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The Mapping Grand Canyon Conference was an event held at Arizona State University's Tempe campus between February 28 and March 1, 2019. The conference marked an unprecedented exploration of the science, art, history, and practice of Grand Canyon cartography. It was a celebration and critical examination of the cartographic history of a global landscape icon.

Free and open to all, the conference delivered a two-day program of map-based story-telling, transdisciplinary analysis, state-of-the-art geospatial and cartographic demonstrations, engaging hands-on activities, and open community dialogue.

Inspiration and justification for convening such a conference was the confluence of two milestones in Grand Canyon history: (1) the centennial (1919-2019) of the legislation that led to Grand Canyon National Park, and (2) the sesquicentennial (1869-2019) of John Wesley Powell's famous first exploration and mapping survey through the canyons carved by the Colorado River, including the Grand Canyon.

The Mapping Grand Canyon Conference originated as a component of a larger research project supported through an ASU Institute for Humanities Research (IHR) seed grant -- Mapping Grand Canyon: A Critical Cartographic History.

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Conference Program

DescriptionOfficial program of the Mapping Grand Canyon Conference. Document was designed and optimized for digital dissemination and mobile device (smartphone, tablet) viewing and interactive browsing. Document was deliberately not printed in paper format with the intent of minimizing the event's ecological footprint through a reduction of paper and ink waste.
ContributorsWatson, Amy Carolyn (Compiler, Designer) / Toro, Matthew (Compiler, Cartographer) / Avila, Theresa (Contributor) / Field, Kenneth (Contributor) / Fry, Michael (Contributor) / Griffin, Dori (Contributor) / Kaplinski, Matt (Contributor) / Karlstrom, Karl (Contributor) / Manone, Mark (Contributor) / Oetting, Ed (Contributor) / Patterson, Tom (Contributor) / Quartaroli, Richard David (Contributor) / Runge, Peter (Contributor) / Semken, Steve (Contributor) / Smilovsky, Nikolas (Contributor) / Smith, Stephanie (Contributor) / Spindler, Rob (Contributor) / Trapido-Lurie, Barbara (Contributor) / Upchurch, Jonathan (Contributor) / Deitrick, Stephanie (Contributor) / Lemar, Shea (Contributor) / Messinger, Ellen Murray (Contributor) / Sherwood, Jill (Contributor) / Wilhelm, Karina (Contributor)
Created2019-02
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Cartoon Maps of Canyonland – Video Recording

Description
Shortly after the Grand Canyon became a national park in 1919, commercial artists began mapping the region for tourist audiences. Beginning around 1930, many of these maps used a cartoon style, populating the landscape with natural wonders, talking animals, cheerful tourists, quirky locals, and timeless “natives” (in the language of…

Shortly after the Grand Canyon became a national park in 1919, commercial artists began mapping the region for tourist audiences. Beginning around 1930, many of these maps used a cartoon style, populating the landscape with natural wonders, talking animals, cheerful tourists, quirky locals, and timeless “natives” (in the language of their day). These illustrated maps facilitated only the most basic navigational tasks, but they performed a great deal of work as cultural narratives, shaping viewers’ concepts and expectations of the Grand Canyon as a tourism destination. From reinforcing a standardized menu of iconic sites to perpetuating popular mythologies of indigenous culture, cartoon maps dealt in stereotypes. Yet they also offered a surprising level of detail and most were based in careful research. Several of the artists who made cartoon maps of the Grand Canyon were well-known as commercial cartographic illustrators, including Ruth Taylor White, Jo Mora, and Arizona Highways art director George Avey. They brought their own signature styles to a geographic region made famous by John Wesley Powell’s 1869 expedition and the Fred Harvey Company’s popular tours. “Cartoon Maps of Canyonland” showcases the rich visual history of mapping the Grand Canyon for tourists and unpacks the complex, evolving stories told by these engaging but imperfect maps.
ContributorsGriffin, Dori (Author, Speaker)
Created2019-03-01
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Geologic Mapping of Grand Canyon, 150 Years and Counting – Video Recording

Description
Geologic maps are to geologists what equations are to mathematicians; they symbolically and compactly encode many layers of hard-won scientific knowledge for those who know how to read them. The best ones also are beautiful. There have been great challenges and great progress in geologic mapping of Grand Canyon over…

Geologic maps are to geologists what equations are to mathematicians; they symbolically and compactly encode many layers of hard-won scientific knowledge for those who know how to read them. The best ones also are beautiful. There have been great challenges and great progress in geologic mapping of Grand Canyon over the past 150 years. Dutton era (1886) maps represent major advances in cartography and geology. The Huntoon et al., (1996) 1:62,500 “Dragon Map” of Eastern Grand Canyon is the best-selling geologic map of all time; it was produced by offset printing and is now out of print. The Timmons and Karlstrom (2012) Geologic Map of Eastern Grand Canyon at 1:24,000 is the most detailed available for large areas; it has been digitized and is being converted to GIS files. The Billingsley’s USGS maps of the entire Grand Canyon region are available at 1:100,000 as GIS files online. Next challenges are to incorporate multiple scales in Google Earth-style zooming in interactive 3-D geologic portrayals. This requires higher detail boots-on-the-ground geologic mapping than is currently available in many areas as well as innovative ideas for 3-D visualizations. Imagery and visualization technologies are available such that this “Grand Challenge” is within reach.
ContributorsKarlstrom, Karl E (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)
Created2019-02-28