Wilderness it may be, if that means sparsely settled, but mysterious ?--no.

It is all known and on record.
* Ray Stannard Baker, Century Magazine, May, 1902.
The Grand Canyon may be likened to an inverted mountain range.

Imagine a great mountain chain cast upside down in plaster.

Then all the former ridges and spurs of the range become tributary canyons and gulches running back twenty or thirty miles into the surrounding country, growing shallower and shallower as the distance increases from the central core, just as the great spurs and ridges of a mountain range, descending, melt finally into the plain.

Often there are parts where the central gorge is narrow and precipitous, just as a mountain range frequently possesses mighty precipices.