform colors, shadows, and shapes in the canyon. It is wonderful to experience the different stops along the Grand Canyon, watching how they evolve according to the time of day, the season, and weather conditions, and to witness the ever-changing beauty of its glorious colors. The Grand Canyon has given people both material and spiritual sustenance for thousands of years. The first known inhabitants of the Grand Canyon arrived approximately 11,000 years ago and were known as the Paleo-Indians. Their Asian ancestors are thought to have crossed the Bering Land Bridge beneath the Bering Strait during the last Ice Age and migrated to the continent of North America approximately 25,000 years earlier. The canyon has never supported more than a sparse population. The ancestral Puebloan people of the southwestern United States made their home in the Four Corners region where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona meet. Their history in this region is rich and spans the time period between 200 B.C. and 1300 A.D. The Puebloan people are believed to be ancestors of the Hopi people who inhabit a region east of the Grand Canyon. More than 2,000 ancestral Puebloan ruins have been found near the Grand Canyon. In the 1300s, a new hunter-gatherer tribe, the Cerebat, moved into the Grand Canyon. Descendants of these people make up the Hualapai and Havasupai tribes which occupy reservations in the western canyon. The last American Indians to arrive at the Grand Canyon were the Navajo. Relative newcomers to this region, they are the descendants of the Atapascan peoples who migrated into the southwest from the north in the 15th century. Their adaptability allowed them to dominate the region. Their huge reservation abuts the eastern section of the canyon. American Indians, also known as the people of the land, traditionally and historically had a special knowledge of the land and its inhabitants. They give special recognition to the power of the animal spirits, painting animals on their homes, and wearing animal fetishes. One of the animals present in the Grand Canyon is the California condor, regarded as one of the rarest birds in the world. Currently, over 70 condors soar over northern Arizona and southern Utah. Many of them frequent the Grand Canyon, especially during the summer. Another important presence in the park is its vegetation. Grand Canyon Park contains many vegetation communities, and the composition and distribution of plant species is influenced by its climate, geomorphology, and geology. The park's dazzling variety of wildflowers put on an extravagant show. Because habitats range from arid desert to snowy heights, there are always flowers blooming somewhere from early spring on. Above the desert scrub and up to 1900 meters is a pinyon pine, Utah, and one-seed juniper woodland. A dwarf forest of pinyon pine and juniper covers vast stretches of the mid-elevation southwest. The scale-like wax-coated leaves of the juniper and the short two-needled clusters of the pinyon are designed to conserve water in a dry climate. There are more than 1,500 known species of vascular plants, 167 species of fungi, 64 species of moss, and 195 species of lichen found in Grand Canyon National Park. The first Europeans to view the canyon were a detachment of conquistadors from Coronado's gold-seeking expedition in 1540. Having learned of a great river from the Hopi, the explorers thought that it might be the fabled Northwest Passage to India. Don Pedro Tovar, a captain in the Francisco Coronado expedition of 1540, is credited with having been the first European to set eyes on the Grand Canyon. By 1776, the Spanish were headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they were attempting to convert the natives to Christianity and extract tribute from them for Spain. They did not explore the Grand Canyon, but their trailblazing journey through hostile, unexplored territory would not be forgotten. In 1848, much of the Southwest was ceded to the United States following the war with Mexico, leading the government to dispatch Army surveyors to chart the unknown southwestern territory. The year 1857 brought a U.S. Army survey party led by Lieutenant Joseph Ives to explore the Grand Canyon region. The canyon remained largely unknown and virtually unexplored until Civil War veteran John Wesley Powell led a famous boat expedition through the gorge in 1869. The one-armed Army major and nine men accomplished this feat in four small wooden boats. Powell's party was the first ever to make such a trip. After a second journey in 1871, he aptly named it the Grand Canyon. When, in 1901, the Santa Fe Railroad was extended to the south rim from Williams, the development of formal tourist facilities on the rim increased dramatically. A few constructions made of stone and wood-framed structures of classic rustic design can be found within the park. The National Park Service architects and landscape architects pursued a type of design that had primary emphasis on harmony with the natural surroundings. The Canyon View Information Plaza with its visitor center, the Yavapai Observation Station featuring geology displays, the Tusayan Museum highlighting Native American cultures, are a few of the buildings inside the park. The 1906 Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities paved the way for President Theodore Roosevelt, a devoted outdoorsman and park supporter, to change the Grand Canyon's status from game reserve to national monument in 1908. From the north rim or the south rim, another way to visit the park is on muleback. The mules are carefully selected for strength, endurance, and temperament. They are thoroughly trained by the guides so that they are well adapted to the unique environment of the Grand Canyon. The historic mule barn is just a short walk from Bright Angel Lodge. The trip passes through a ponderosa forest, an opinion and juniper woodland filled with abundant wildlife, on the way to a magnificent cliff at the edge of the canyon. Different walking trails can be taken to arrive at the Colorado River, depending on the number of days a person has to visit the park. Hiking along the south rim is among the favorite pastimes of visitors to the park, with options for every skill level. Along the Colorado River and its perennial tributaries, a unique ecosystem of vegetation exists. Coyote willow, arrowweed, seep willow, western honey mesquite, catclaw acacia, and exotic tamarisk are the predominant species. Hanging gardens, seeps, and springs often contain rare plants, such as the white flowering redbud tree, stream orchid, and metuhol's flaveria. The Grand Canyon's corridor trails provide a spectacular way to experience the canyon's grandeur. Of the various trails leading into Grand Canyon, the most important are the Bright Angel, the South K-Bob, and the North K-Bob, which descends to the Colorado River. Exploring the Grand Canyon by river is an experience unlike any other. Discover hidden waterfalls and breathtaking side canyons, areas of Grand Canyon National Park that are accessible only by river. The Colorado River is one of the most important water systems in the United States. Draining watersheds from seven western states, it is divided into two major districts, the upper basin comprised of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and the lower basin formed by Nevada, Arizona, and California. The Colorado River can be crossed by a narrow footbridge. K-Bob or Black Bridge was built in 1928. It is 134 meters long and 1.5 meters wide. The Black Bridge can be accessed through rock tunnels. The bridge is used by both hikers and mules. The eight 168 meter long cables that support the bridge weigh more than a ton each. The view from the bridge shows the Colorado River and the landscape of the canyon. The sandy beaches along the river's edge can be reached from the bridge. Because most of the sand that was carried yearly to the Grand Canyon by the Colorado River now gets trapped behind Glen Canyon Dam, the sandbars would have gradually eroded, never to be replaced. The beaches provide necessary sand to the canyon, helping it to preserve its archaeological resources. Erosion within the canyon is thus controlled by geological studies. Spring snowmelt brought a rushing torrent of water into the canyon, transporting sediment, building beaches, replenishing the nutrient base of the river's shores, and creating vital backwater habitat as the water receded. Low flows were critical for warming water, juvenile fish survival, and maintaining the food base. Unfortunately, because of dam construction, four of the eight native Colorado River fish are gone, and two more are struggling for survival. Native birds, lizards, frogs, and many of the canyon's native insects are disappearing as well. In addition, native vegetation along the river's high water zone is absent, or stunted due to lack of nutrients and the invasion of competing non-native plant species. The park's fauna includes 75 types of mammals, 50 kinds of reptiles and amphibians, 25 species of fish, and over 300 different birds, not to mention the millions of insects, spiders, and scorpions creeping, crawling, and buzzing around the park. Some of the larger animals seen wandering in and around the Grand Canyon include bighorn sheep and mule deer. Although first afforded federal protection in 1893 as a forest reserve and later as a national monument, the Grand Canyon did not achieve national park status until 1919, three years after the creation of the National Park Service. Today, Grand Canyon National Park receives close to 5 million visitors each year. Like many of America's national parks, Grand Canyon National Park is in danger of becoming a victim of its own popularity. On March 31, 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed legislation creating the Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC. The Civilian Conservation Corps was a Depression-era program that employed poor young men to do conservation work in national parks, national forests, state parks, and other public lands. Four federal agencies worked together to make the CCC a success. The Department of Labor cooperated with local welfare agencies to select the neediest young men. The Department of War transported the men, supervised them in their barracks, and managed their pay, food, and medical care. The Departments of Agriculture and Interior designated the projects and supervised the CCC boys while on the job. The Civilian Conservation Corps became FDR's most popular Depression-era program. During the 1920s, federal agencies, including the National Park Service, fell behind in providing infrastructure for increased visitation. The CCC helped Grand Canyon and other national parks construct streets and roads, trails, picnic shelters, campgrounds, and telephone lines. Specific Grand Canyon projects included the Clear Creek, Ribbon Falls, and Upper Ribbon Falls trails. Hikers still use the original rest houses along the Bright Angel Trail. The Trans-Canyon telephone lines connected the south and north rims in 1935. Construction of telephone and electric lines east from Grand Canyon Village aided the development of Desert View. Bright Angel Campground sits on the site of the CCC camp at Phantom Ranch. During its nine-year existence, the CCC completed numerous conservation projects in state parks, national parks, and national forests, as well as other public lands across the United States. The CCC program ended in 1942. In 1992, in response to growing public concern over the health of the Grand Canyon, the U.S. Congress passed the Grand Canyon Protection Act, essentially requiring all damages to the Grand Canyon to be mitigated. The act required dam operations to become secondary to the health of the Grand Canyon ecosystem. The act also required the ongoing operational EIS to be completed in a timely manner. Despite the clear mandate, action taken by the Bureau of Reclamation has fallen far short of fulfilling the congressional intent of the act. The Grand Canyon area experiences a variety of weather conditions, including cold winters and mild, pleasant summers, and moderate humidity. Considerable diurnal temperature variations can be found at the higher elevations, with hot and drier summers at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, along with cool, damp winters. Summer thunderstorms and winter snowfall add to the variety of weather conditions in this region. Summer temperatures on the south rim are relatively pleasant, while temperatures typically rise to over 38 degrees Celsius at the canyon's base. The hot summer temperatures permit approximately 47 reptile species to live in Grand Canyon National Park. One of the historic constructions in the park is the Watchtower. The Desert View Watchtower, constructed in 1932 as a replica of a prehistoric Indian tower, commands a magnificent view of the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert to the east, and the San Francisco Peaks to the south. This 70-foot tower is the highest point on the south rim. The most noteworthy aspect of the exterior is the stonework. A variety of uncoursed rubble below and coarse sandstone above, with decorative patterns of triangular stones adding architectural interest directly below the tower's parapet. Other bands of colored masonry add even more visual interest. Vulcans is a late quaternary cinder cone on the Toroweap Fault, which separates the Winkaret Plateau and its volcanic fields on the west from the Kanab Plateau to the east. Trees and shrubs can be identified by their woody stems. There are approximately 200 species of trees and shrubs in Grand Canyon National Park. Most of these are found in the higher elevations of the park, on the south and north rims. Some of the tree species include the white fir, engelmann spruce, and blue spruce. Some of the shrub species have compound leaves, including creeping barberry, fernbush, and honey mesquite. Shrub species with simple and alternating leaves are the chokeberry, big sagebrush, sepullo, or birch leaf buckthorn. Grand Canyon Park is home to hundreds of flowering plants. There are approximately 650 herbaceous wildflowers with little or no woody stem in the park. Some of the common species display a white flower, the sacred datura, evening primrose, or tidy fleabane. Some common yellow flowering wildflowers are broom snakeweed, yellow ragweed, or hamino papis. Red or orange flowered plants include the globe mallow, red columbine, or skyrocket. Those traveling across the country on Highway 89A between Bitter Springs and Jacob Lake, Arizona, arrive at two bridges similar in appearance spanning the Colorado River. These two bridges, one historic and one new, represent one of only seven bridges crossing the Colorado River for 1,207 kilometers. Construction of the historic bridge began in June of 1927. This was rugged and remote country, and it was difficult to get men, materials, and equipment from one rim to the other, a distance of only 244 meters. In 1934, after great debate in the Arizona legislature, the official name was changed to Navajo Bridge. Navajo Bridge served the area well for 66 years. The historic bridge would remain and serve as a pedestrian bridge and provide visitors with a breathtaking view of the Colorado River, 142 meters below. A desert scrub community composed of North American desert flora thrives in this area. Typical warm desert species such as creosote bush, white bursage, brittle bush, catclaw geisha, ocotillo, mariola, western honey mesquite, four-winged saltbush, big sagebrush, black brush, and rubber rabbit brush grow in this region. A few hours away from Grand Canyon National Park is another spectacular park Monument Valley, which has provided perhaps the most enduring and definitive images of the American West. The valley is not a valley in the conventional sense, but rather a wide, flat, sometimes desolate landscape, interrupted by crumbling formations rising hundreds of feet into the air, the last remnants of the sandstone layers that once covered the entire region. This great valley boasts sandstone masterpieces that tower to heights of 120 to 300 meters, framed by scenic clouds casting shadows over the desert floor. The valley's vivid red color comes from iron oxide exposed in the weathered siltstone. The darker blue-gray rocks in the valley get their color from manganese oxide. Before human existence, the park was once a vast lowland basin. For hundreds of millions of years, materials that eroded from the early rocky mountains deposited layer upon layer of sediments, which cemented a slow and gentle uplift generated by ceaseless pressure from below the surface, elevating these horizontal strata quite uniformly one to three miles above sea level. What was once a basin became a plateau. Natural forces of wind and water that eroded the land spent the last 50 million years cutting into and peeling away at the surface of the plateau. Guided tours led by Navajo tour operators allow visitors to go down into the valley in jeeps for a narrated cruise through these mythical formations. The arches and bridges are just present-day stages in a geologic evolution that started millions of years ago and continues to the present day. Nature finds a weak spot in the thin sandstone cliff. Be it a crack or a small hole in the vertical face, the elements drive against the rock to expose the sandstone. This arch is called the moccasin. Winter's rain and snow, followed by freezing and thawing, create cracks in the rock, a process that is repeated until large chunks fall out, while wind and blowing sand round off the edges. The land looks like a dry, dusty, and barren desert. The Navajo, the largest Indian tribe in North America, live here in a world of their own. More than 180,000 Native Americans live on a reservation here, adapting their way of life to live in harmony with this hostile land. John Ford's Point is perhaps the most famous overlook along the scenic drive through Monument Valley. In the opening scene of Fort Apache, a classic John Ford film, Henry Fonda portrays a starchy career Army officer, an Easterner, riding his horse through a quintessentially Western American landscape. The outdoor setting that Ford loved most was Monument Valley. There, the director defined enduring images of the American West with some of the most beautiful and powerful cinematography ever shot. Return to the Grand Canyon at sunset. Changes in the position of the sun and variations in the sky transform colors, shadows, and shapes in the canyon. Storm clouds may break to reveal a sky flooded with sunlight, or perhaps a rainbow. Any place is a good place to see the sunset at the Grand Canyon. The sun illuminating from a lower angle highlights color, texture, and silhouettes. The warm yellows, golds, and reds contrast with the deep dancing shadows, creating patterns that cannot be perceived when the sun is high in the sky. The Grand Canyon is among the Earth's greatest ongoing geological spectacles. Its vastness is stunning, and the evidence it reveals about the Earth's history is invaluable. The Grand Canyon was classified a natural site by UNESCO in 1979.