Year walk logo
Judy Hellmich-Bryan, Chief of the Division of Interpretation and Resource EducationĬarl Bowman, Branch Chief for Exhibits and Media Michael Williams, University of Massachusetts, Department of Geosciences, structural geology researcher Ryan Crow, Doctoral student, University of New Mexicoĭr. Steven Semken, Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration, ethnogeologist and geoscience education researcher Laura Crossey, University of New Mexico, Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, geochemistry researcher and geoscience education specialistĭr. Karl Karlstrom, project manager, University of New Mexico, Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, structural geology researcher and expert in Grand Canyon geologyĭr.
It was designed and installed by the Trail of Time team led by Geology Professors Karl Karlstrom and Laura Crossey of the University of New Mexico, with over 2 million dollars of funding from the Informal Science Education Program of the National Science Foundation.ĭr. The Trail of Time project included research to improve public geoscience education. The Trail of Time exhibit is designed to be an accessible way to view the Grand Canyon and "catch people at a moment when they are inspired with the grandeur of the canyon, and want to understand more about how the landscape was shaped by geologic events," says Karl Karlstrom, a geologist at the University of New Mexico who helped design the exhibit.
A majority of those visitors are unable to hike down into the Grand Canyon. Grand Canyon National Park has about six million visitors every year. Walk from the past to the present, forwards in time: Walking east from Grand Canyon Village takes you through the same experience, but forward in time, from Grand Canyon's oldest rocks to canyon carving and Grand Canyon's human history. This fully accessible one hour walking trip provides breath taking vistas of Grand Canyon and allows you to ponder and understand the depths of geologic space and time. The "Million Year Trail" is immediately followed by the main Trail of Time where each meter equals one million years of Grand Canyon's geologic history. You will start by walking the "Million Year Trail", which transitions from human time scales to geologic ones. Walk into the past, walking backwards in time: Between Yavapai Geology Museum and Grand Canyon Village (2.1 km or 1.3 miles), walk (west), backwards in time and experience Grand Canyon's entire geologic history. One can stop in the Village or keep walking out towards Hermits Rest. The trail continues to Grand Canyon Village and beyond. The start of the Trail of Time is at Yavapai Geology Museum, a half hour walk from Mather Point and the Canyon View Visitor Center. That's five steps in a Trail of Time that's over a mile long It was carved into these very old rocks over only the last five or six million years. The canyon itself is a geologically young canyon. These rocks were collected by the river, brought up for display and then placed at their birthdays - or their ages. Along the way you can see and touch some of the rocks from the many varied layers of the Grand Canyon.
You can start from today, at the Yavapai Geology Museum, and work your way back in time through Grand Canyon's history. For most of the trail, one step equals one million years. There's a time accelerator trail here at the beginning that helps you make the transition between human timescales of years, decades, centuries, to geologic timescales of millions and billions of years. The trail of time is a geology timeline exhibit along the rim trail between the Yavapai Geology Museum and Grand Canyon Village.
It's hard to conceptualize these 'illions, and relate them to human timescales but a timeline can help. The youngest rock, the layer I'm standing on right now is about 270 million years old. The oldest rock, way down at the bottom of the canyon, is about 1.8 billion years old.