Grand Canyon National Park turns ONE HUNDRED on February 26th! It had been a Forest Reserve and then a National Monument before that, and achieved National Park status in 1919, three years after the creation of the National Park Service.

The Grand Canyon’s quest to becoming a national park began in the 1880s, with several failed congressional bills. Theodore Roosevelt, the “conservationist president, decalred the Grand Canyon a National Monument in 1908. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson passed the bill to grant the Grand Canyon National Park Status.

To celebrate its centennial, the park will be hosting events throughout the year. Some events include Grand Canyon: 100 Years of Stories, Geoscience Symposium, Centennial Summerfest and Grand Canyon Centennial Star Party (occuring together over one week) , Of Time, Wind, and the River, Centennial Performance by the US Field Army Band and West Point Glee Club, and other performance of “Grand Canyon Suite” by mutliple symphonies. The park will also host a Founder’s Day Centennial Celebration on February 26th, which will kick off the official start of its centennial year. The day will include cultural demonstrations by the traditional tribes of the Grand Canyon, a concert by he Flagstaff District School Choir, and a kick-off ceremony (with cake after!).

There is also an online exhbit, titled “100 Years of Grand”, that was put together by ASU, NAU, and Grand Canyon National Park. The online exhibit “makes accessible, for the first time, thousands of high-quality archival photographs and documents, chronicling the early history of the Grand Canyon… Weaving together several decades of cultural, geospatial, entrepreneurial, documentary and administrative archival history…” There are newspapers, posters, maps, photographs, and more included in the exhibit to give people a look at the creation and beginning of Grand Canyon National Park.

On February 26th, make sure to wish Grand Canyon National Park a Happy One-Hunrdedth Birthday!