Image The Grand Canyon gained national monument status 110 years ago today. Credit... Richard Perry/The New York Times

The canyon’s path to national park status began in the 1880s, when Senator Benjamin Harrison of Indiana introduced several bills to designate it a “public park,” but without success. Later, as president, he made it a forest reserve.

President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed parts of it a federal game reserve, and then established it as a national monument on this day in 1908.

Five years earlier, on his first visit to Arizona (then still a territory), Roosevelt said he could not describe the Grand Canyon and implored people to preserve it. “You cannot improve on it; not a bit,” he said.

Like Roosevelt, the environmentalist John Muir was left at a loss for words by the canyon’s beauty, writing in 1902 that no artist could do justice to its colors: “And if paint is of no effect, what hope lies in pen-work? Only this: Some may be incited by it to go and see for themselves.”

Jennifer Jett contributed reporting.

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