A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GRAND CANYON TOPOGRAPHIC BASE MAP

Portions of the greater Grand Canyon region gained protection as a US national park in 1919. In the summer of 1969, fifty years following the creation of the park, legendary explorer Bradford Washburn found himself disturbed by the unavailability of large-scale maps of the region. The most accurate and detailed maps available at the time were the 1:62,500-scale topographic maps produced by the United States Geological Survey. Soon after, Washburn went on to lead a topographic survey of portions of the Grand Canyon funded by the National Geographic Society and the Museum of Science in Boston. But Washburn was far from the first to quest for a better Grand Canyon topographic base map. His efforts stood on the proverbial shoulders of giants, namely on prior topographic surveys and map output produced over the preceding century under the leadership of figures such as Claude Hale Birdseye, François Émile Matthes, John Wesley Powell, and Joseph Christmas Ives, among others. A map drawn by the pioneering cartographer Frederick Wilhelm von Egloffstein as part of the 1857-1858 Ives expedition of the Colorado River marked the first successful effort to map the river, and, by extension, its “Big Cañon”, in any meaningful detail, including in any geologic detail. In the summer of 1869, fifty years prior to the creation of Grand Canyon National Park, John Wesley Powell famously led a group to explore and conduct a more thorough geo-scientific survey of the perennially mysterious lands carved by the river. Through their mappings of the Grand Canyon, these scientific pioneers opened new frontiers of geographic consciousness -- fundamental knowledge upon which all scientists and students of the Grand Canyon region continue to build.