Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 237, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1916 — DOWN BRIGHT ANGEL TRAIL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DOWN BRIGHT ANGEL TRAIL

DOWN Bright. Angel trail straggle the hardy burros. Then up Bright Angel trail they scramble again. Part of the way their saddles were empty, where the trail clings so closely to the precipitous wall of the Grand canyon of the Colorado that there is no room for a rider to stick on. Winding its tortuous way upward, twisting about rocks, clutching the mountainside by inches, the trail gradually climbs thesteep ascent from the river bed of the rushing Colorado to the heights above, 6,000 feet above, a mile straight up in the blue from the dark depths of earth’s most wonderful treasure Chasm of beauty. You have not seen America until you have descended Bright Angel trail in Arizona, writes Earl William Gage in the Utica Saturday Globe. Nowhere else on earth exists such a depression into the surface of the earth, from 1,000 to 6,000 feet deep. The canyon of the YeHowstone is trifling in comparison with the Grand canyon of the Colorado river in Arizona. The great gorge is 217 miles long; varying from 9 to 13 miles in width, the maximum depth being 6,000 feet. Here the tourist stands at the top of the mountain peak at the start and to gain the victory land must descend 6,000 feet of sheer rock. Elsewhere, we stand at the foot of the mountains and must ascend. At Grand canyon the rules that regulate tourists are reversed in everything. “The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is the greatest thing in the world,” says one writer.. It is. absolutely .un-paralleled-anti Its beau ties and grandeur are far beyond the grasp of the writer or the artist. More commanding than Yosemite or Yellowstone, more beautiful than majestic Niagara, more mysterious in its depth than the

Himalayas in their majestic height, the Grand canyon remains the first natural wonder of the' world. Nature’s Titanic Struggle. While we may say that the Grand canyon is truly a canyon, it is rather an intricate system of canyons, each subordinate to the river channel in the midst. The river channel, lying more than 6,000 feet below the vision, seemingly is a rather insignificant trench, attracting the eye more by reason of Its somber tone and mysterious suggestion than b,y any appreciable characteristic of the chasm. It is perhaps five miles distant in a straight line, and its uppermost rims nearly 4,000 feet? beneath the observer, whose measuring capacity is entirely inadequate to the demand made by such magnitudes. Here some great battles of nature once took place, which has left its effect strikingly'visible, yet of which we know nothing. The surrounding country looks for all the world like the mouths of a thousand still volcanoes, while the coating over the surface of the peculiarly shaped depressions is like volcanic ash in texture. The Gfand Canyon district lies in northwestern Arizona and coincides--with a local uplift, or structural swell, in the Colorado plateau. Its area is about 16,000 square miles. Over practically all of this nearly level expanse one geologic formation, the Kaibab limestone, is surface rock. Along the eastern border of the district a sharp downward bend, known as a monocline, carries the beds to a lower level, where they resume their nearly horizontal attitude and continue eastward beneath the higher strata of the plateau. The upward edges of these higher faces are known as Echo Cliffs. _ On the north the district is walled \ by another line of cUffs and ter-

races, running east and west along the southern border of Utah. These have been curved by erosion out of the higher strata of the plateau and rise in huge steps nor th ward, to elevations of 11,000 feet or more. The southern border of this district is marked by an abrupt descent to lower country along a series of cliffs carved from the plateau strata. The northern portion of the Grand Canyon district Is divided into five minor platforms or plateau blocks by great lines of fracture or flexure, which trend north and south and are roughly paralleled. Long Series of Canyons. The Colorado river crosses the plateau province from northeast to southwest. It has Carved a series of canyons whose total length exceeds 500 miles. All these canyons are clearcut, deep gashes in nearly level platforms and their step-like walls descend abruptly by alterations of bold Cliffs and narrow ledges,—The river at the bottom carries the drainage from the whole western front of the Rocky mountains in Colorado and southwestern Wyoming. Because of the general impassability and inhospitable character' of the bordering deserts, these canyons form a barrier to human travel more effective than the Rocky mountains. The Colorado river is unbridged for 700 miles, a distance about equal to the distance between New York and Chicago. In the high-blocked plateaus of the Grand Canyon ‘ district the canyons reach their culmination in size and grandeur. The pathway of the river across these plateaus is the most remarkable valley in the world. The section that traverses the marble platform is known as'the Marble canyon, being 60 miles in length. The part cut through the Kaibab, Kanab, Uln-

karet and Sivwits plateaus is the Grand canyon proper. This is about 220 miles long, and averages a mile in depth and miles in width, from rim to rim. The Kaibab and Kanab divisions are each about 50 miles in length,* while the Uinkaret is 415 miles, and the Slvwitz 75 miles. Home of Old Cliff Dwellers. Evidences of former human occupation are found everywhere in the Grand Canyon region, but as few of these ruins are well preserved there is nothing especially spectacular about them, save as of historic import. Here at one time abounded crude stone houses. Some of these ruins are perched high under overhanging ledges which still show the blackening of the smoke from their fires; others lie among huge blocks of debris that have fallen from the cliffs; still others stand in the open, away from any natural shelter. The only well-pre-served shelter are the old storehouses, biiilt high up among the crevices in the canyon walls. And into the depths of this wonderland plunges Bright Angel trail, named by Major Powell. It is one of the few trails that permit human beings to enter the land of splendor. Almost everywhere huge walls of rock bar entrance to this cliff-protected chasm, where nature’s God has wrought such marvels, which no man could equal.