The Grand Canyon

This week, I’d like to share three items in our antique collection that trace the remarkable history of the Grand Canyon. Starting from early scientific reconnaissance and exploration, to the first filmed documentation, and finally to its mid-twentieth-century promotion as a destination accessible to the American public, each item captures a distinct moment in the canyon’s history, as well as changing intentions, technologies, and audiences. 

Starting with Joseph C. Ives’s Report upon the Colorado River of the West, published in 1861 by the Government Printing Office, this first edition represents one of the earliest comprehensive attempts to document the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon through systematic exploration. Ives’ expedition, undertaken between 1857 and 1858, sought to evaluate the Colorado River’s potential as a transportation route, while simultaneously gathering geological, botanical, and zoological data through the work of leading scientists of the period.

Lavishly illustrated with folding maps, panoramas, engravings, and scientific plates, the volume stands as the first detailed published account in the United States to describe the Grand Canyon’s vast scale and natural complexity. Although Ives concluded that the river was unsuitable for commerce and believed the region unlikely to attract future visitors, his carefully written narrative and accompanying scientific reports by John Strong Newberry, Asa Grey, Spencer Fullerton Baird, and others established a documentary starting point that revealed the canyon’s profound geological significance.

Several decades later, the canyon was no longer merely a subject of official surveys but the setting for popular fascination, as captured in Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico by Ellsworth L. Kolb. Originally published in 1914 and represented here in a later 1963 edition signed by Emery Kolb, this book recounts the Kolb brothers’ 101-day journey navigating the Green and Colorado Rivers while recording the experience through still photography and motion pictures.

The Kolb brothers’ work marked the first time the Grand Canyon was captured on moving film. Illustrated with more than one hundred photographic plates and accompanied by a hand-drawn map, the volume documents not only the physical challenges of traversing the canyon’s 277 miles but also the emergence of photography and film as powerful tools for documentation. This book and the brothers’ subsequent film-lecture tours brought their images of the canyon to audiences across the country. They helped foster a broad and significant public appreciation for a Grand Canyon, a landscape that many would never see in person.

Lastly, our 1949 “Grand Canyon” travel poster designed by Oscar M. Bryn for the Santa Fe Southern Railway indicates the shift from the Grand Canyon as a documented terrain, intriguing but still unvisited by many, to an iconic destination promoted through modern advertising. Bryn’s colorful composition depicts a couple in the foreground, visually dwarfed by layered expanses of terracotta, ochre, and rust-colored rock, emphasizing both human presence and the canyon’s overwhelming scale. The assertion that “Santa Fe is the Only Railroad Entering this National Park” highlights the railway’s exclusive access to the South Rim and underscores the role of transportation in driving tourism. As part of the Santa Fe Railway’s broader tradition of destination-driven advertising, the poster demonstrates how art and commerce combined into a compelling invitation to experience the Grand Canyon firsthand.

Considered together, these three items form a narrative of discovery, interpretation, and promotion. From Ives’ scientific and official assessment, through the Kolb brothers’ immersive visual chronicle, to Bryn’s commercial promotion of accessible grandeur, they reveal how understanding and appreciation of the Grand Canyon evolved over nearly a century.