The Wonder of the World

In this final episode of our seven-part road trip through Arizona, we head to the Grand Canyon. Red rock spires and golden, the snaking blue of the Colorado River 5,000-feet below. Most visitors stand at the rim, take a photograph and leave. But that’s only part of what makes this canyon grand. We hike down the Hermit Trail with park geologist Anne Miller, descending through 1.8 billion years of Earth’s history written into the stone. We find out about the indigenous history if the canyon, which has been used by native people for thousands of years. And end our journey at Shoshone Point and one of the most spectacular sunsets you’ll ever see.

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Episode highlights

Hiking Back in Time

Follow geologist Anne Miller down the Hermit Trail, where every switchback takes you millions of years further into the past. Find out why the rocks at the rim are older than the dinosaurs, and how at the bottom of the canyon you can stand on the tops of mountains 1.8 billion years old.

An Ocean a Mile High

Discover a vast prehistoric sea pressed into the canyon walls, with crinoids like tiny stone Cheerios, clam-like brachiopods and ancient sponges, a mile above today’s ocean.

A Living Landscape

The Grand Canyon isn’t just ancient history. It’s a living homeland. Eleven tribes hold it sacred, and Native communities still live on its rim and deep within its walls today. See the canyon through their eyes, and the landscape starts to reveal itself: pottery shards underfoot, petroglyphs on the canyon walls, and mysterious split-twig figurines, as old as Stonehenge, hidden deep in caves that almost no one will ever see.

Secret Sunset

Find out where to go for one of the most spectacular sunsets in the park. It’s a mile’s hike in, and worth every step. From a narrow peninsula of rock with a near-270-degree view, watch the buttes and temples below catch fire in the last light as the canyon turns slowly gold all around.

People pass by these fossils all the time because they’re focused on the view, which is also spectacular. But to me, there’s so much more than the view.

Anne Miller, Geologist and Paleontologist, Grand Canyon National Park