How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History [Hardcover]

Stephen J. Pyne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1998

Acclaimed by The New York Times Book Review for his "major contribution to the literature of environmental studies," Stephen J. Pyne now focuses on the Grand Canyon he fell in love with during his fifteen years as a firefighter there. Merging environmental, social, intellectual, political, and economic history, How the Canyon Became Grand is both a chronicle of discovery, from Spanish conquistadors to exploring geologists like John Wesley Powell and Clarence Dutton, and a provocative explanation of how the Canyon found its niche in the American psyche. Spurned as worthless by the first Spanish explorers, it took three more centuries of desultory contact, and major shifts in Western attitudes toward nature, geology, and the land itself, before a complex coalescence of science, art, literature, nationalism, and personalities turned the Canyon, within a handful of years, into a cultural emblem. Today it attracts over five million sightseers a year, and is regarded as one of the great natural wonders of the world. Yet it continues to be the focus of national debates, particularly about the character of American environmentalism. This extraordinary book, complete with photographs, maps, and charts, but sized to fit into any backpack, casts fascinating new light on a natural phenomenon that mirrors the making of our nation. A tour de force.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Arizona-based environmental historian Stephen J. Pyne has fought fires on the Grand Canyon's north and south rims, traveled on foot and muleback into its depths, floated its length down the Colorado River, explored its hidden recesses--and spent years looking into its history, especially into what he deems the "intellectual miracle" of the canyon's transformation into a celebrated symbol of the American wild lands.

American explorers, who first came to the canyon's walls after the U.S. took the Southwest as the spoils of victory over Mexico, were inclined to describe it in harsh terms. As Lt. Joseph Ives remarked in a report to Congress in 1858, "The region is, of course, altogether valueless...." But 11 years later, when John Wesley Powell surveyed the length of the Colorado River, he brought to the canyon a poetic, even romantic sensibility. Through Powell and his companions, especially the geologist Clarence Dutton, the harsh landscape of the Grand Canyon would come to be regarded as "the coliseums, temples, and statuary of an inspired nature."

"The Canyon claims standing," Pyne remarks, "not because of its size or antiquity but ... by virtue of its ever-evolving ensemble and the ideas continually made available by which to interpret it." Those ideas--from men and women like Theodore Roosevelt, Wallace Stegner, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, and Ann Zwinger--would come to influence the national discussion on all public lands. As such, Pyne suggests, the Grand Canyon became a laboratory for the environmental movement as a whole, influential far beyond the borders of the arid Southwest--in short, as Pyne calls it, "a planetary monument." --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

Don't expect a mere geology lesson from Pyne. Here, the acclaimed environmental writer (Fire on the Rim; The Ice; etc.) and MacArthur Foundation Fellow places America's most notable natural wonder in cultural context. While today we may take the Grand Canyon's splendor for granted, as far back as the 1500s, when the canyon was "discovered" by European explorers, it earned little more than a brief mention in journals. The explanation for this, Pyne reasons, is that there was then no cultural, artistic or monetary tradition or value attached to natural monuments: "Probably no European country was prepared to appreciate a phenomenon like the Canyon." It wasn't until the mid-19th century that the canyon began to become fully appreciated, both for its natural beauty and as a geological phenomenon. The canyon increasingly became the subject of paintings, photographs, travelogues and intense scientific study. A professor of history at Arizona State University, Pyne writes eloquently as he sketches early explorers, scientists, artists and engineers who applied themselves to the study of the canyon and who, in so doing, nurtured our love for it. Anyone interested in the Grand Canyon and the Southwest, or in the evolution of cultural evaluation of the natural world, should cotton to Pyne's first-rate history. Illustrations.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 199 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; Copyright 1998 edition (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670881104
• ISBN-13: 978-0670881109
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,569,448 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting ideas and information, but socially very biased, May 2, 2006

By 

Atheen M. Wilson "Atheen" (Mpls, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History (Paperback)

This book like others on the Grand Canyon's history as national monument discusses various visits by European and US explorers. Dr. Pyne's book approaches the topic from a different slant. By focusing on the effect of cultural and psychological filters he explains why the geologic phenomenon has been valued differently through time. Especially in this book as unlike others, the author shows why the canyon was "seen" or not and why parts were included in an individual's perspective or not. This was something new to me, something that is apparent once voiced but not necessarily obvious until pointed out.

I once took a speech-communications class called "persuasion" in the course of which it became obvious that 1. context contributes a great deal to message, and 2. not all communication is intended. At the time it struck me that the dead communicate, namely the most salient point about themselves, ie. that they are dead, however few would say that they "intended" to do so. Likewise, a canyon or other environmental configuration can communicate to an observer, but the message sent and received is determined by the filters of the recipient, his/her cultural, social, and psychological context. Pyne's book makes it evident that the message of the Grand Canyon is different for each age and for each person, and is shaped as much by our expectations and cultural orientations as by anything else. He does an excellant job of showing how the canyon and the Colorado River have changed their cultural identity through time, even in our own time.

For those looking for something of a biography of the discoverers of the Canyon and explorers of the Colorado River system, this is probably a less detailed book than you might like. A more thorough account is available in The Grand Canyon: Solving Earth's Grandest Puzzle by James Lawrence Powell. It does include a bibliography of works, however, including some of the original publications by the 19th century explorers themselves. These might provide you with more of what you're looking for, particularly accounts by John Westly Powell. For those looking for a brief overview, however, this will certainly provide you with a good start. Although I've studied geology, the geology and history of the Colorado was not familiar to me, so I found the book helpful.

I was not entirely certain I agreed with the author's rather vaunted sense of "elite" and "intellectual," and his negative attitude toward popular-that is middle class-culture. I agree that we are given to commercialism and mass consumerism, but that pretty much cuts across the social boundaries. There are reasons why the 19th century wealthy could endow entire museums with their private art collections and furnish their homes in wall to wall Tiffanies. The difference between middle class and upper class consumerism appears to be the expense of the items purchased. I see no difference in the desire of a middle class individual to investigate the unique in his/her environment than in that of a wealthy, educated individual pursuing his or hers. If anything, it would appear to have been the spread of education throughout society during the latter part of the 19th century and earlier portion of the 20ieth that gave more people access to the information and orientation that allowed more people to appreciate something like the Grand Canyon.

I also disagreed with the author's by-the-by negative attitude toward the "Democrates" at whose doorstep he laid the building of dams and other projects. I do agree that doing so damaged a scenic environment of great value emotionally to the nation, I even agree that it was environmentally an unsound decision. But given the information at the time, the needs and social issues of the time, the decisions made may have appeared acceptable to those who made them at the time. Twenty-twenty hind-sight and values based on modern perspectives is a waste of time. It's usefulness is questionable, like exhuming Attila the Hun and trying him posthumously for crimes against humanity; what's the point? We too will be judged in our turn by the future, and who knows what "crimes" we will be determined to have committed?

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great intellectual history, October 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History (Paperback)

This book is a great intellectual history of a subject that tends to be considered so trite as to be mundane. In the course of the 20th Century the wonders of the Grand Canyon have been so often noted that they have become a cliche of commercialism. Pyne takes us back to the Spanish explorers and helps us to understand why their intellectual powers were inadequate to interpret the meaning of the Canyon when they first encountered it. Pyne describes 3 great ages of exploration, and devotes considerable space to the explanation of the geology of the canyon, first discovered in the late 1800's by John Wesley Powell and his associates. He also makes frequent reference to the human representation of the Canyon in art; he considers this, it would appear, to be as significant as its geology. He relates this art to the modernistic movements in Europe. He describes the advent of commercialism and of the ecology movement by men like Joseph Wood Krutch, who wanted the Canyon maintained in its pristine state for the enjoyment of all. He describes how the Canyon has become less important in scientific circles with the advent of the theory of plate tectonics and of crater impact zones, of space exploration.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Academic tedium, December 15, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Grand Canyon, Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History (Hardcover)

This is the second book of Stephen Pyne's that I have labored through. Living and working at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for ten years I have read many titles that concern itself with the area. This reads just as it was created, a college thesis. I am sorry that Mr. Pyne bemoans the lack of intellectual approaches to interpreting the Grand Canyon. But this gets a bit stuffy if not pompous as I turned the pages. To call Zane Grey a literary hack is a bit of a stretch to say the least. As I gazed out my window last week to one magnificent snowstorm I was reminded how Mr. Pyne had written that Thomas Moran exaggerated the mists of the Canyon. I think not. It's on the shelf and over now. The subtitle is what salvaged the book for me - a SHORT history.