Grand Canyon National Park

Until 1928 the main trail into the Grand Canyon was a private toll operation, and the drinking water cost extra. Prospector Ralph Cameron controlled the Bright Angel Trail through mining claims, charging a $1 toll plus separate fees for water and outhouses, and when the National Park Service moved against him he had the advantage of being, from 1921, a United States Senator. In February 1922 he had Grand Canyon’s development appropriation stripped from the Interior Department funding bill, on the grounds that it would only build campsites for “thirty or forty millionaires.” Coconino County finally ceded the trail in 1928, the last toll trail in the national park system.

Canyons are where contour maps do their best work, and this one is dense with information. The lines crowd together at the cliff bands of the inner gorge, spread apart across the broad platforms of the Tonto bench, and trace the winding course of the Colorado River through the center of the print. Side canyons like Bright Angel branch away from the river, and the isolated buttes and temples that rise from the canyon floor appear as tight rings of contour standing alone in open space.