"President Theodore Roosevelt's 1903 visit to the Grand Canyon gave the American people an idea of just what that huge chasam in the seemingly barren high desert of Arizona was all about: 'In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country — to keep this great wonder of nature as it is now.... I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loveliness and beauty of the Canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve upon it.'

In 1906, Roosevelt created the Grand Canyon Game Reserve by executive order. That same year, he signed the Antiquities Act, which gave him legislative authority to establish Grand Canyon National Monument two years later. He also enlarged the forest reserve into a national forest, all before Arizona statehood in 1912. By the time the Grand Canyon became a national park in 1919 under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, the South Rim had already been developed, and the Santa Fe's El Tovar stood as the flagship hotel of Grand Canyon Village."

-from chapter one, The Divine Abyss