The word “breathtaking” did not make it into Noah Webster’s original 1823 “American Dictionary of the English Language.” Perhaps it is because the adjective was not necessary until the Grand Canyon became a national monument and then a national park, almost a century after Webster first published his grand volume. Yet it is the word “breathtaking” that so ideally sums up the personal experience of the Grand Canyon’s vista and the hushed awe it elicits. Or, as early 19th-century British novelist J.B. Priestley described the natural marvel: “It is not a show place, a beauty spot, but a revelation.”
It was the aforementioned quote that Stephen J. Pyne chose to begin the first chapter of his 1998 book, “How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History.” Its thesis concentrates on more than just the canyon’s geological creation story; it brings to light numerous factors contributing to the Canyon’s becoming a symbol of America’s grandeur. In fact, the concise 199-page book provides insight into how social, artistic, literary, political, and intellectual influences truly put the Grand Canyon on the world map.
While “How the Canyon Became Grand” begins with a general explanation of how the Canyon was formed and how Native people and exploration corps may have witnessed the great expanse, the book’s second chapter looks at modernity’s impact. “Before 1857, the Canyon was an incidental landform, concealed amid scores of exotic western scenes, no more distinguished than the ancient shorelines of the Great Basin or the glaciated summit of Mount Shasta,” writes Pyne, an Arizona State University professor and a former Grand Canyon North Rim forest firefighter.
“In 1903 Teddy Roosevelt, then president of the United States, rode a train along a specially constructed spur track to the opulent El Tovar Hotel on the South Rim and proclaimed to reporters of the New York Sun that the landscape before them was one of the ‘great sights every American should see.’”
Artists thereafter painted vivid, majestic views, and photographers captured scenes in high-contrast black and white. Pyne notes that artist Thomas Moran’s “Chasm of the Colorado” panorama panting, purchased by Congress in the late 1800s, traveled alongside his “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” painting to the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia “where they boasted the scenic splendor of the American empire.” He added, “The Canyon’s rim was American art’s greatest gallery and its greatest pulpit.”
Each chapter opens with two significant quotes to denote the Grand Canyon’s splendor. For example, at the beginning of the chapter titled “Canyon and Cosmos,” historian and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Wallace Stegner is quoted as saying, “No place, not even a wild place, is a place until it has had that human attention that at its highest reach we call poetry.”
For such a short book, Pyne’s presentation is thorough. He opens with a two-page spread, black-and-white map of the Western and Eastern canyons; shares his insights and research; and then ends with a comprehensive appendix that includes diagrams and graphs, research references, further reading suggestions, and an index.
However, this is not a drab historical and scientific lecture in a tight volume, but rather an eye-opening presentation of the Grand Canyon that has been carefully assessed from varied angles.
