“You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths,” wrote John Wesley Powell in The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons. This year, 2019, we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Powell’s milestone 1869 journey through the mouths and labyrinths of the Grand Canyon in what is today Arizona. We also celebrate the 100th anniversary of the creation of Grand Canyon National Park, by President Woodrow Wilson, February 26, 1919. At the same time, we recognize that in celebrating the parks by even visiting them as often and as lovingly as we do, we harm them through wear. Stewarding the Grand Canyon National Park through another 100 years, then, is as challenging today as it was a century ago.
