Grand Canyon Crowding
(Abridged Story)
From a news story by
CNN San Francisco Reporter Don Knapp
5/27/97
Grand Canyon Crowding
(Abridged Story)
From a news story by
CNN San Francisco Reporter Don Knapp
5/27/97
The Grand Canyon is running out of space! That sounds illogical, because it is such a large place.
However, many people visit the Grand Canyon. They come by bus, by motorcycle, and by car. Some people fly over the canyon in airplanes.
Five million people visited the Grand Canyon last year. Most people visited the South Rim of the canyon. Six thousand cars visited that area every day. That was three times the number of parking places there!
The Grand Canyon National Park has a superintendent. He plans to ban cars from the South Rim. There is a plan to have a light rail train going around the South Rim area. People could ride around the park in this train.
About twenty-one thousand visitors to the Grand Canyon take raft trips down the Colorado River. This river is at the bottom of Grand Canyon. About one hundred thousand visitors hike along trails within the canyon.
However, the visitors to the South Rim area are the main problem. They use a lot of water for toilets and showers. Plants and animals in the area need this water. The water comes from springs on the side of the rim. New buildings on the rim affect the springs as well.
There are other problems outside the canyon that affect live inside the Grand Canyon National Park. Smog from Los Angeles clouds the air. A dam upstream on the Colorado River has changed the water flow.
In order to make the Grand Canyon less crowded, there may be new policies. People are talking about requiring reservations to visit the park. A new twenty-dollar fee is now required to visit the Grand Canyon for the day.
Additional notes:
Visit these websites for lots of interesting information about the Grand Canyon and plans for its future:
