The Grand Canyon National Park was established in Arizona by an act of Congress in 1919.

On this day in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Grand Canyon Park bill, establishing the Grand Canyon National Park and offering it the highest level of protection the nation can give. 27 years earlier, then-Senator Benjamin Harrison had introduced the first of five unsuccessful bills to create the Grand Canyon National Park. As President, Harrison was able to give the park its first federal protection, naming it the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt named the area the Grand Canyon Game Preserve, and in 1908 established the Grand Canyon National Monument. In 1979, the Park was designated as a World Heritage Site. Today, the Grand Canyon receives about five million visitors each year and remains one of the most stunning and beautiful examples of erosion in the world. 

ARTSEDGE 
In Photography and the National Park Service (9-12), students examine ways in which art has influenced national policies. 

In Discovering National Parks (5-8), students create a media campaign as they learn about environmental activism and the role that artists have playing in creating and maintaining our National Parks.

EconEdLink 
National Parks: Only You Can Prevent the Coming Crisis (9-12) discusses problems facing the National Park system from an economic perspective. 

Xpeditions 
In Our National Parks: Recreation and Preservation (K-2), students will learn about the National Park system in the United States and, through exploration of the parks (via books, magazines, maps and the Internet), identify human modifications to the physical environment and the intended and unintended effects of those modifications. 

Xpeditions also offers a series of lessons about the Grand Canyon. In Introduction to the Grand Canyon (K-2), students look at pictures of several canyons before focusing on the Grand Canyon and how it was formed.

Older students learn about how the Grand Canyon was formed and explore its layers and geologic time periods in How Was the Grand Canyon Formed? (3-5), Delving into the Grand Canyon (6-8) and Layers of the Grand Canyon (9-12).