Desert View is the east end of the rim drive, at 7,438 feet, and it sells the South Rim's only in-park fuel, from self-service pumps open around the clock. Mary Colter's Watchtower stands about 70 feet tall. The upper floors open when staffing allows, so hours are best confirmed on site. NPS counts 18 air miles to the opposite rim and 50 miles of canyon in view, along with the river's Big Bend and the junction it treats as the canyon's beginning. Parking is free in two lots. The area is on its way to becoming the Park Service's first site of its kind, an Inter-tribal Cultural Heritage Site led by 11 tribal communities. Boone's parked tale here concerns the architect, for listeners who have stopped the car.
Desert View's entry road is on your right, and if you stop once on this tour, stop here. Give it half an hour. Turn in and take the lot on the right as you enter, cars only. The lot on the left is for buses and RVs. The pumps here are the only gas inside the park on the South Rim, pay at the pump by card, any hour. Parking's free, and a quarter-mile walk past the restrooms brings you to the point. If I cut out when you shut the car off, tap play, and stay close. Boone has a tale here, about three minutes. When you leave, turn right, heading west. The first spur on your right is Navajo Point, and it's worth the pull-in. The tower on the rim is Mary Colter's Watchtower, about seventy feet tall. What's open inside changes, so check at the door. If you do get in, look up in the round room. Those ceiling logs came from the old Grandview Hotel up the rim. From the point, the Colorado makes its Big Bend directly below you. The park's numbers from here are four miles to the river, eighteen air miles to the far rim, and fifty miles of canyon in sight. The dark cliffs along the water are lavas, from volcanic activity long before the canyon was cut, nothing like the rest of the walls. Look east from the point. The flat-topped mesa back from the rim is Cedar Mountain. Just past it, the Little Colorado gorge runs north and south like a crack in the earth. Trace it left to where it meets the canyon. The park says that junction is where Grand Canyon begins, and it measures two hundred seventeen river miles west from there. Desert View has been a gathering place for thousands of years. The eleven Grand Canyon tribal communities, in partnership with the park, are leading its change into the National Park Service's first Inter-tribal Cultural Heritage Site. The Inter-tribal Advisory Council says why, in its own words. We share Desert View as a symbol to bond the peoples of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The Watchtower serves as a connection to embrace the heartbeats of our peoples and visitors far and wide with the heartbeat of the canyon. And the statement closes, We are still here.
Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress (LC-DIG-highsm-15759) · Public domain (Highsmith gift; LoC: no known restrictions on publication)