Arizona’s Natural Wonders

Arizona is blessed with many beautiful, unique, scenic and historic spots. For more information and pictures about these wonderful places in Arizona, take a virtual tour of Arizona State Parks and visit the Arizona Department of Tourism.

GRAND CANYON OF ARIZONA

One of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Grand Canyon is an unbelievable spectacle of nature. It is a great, huge slash in the surface of the earth – 217 miles long, 4 to 18 miles wide and a mile deep, with the Colorado River flowing at the bottom. Standing at the edge, it is possible to imagine the turbulence of the earth millions of years ago when its crust was being formed. As far as the eye can see are great pinnacles of stone and rock with colors as varied as the rainbow and which change in hue with every passing hour. At the bottom is the Colorado(Spanish for red) River, which is still so swift and turbulent it carries half a million tons of silt in a single 24 hours past any given point. Along side the river is Phantom Ranch, where many people stay overnight. In small side canyons are beautiful water falls and shimmering pools of turquoise water. The Havasupai Indians have lived for hundreds of years in one of these spectacularly beautiful but remote canyons. One of the Havasu waterfalls is higher than Niagara Falls. Grand Canyon is a National Park, and rangers have telescopes and strong field glasses mounted on the rim so visitors can see various magnified sections of the Canyon. There is also a model which shows the Canyon in its entirety. The rangers show movies and give lectures and answer questions for anyone who wants to know more about “America’s Seventh Wonder of the World“ -one of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring sights to be seen anywhere on earth.

Grand Canyon National Park website

NATIONAL PARKS
With two National Parks (Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest) and sixteen National Monuments, Arizona leads the nation, but there are fifty or more areas which are worthy of such recognition. The Monuments include the prehistoric Indian ruins; Tumacacori Mission; Pipe Spring, an early Mormon fort built around a spring; Chiricahua, with the Wonderland of Rocks, where Cochise, Geronimo and their Apaches roamed; Rainbow Bridge, a huge natural rock bridging Rainbow Canyon; two cactus forests, Saguaro and Organ Pipe; and Sunset Crater, a 1,000 foot high volcanic cinder cone. These historic and spectacular sights, plus others of equal beauty and significance, were familiar to our Indian predecessors and pioneer ancestors and today draw thousand of visitors.

Source: azgoverno