Celebrate Earth Day at the Grand Canyon

Kathleen Reeder | Grand Canyon

 

Earth Day is right around the corner (April 22 is the big day), and if you don’t already have plans to celebrate Mother Earth, why not visit the Grand Canyon? Starting April 19, Grand Canyon National Park is kicking off National Park Week with Earth-friendly activities over the weekend and waived entrance fees all week long.

Check it out:

Grand Canyon National Park will kick off National Park Week with a weekend of Earth Day activities and then will join national park units around the country in waiving entrance fees on April 22 – 26, 2013.

The festivities will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, April 19, with a free screening of the film Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time in the Grand Canyon Visitor Center theater.  On Saturday, April 20, at 7:30 p.m. at the Shrine of the Ages, Grand Canyon’s Green Team will host environmental author Mary Ellen Hannibal, who will explore the critical nature of wildlife corridors and review the history of America’s native wildlife habitats, which include natural habitats found within national parks, and share what scientists are doing to combat the gradual loss of these important lands along the spine of the continent.  On Sunday, April 21, an open-house style Earth Day celebration will be held at the Grand Canyon Visitor Center plaza from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will include educational activities, demonstrations and games, samples, and information on local and national environmental initiatives.  The day will conclude with a walk and trash pick-up along the rim at 2:30 p.m., volunteers are welcome.  All of the weekend’s activities are family friendly and free of charge.

The fee-free celebration of National Park Week begins the next day.  Visitors who arrive at the Grand Canyon April 22 – 26 will be allowed to enter the park free of charge.  Those who plan to spend time in the park beyond April 26 will need to pay the regular entrance fee for the remainder of their stay.

“This year’s National Park Week theme, ‘Did you know…’, provides a fun way to discover the wonders of America’s national parks,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis.

According to Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Dave Uberuaga, “Oh, there are some wonderful ‘Did you knows…’ at Grand Canyon!  For instance, did you know the oldest rocks at Grand Canyon are estimated to be about 1.8 billion years old?  Did you know Grand Canyon was once a designated forest reserve, and then a game preserve?  Did you know that the oldest human artifact found at Grand Canyon is about 12,000 years old?  The staff here at Grand Canyon National Park encourage everyone to take advantage of National Park Week to visit one of their national parks free of charge and see what ‘Did you knows…’ they can discover.”

Park visitors are reminded that the fee-free designation applies to entrance fees only and does not affect fees for camping, reservations, tours or use of concessions.  Park entrance stations will have Interagency Senior and Annual Passes available for those who wish to purchase them.

To learn more about Grand Canyon’s Earth Day celebrations, please contact Green Team member Marty Martell at 928-638-7834.  For more on National Park Week, please visit www.nps.gov/npweek or www.nationalparkweek.org. And to learn about the year’s remaining national park fee-free days, please visit: www.nps.gov/findapar/feefreeparks.htm.

Check Out Our May Cover (and Start Planning Your Trip to the North Rim)

Grand Canyon Celebrates 94 Years as National Park

NPS photo | Steven T Mather, first Director of the NPS (far left), at the Powell Memorial on the South Rim with Grand Canyon’s first designated Superintendent Dewitt L Raeburn (right front) and the man who would follow him as Superintendent Walter Wilson Crosby (plain clothes, right back)

If you’re in love with the Grand Canyon like we are here at Arizona Highways, then we hope you’ll take a moment to thank the advocates who worked to protect this natural wonder. Today, the park is celebrating the anniversary of its designation as a national park.

You can read more below:

On Tuesday, February 26, Grand Canyon National Park will celebrate the anniversary of its designation as a national park 94 years to the day after an act to establish the Grand Canyon National Park in the state of Arizona was signed into law.

“Protection of this spectacular landscape actually started long before Grand Canyon became a national park,” said Grand Canyon Superintendent Dave Uberuaga. “People started trying to protect the canyon as early as the 1880s; and its first official protection and recognition came in the 1890s when it was set aside as a national forest reserve by President Benjamin Harrison.”

Harrison wasn’t the only President to take an interest in the canyon’s protection. In the early 1900s, after saying of the canyon, “Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it….”, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Grand Canyon a national game preserve. Two years later, after passage of the Antiquities Act, he established it as Grand Canyon National Monument. Arizona achieved statehood four years later in 1912, just five years before Grand Canyon was designated a national park in 1919.

“On February 26, the National Park Service will host the park’s 94th birthday with cake and a small ceremony at the Grand Canyon Visitor Center…,” continued Uberuaga, “…but it might surprise people to know that for years, the U.S. Forest Service hosted Grand Canyon’s birthday celebrations. The Forest Service administered Grand Canyon from the time it became a forest reserve until it became a national park. This place really does have a fascinating and sometimes complicated history.”

Everyone is invited to join in the park’s birthday celebration. A small ceremony will be held at the Grand Canyon Visitor Center on the South Rim of the canyon at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, February 26. Birthday cake will be served immediately afterward. (Cake will also be served at the Verkamp’s Visitor Center in Grand Canyon Village.) Those who plan to attend might want to brush up on their Grand Canyon history, though.

“We’ll have a contest of sorts to test people’s knowledge of the Grand Canyon and its history,” explained Uberuaga. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it got pretty competitive.”

The Grand Canyon is 277 river miles long, averages 10 miles across, and its walls rise almost a mile above the Colorado River. Designated a national park on February 26, 1919, Grand Canyon National Park is now a World Heritage Site, as well. Visitation to the park in 1919 was just under 38,000 and in 2012 was almost 4.5 million. Grand Canyon National Park is one of 22 national park units in the state of Arizona which collectively contribute over $700 million in economic benefits to the state.

Grand Canyon Goes High Tech to Reach Students Nationwide

Environmental Educators Andy Pearce and Amala Posey prepare for their first live broadcast from Grand Canyon’s new Virtual Studio for Kids.
NPS Photo by Kristin M. Coldon

Looks like the Grand Canyon is going high tech with its new Virtual Studio for Kids. The new studio allows environmental education rangers to share the Grand Canyon with students who live all over the U.S. A pretty impressive feat, if you ask us.

Grand Canyon, Ariz. – “Do you live hundreds or thousands of miles away from Grand Canyon…? Why not let Park Rangers bring Grand Canyon to your classroom?” So starts the National Park Service’s brochure on Distance Learning Education Programs at Grand Canyon National Park.

Recently, the park unveiled its new, high tech, Virtual Studio for Kids. The new studio replaces a temporary one that had been in use since 2006. Improvements include the addition of green-screen technology and an integrated system that allows for high definition, live, multi-camera video production. In addition, schools now have the option of connecting via Skype or through a dedicated IP address, allowing flexibility for those who would like to take advantage of the programs offered.

Using the studio, environmental education rangers at Grand Canyon National Park offer five different, free, curriculum-based, interactive classroom presentations, each appropriate for a different age range. Topics include ecology, geology and human history. Teachers can choose the particular presentation they want for their students and can even sign up for several different presentations, but each presentation requires its own timeslot of about an hour. In addition to the virtual field trips, lesson plans, pre-and post-assessments and other materials have been developed for each of the presentations to help build background knowledge on the topic of study before students even “meet” the rangers.
“Children living in many of the country’s most populous cities don’t live anywhere near Grand Canyon. Yet, its world-class natural resources make it an incredible natural classroom,” said distance learning coordinator Amala Posey. “A Grand Canyon field trip can provide excellent learning opportunities, but for many youngsters, that field trip simply isn’t a realistic possibility. With our new system, we can reliably offer the option of virtual visits to a larger audience than ever before.”

This school year, rangers are offering seven weeks of programming and expect to reach about 3,000 students. They hope to reach as many as 10,000 students in coming years.“We still have some class time available in March. If teachers are interested, they should fill out the registration form found on the park’s website as soon as possible,” added Posey.

Creating the Virtual Studio for Kids took a lot of time, dedication and generosity. Almost two years went into researching and securing funding for the project. To learn what was out there and what might be right for Grand Canyon, Posey contacted other NPS sites and California State Parks. She also traveled to the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to see firsthand what they had and learn how it worked. In the end, the system chosen was modeled after NASA’s Digital Learning Network in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Funding to create the studio, which cost almost $105,000, was provided solely through grants and donations.

Grand Canyon Summer Specials. Book Yours ASAP

Courtesy of Jeff Kida

Xanterra South Rim, an operator of overnight accommodations in Grand Canyon National Park, will again offer its “End of Summer” package this year and at the same prices as in 2011. The package features accommodations, breakfast, tour and retail discounts for less than the typical cost of just the room.

Available Aug. 26 – Sept. 6, 2012, the package features accommodations at Maswik Lodge or Yavapai Lodge, cafeteria breakfast for two, one in-park motorcoach tour for two and discounts in Xanterra gift shops of up to 20 percent. Rates are based upon double occupancy. Additional guests can share the room at $9 plus tax each. Breakfast and tour may be purchased separately.

The rate at Maswik Lodge is $169 per night plus tax and features accommodations in a “Maswik North” room, breakfast coupons, choice of a Hermits Rest motorcoach tour in the morning or Sunset motorcoach tour in the afternoon and a one-time gift shop discount good for 10 percent off purchases of $50-149.99 and 20 percent off purchases $150 and above.

The rate at Yavapai Lodge is $154 plus tax and features accommodations in a “Yavapai East” room, breakfast coupons, choice of a Hermits Rest motorcoach tour in the morning or Sunset motorcoach tour in the afternoon and a one-time gift shop discount good for 10 percent off purchases of $50-149.99 and 20 percent off purchases $150 and above.

Rack rates for rooms are normally $176 per night at Maswik North and $166 at Yavapai East. Rates do not include taxes.

In addition to operating lodging, restaurants and gift shops at the South Rim, Xanterra offers activities such as mule trips and motorcoach tours. Travelers may also wish to leave the car behind and arrive at the Grand Canyon via train on the Grand Canyon Railway as it makes its daily round trip from Williams, Ariz. There are also a variety of tours and activities in Grand Canyon Village with a self-guided walking tour of the historic district of Grand Canyon Village.

When reserving this package, guests need to use the promo code SUMMER online at http://www.grandcanyonlodges.com or call toll-free 1-888-297-2757 or 1-303-297-2757 from outside the United States. More information about Grand Canyon National Park can be obtained at http://www.nps.gov/grca or 1-928-638-7888.

Xanterra South Rim is an authorized concessioner of the National Park Service.

Go North … By Editor Robert Stieve

Along the North Rim Parkway

It was an incredible weekend. It always is when I have an opportunity to visit the North Rim —  it’s my favorite place in Arizona. This time I was up there for two reasons: 1) to attend a board meeting for the Grand Canyon Association, which is an amazing organization that works in partnership with the National Park Service to help educate and inspire visitors to the Grand Canyon; and 2) to do some hikes for the magazine and for the second edition of my hiking book. The hikes were incredible, the weather was stormy and the Grand Canyon … well, there aren’t words for that thing. Here’s a selection of photos I posted on Instagram over the weekend. Keep in mind, I’m not a photographer; I’m just a guy with an iPhone who happened to be in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

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