Visiting Where the Grand Canyon Begins

Lee’s Ferry and Marble Canyon are Worth the Drive

Less than ten miles south of and in the center of the border with Utah is one of my favorite places in Arizona. Lee’s Ferry is the only place for 260 miles along the Colorado River where the river is at ground level. Glenn Canyon officially ends at Lee’s Ferry, and a few hundred feet downstream, the Grand Canyon begins its rise as Marble Canyon. In one spot, you can get a taste for the pioneer history of the state, its monumental landscape, the relentless power of the Colorado River, and the never-ending battle of water rights with our neighbors.

John Lee Got to Pick the Name, but Things Didn’t End Well

If you were a Mormon settler or missionary headed south from the new settlements in Utah to Arizona, this was the only place you could cross. After a fort there failed, John D. Lee decided to settle in the valley with his two wives and their kids and set up a ferry service. Interesting in and of itself, but what was more intriguing was the reason Lee chose this isolated valley. Well, he took part in the Mountain Meadows Massacre – an attack on a non-Mormon wagon train that killed around 120 people on their way to California. If you watched American Primeval, you got a bloody overview of Lee and the massacre. He hid out and operated the ferry for four years before he was caught, tried, and executed.

One of his wives, then several other families, operated the ferry until a fatal crossing in 1928 shut everything down. A year later, Navajo Bridge was built across Marble Canyon, 4 miles downstream, making Lee’s ferry obsolete.

Where the Grand Canyon Begins, and the Roadrunner Battled W. E. Coyote

If you sit on the North side of the river at Lee’s Ferry, you can see the layers of the Colorado Plateau rise up at an angle. This is the start of the Grand Canyon, Marble Canyon. If you stop before the turnoff to Lee’s Ferry, you can walk across the now-closed Navajo Bridge, look upstream, and see the river as it begins to cut its way through the uplifting rock.

Marble Canyon is special for me because when I look at the Grand Canyon proper, at its widest and deepest, it is overwhelming. My mind can’t get around what I’m looking at. But here, you can see the battle begin, knowing that over millions of years, the river will slice through eons of rock.

Oh, and about halfway between Navajo Bridge and Lee’s Ferry, you can pull over and see balancing rocks. These formations are critical to my childhood because this is where the Roadrunner stopped in the shade, and the Coyote tried to use the distorted physics of cartoons to tip the rock onto the always more clever bird.

Something Powerful

I like to sit next to the river on a sandy beach downstream of where the crossing was. It’s a mild rapid with just enough white water to make a wonderful, constantly varying sound and very subtly vibrate the ground. You can see the layers of different colored stone across from you and watch the patient power of the river. Even damned up and harnessed, it is still powerful and timeless.