Wilson Establishes Grand Canyon National Park 2/26/19

Above, Grand Canyon National Park in November 2016. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

On this day in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson established Grand Canyon National Park.

According to Politico:

Three years after the creation of the National Park Service, on this day in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law a bill establishing the Grand Canyon as the nation’s 15th national park. Nearly 2 billion years of the Earth’s history are exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut through the sediment. 

A history report in 2000 by Michael Anderson for the Grand Canyon Association notes that President Theodore Roosevelt liberally interpreted the Antiquities Act of 1906 in creating the 1,279-square-mile Grand Canyon National Monument in 1908. The monument was carved from Grand Canyon National Forest, initially designated by President Benjamin Harrison as a preserve in 1893. The U.S. Forest Service managed the monument from 1908 until it became a national park, relying on the Santa Fe Railroad to invest in roads, trails and facilities to serve a budding tourism industry.

Last year, nearly 6 million people visited Grand Canyon National Park. I stopped in Grand Canyon National Park on the way home from my cross-country trip in November,

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