The Grand Canyon - by Jacob Eapen

The Grand Canyon

The depth of the Grand Canyon is 1.6 kilometers, the width is 6 to 29 kilometers, and the length of the canyon from Little Colorado River to Lake Mead is 349 kilometers. According to some scientists the Grand Canyon is 6 million years old. The Grand Canyon is located in northwestern Arizona. The Colorado River formed the Grand Canyon and still runs through it today. The acting forces that made the canyon so deep other than the Colorado River is wind, frost, and rain. Vishnu schist rock is an important to the Grand Canyon because it is one of the oldest rocks in the canyon. The Havasupai Indian tribe lives in Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon rattlesnake, bighorn sheep, and mule deer are animals that live here. Ponderosa pines, piniõn pines, junipers, and cactuses live in the Grand Canyon. One the oldest rocks, Vishnu schist is, according to some scientists, 4 billion years old. Mountains existed before the canyon was formed, but were eventually eroded away. The Havasupai’s "two pillar legend" they believe in says that the two pillars that are very close to where they live watches over them, and when the pillars fall it will kill all of the tribe. The first white man to explore the Grand Canyon was Garcia Lopez de Cardenas who traveled on the Francisco Coronado Expedition. He traveled down the Colorado River in a wooden boat called a dory. Today people get in and out of the canyon by hiking, mule, or boat. The Havasupai word Kaibab means, "mountain inside out." One animal in the canyon called the chuckwaller when getting away from predators goes into a rock crevice and inflates itself. The predator can not easily pull out the lizard out of the crevice, or the predator might get scared and go away. Some of the sandstone formations in the Grand Canyon are reddish in color caused by oxidation. Oxidation is caused by when iron and other metals combine chemically with oxygen in the air to form oxides. The canyon has reddish colored rocks because there is iron oxide in it. The Grand Canyon has many sedimentary rocks including limestone, shale, and sandstone.