ioned for
a national park, and the National Federation of Women's Clubs began an
agitation. The Department of the Interior prepared a map upon which to
base a bill, and for several years negotiated with the Forest Service,
which administered the Grand Canyon as a national monument, concerning
boundaries. Finally the boundaries were reduced to little more than the
actual rim of the canyon, and a bill was prepared which Senator Ashurst
introduced in February, 1917. It failed in committee in the House owing
to opposition from Arizona. It was the same bill, again introduced by
Senator Ashurst in the new Congress two months later, which finally
passed the House and became a law in 1919; but it required a favoring
resolution by the Arizona legislature to pave the way.

Meantime many schemes were launched to utilize the Grand Canyon for
private gain. It was plastered thickly with mining claims, though the
Geological Survey showed that it contained no minerals worth mining;
mining claims helped delay. Schemers sought capital to utilize its
waters for power. Railroads were projected. Plans were drawn to run
sightseeing cars across it on wire cables. These were the interests, and
many others, which opposed the national park.

XVII

THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT

ZION NATIONAL MONUMENT, SOUTHERN UTAH. AREA, 120 SQUARE MILES

When, in the seventies, Major J.W. Powell, the daring adventurer of the
Grand Canyon, faced Salt Lake City on his return from one of his notable
geological explorations of the southwest, he laid his course by a temple
of rock "lifting its opalescent shoulders against the eastern sky." His
party first sighted it across seventy miles of a desert which "rose in a
series of Cyclopean steps." When, climbing these, they had seen the West
Temple of the Virgin revealed in the glory of vermilion body and shining
white dome, and had gazed between the glowing Gates of Little Zion into
the gorgeous valley within, these scenery-sated veterans of the Grand
Canyon and the Painted Desert passed homeward profoundly impressed and
planning quick return.

No wonder that Brigham Young, who had visited it many years before with
a party of Mormons seeking a refuge in event of Indian raids or of exile
from their Zion, Salt Lake City, had looked upon its glory as prophetic,
and named it Little Zion.

Geologists found the spot a fruitful field of study. They found it also
a masterpiece of desert beauty.

"Again we are imp