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The park includes over a million acres of land: 1,218,376 acres / 493,077 hectares, or 1,904 square miles / 4931 square km. Most people measure the canyon in Colorado River miles. By that standard, Grand Canyon is 277 miles / 446 km long. It begins at Lees Ferry and ends at Grand Wash Cliffs.
The Colorado River is longer than Grand Canyon, flowing 1,450 miles / 2,333 km from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to the Gulf of California in Mexico. Grand Canyon is only one of many beautiful canyons carved by the river. Others include Cataract Canyon and Glen Canyon, the latter now lying beneath the waters of Lake Powell. Most people agree, however, that Grand Canyon is the most spectacular. No other place in the world looks quite like it.
Width and depth of the canyon vary from place to place. At the South Rim, near Grand Canyon Village, it's a vertical mile (about 5,000 feet / 1,524 m) from rim to river, or 7 miles / 11.3 km by trail. At its deepest, it is 6,000 vertical feet / 1,829 m from rim to river. The width of the canyon at Grand Canyon Village is 10 miles / 16 km (rim to rim), though in places it is as much as 18 miles / 29 km wide.
A trip to the bottom of the canyon and back (on foot or by mule) is a two day journey. Rim to rim hikers generally take three days one way to get from the North Rim to the South Rim. A trip through Grand Canyon by raft can take two weeks or longer. Experienced backpackers have spent weeks in the more remote areas of the canyon.
