Giving Compass' Take:

• Stephen Pyne at The Conversation takes a look back at the history of the Grand Canyon National Park, how it came to be, the great impact it holds and what's to come in the future. 

• How can donors drive support to conservation efforts for our National Parks? What potential threats are our parks under? 

• Here's why fee hikes for National Parks hurts everyone. 

Few sights are as instantly recognizable, and few sites speak more fully to American nationalism. Standing on the South Rim in 1903, President Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed it “one of the great sights every American should see.”

It’s true. Every visitor today knows the Grand Canyon as a unique testimony to Earth’s history and an icon of American experience. But visitors may not know why. Probably they don’t know that it was big and annoying long before it was grand and inspiring. Likely, they don’t appreciate that the work of appreciating so strange a scene has been as astonishing as its geological sculpting. Other than a pilgrimage to a sacred site, they may not understand just what they are seeing.

As Grand Canyon National Park celebrates its centennial on Feb. 26, 2019, it’s worth recalling the peculiar way the canyon became grand and what this has meant.

Read the full article about the Grand Canyon National Park by Stephen Pyne at The Conversation