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Mr. Wood's Classroom |
I cannot think of a more majestic place to celebrate
Christmas day then at the
Grand Canyon National Park. This natural wonder makes one feel
trivial and yet powerful all at the same time. We drove into freshly laid snow,
green ponderosa pines and red sandstone cliffs. Nature’s decorations trump droopy
Christmas trees and rumpled wrapping paper any day. And at night, to quote John
Denver, there are no “stars across the land”. It is pure nature at it’s finest.
Of course there are pictures, books and websites galore to
learn about the Grand Canyon. I will keep this synopsis short and sweet. For
one thing, winter at the GC is cold, sometimes windy and usually under a
cloudbank. We consider ourselves fortunate that we could see across the 10-mile
span to the North Rim. Due to the chill, we visited a couple indoor ranger-led
talks; something we probably would not do when trails and hikes are so
accessible in the summer. Curiouser, John and I noticed during this trip how more able we were to perceive the tremendous expanse of the GC. We either have been here enough times that we no longer are awestruck or the grey skies and fresh snow helped frame the landscape, making it seem more visually accessible. Whichever, it's still the real deal and pretty much awesome.
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Storm moving in and decreasing visibility. |
We learned that
Fred Harvey, in
conjunction with Santa Fe railroad was instrumental in helping to tame the Wild
Arizona West and populating much of the surrounding areas. The introduction of the railroad line
skyrocketed the tourism into Arizona and there was a need for quality
eateries. Harvey built the first hotel
at GC, the El Tovar and it is the second oldest hotel in a National Park System.
As most men in the area were miners and ruffians, he recruited educated women
from the East Coast to serve the tourists, as well as Mary Jane Coulter, who
was employed to design and decorate all the original buildings; very progressive
thinking considering this was the late 1800’s.
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Hard to see but you can see from North Rim
down to Colorado River. |

Many standards were established for
these single woman and they were highly respected; required to wear very
conservative nun-like uniforms. Over a
span of 40 years historians estimate 100K women worked as a “
Harvey Girl” and
approximately half settled in Arizona after their 9-month or more employ. The “Girls” lived on-site in a boarding house,
which continues to present day in the same building described as the “all
female dormitory.”
Additionally, the Grand Canyon is it’s own village with a
zip code, power plant and recycling center. There is a year-around resident population of ~1500 and this number
doubles during the summer months with increased employment demands. Housing is a combination of dormitories,
apartments and cabins and includes the NPS staff. Sales tax is upwards of 11%,
which includes an environmental fee for water potablility. We stayed in a hotel within the park and highly suggest doing the same. However, during the peak months it's very busy and book-out months in advance.

We continued to learn more about
the geography of the GC at the
Yavapai Point Geology Museum. I will not bore you with the fundamentals of
canyon development; however, I learned three interesting things: 1) The south
rim is 1000 feet lower than the north rim and mostly due to dynamic uplift. 2) If
you had a book of geological time, the bind would be approximately 6 inches
wide and man’s history would only be recorded on the very last page; pretty
impressive visual for little kids. And 3) Geologist have confirmed this area,
the Colorado Plateau, has been under the ocean 7 different times. I find myself
wishing to be able to live long enough to see a noticeable change in topography,
I simultaneously hope I won’t, but global warming just might be a big enough
event to change the earth’s features within this lifetime, that could be quite
disastrous for our future, we might not get to page 2.
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