MORAN POINT |
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Moran Point, named for famed American landscape artist Thomas Moran is located on the South Rim of the canyon in between Grand Canyon Village and Desert View. A spur from Desert View Drive allows visitors to pull over and enjoy canyon vistas. The point is due south of Cape Royal viewpoint on the North Rim. Though only separated by eight miles across the chasm, it would take hundreds of miles of driving from Moran Point to reach the Cape Royal viewpoint. Thomas Moran traveled with John Wesley Powell down the Colorado River to the North Rim during Powell’s second expedition. Congress purchased a painting that he made of the Grand Canyon inspired by this trip and hung it in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., in 1873. Its prominent public display helped give many Americans their first glimpse of the Canyon. Moran later worked as an employee of the Santa Fe Railway, spending his summers living at the Canyon and painting works that were used in the company’s advertising campaigns. To read more about Moran’s significance to American art, visit our Visual Arts page. |
View from Moran Point looking east. Credit: NAU Cline Library, Josef Muench Collection, NAU.PH.2003.11.4.1.8.M7724 |
Moran Point has inspired everyone from artist Thomas Moran to everyday photographers to try to capture an image of the canyon from its edge. Credit: NAU Cline Library, P.T. Reilly collection, NAU.PH.97.46.165.84 |
Three of the Grand Canyon’s main rock groups are visible at Moran Point: Layered Paleozoic Rocks, the Grand Canyon Supergroup, and the Vishnu Basement Rocks. The first group is comprised of sedimentary rocks, which make up most of the Grand Canyon. The Supergroup rocks are visible at only a few spots along the rim. The Vishnu Basement Rocks are both igneous and metamorphic, and represent the oldest rocks that can be found at the Grand Canyon. The Colorado River cuts through this final layer, and is visible below Moran Point. The point also provides an excellent view of Red Canyon, where John Hance built a mining operation and several trails. Today photographers and painters fittingly choose Moran Point as one of their favorite spots for capturing the light and shadows that play upon the Canyon walls. |
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