One-hundred and four years ago today, Jan. 11, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt declared more than 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon in Arizona a National Monument. Roosevelt said after visiting the area: “In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. 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 loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.” The Mandarins took time in 2008’s “The River”” to pay homage to the great chasm. The only corps in the DCI-era to perform a movement from American composer Ferde Grofe’s popular orchestral work “Grand Canyon Suite,” Mandarins designers chose “Sunrise” to slow the show down before performers marched into the finale of the 11-minute production.
