The Grand Canyon becomes a national park
On this day · 26 February 1919
After decades of false starts, Congress finally walled off one of Earth's deepest gorges from the miners and speculators in 1919.
On February 26, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson signed an act of Congress establishing Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, granting permanent federal protection to a mile-deep gorge carved over millions of years by the Colorado River.
The canyon had been inching toward protection for a generation. It was set aside as a forest reserve in 1893, a game reserve in 1906, and a national monument under Theodore Roosevelt in 1908. Earlier bills to make it a full national park were introduced and defeated in 1910 and 1911, often opposed by mining and grazing interests eyeing its resources.
The 1919 act finally settled the matter, making the Grand Canyon the country’s 17th national park. Its layered walls expose nearly two billion years of geologic history, and in 1975 a later law roughly doubled the park’s boundaries. Today it draws millions of visitors a year to peer over its rim.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
