Hotel Directory > United States Hotels > Arizona Hotels > Grand Canyon, AZ Hotels

This is the current conditions weather report for Grand Canyon. The report was made 51 minutes ago, at 09:54 UTC. The wind was blowing at a speed of 6 miles per hour / 9.3 kilometers per hour from the southwest (230°). The temperature was 36°F / 2°C, with a dew-point at 36°F / 2°C. The temperature felt like 32°F / -0°C. The atmospheric pressure was 29.88 inHg / 1013 hPa. The relative humidity was 56%. The skies were overcast.

The Grand Canyon is a very colorful, steep-sided gorge, carved by the Colorado River, in the U.S. state of Arizona. It is largely contained within the Grand Canyon National Park — one of the first national parks in the United States. President Theodore Roosevelt was a major proponent of the Grand Canyon area, visiting on numerous occasions to hunt Cougars and enjoy the scenery.

The canyon, created by the Colorado River cutting a channel over millions of years, is about 277 miles (446 km) long, ranges in width from 0.25 to 15 miles (0.4 to 24 kilometers), and attains a depth of more than a mile (1,600 m). Nearly two billion years of the Earth's history has been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut through layer after layer of sediment as the Colorado Plateaus have uplifted.

The first recorded sighting of the Grand Canyon by a European was in 1540, García López de Cárdenas from Spain. The first scientific expedition to the canyon was led by U.S. Major John Wesley Powell in 1869. Powell referred to the sedimentary rock units exposed in the canyon as "leaves in a great story book". Long before that, the area was inhabited by Native Americans who built settlements within the canyon walls.

Contribute Grand Canyon Tourist Info.
Expand Window | Collapse Window