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National Parks and Monuments
Geography
 The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 4 to 6
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   4.58

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    mollusks, gravity, view, powerful, level, however, visitor, former, combination, appear, deep, visible, east, waves, mile, rocks
     content words:    United States, Grand Canyon, Colorado River, Rocky Mountains, President Theodore Roosevelt, South Rims

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The Grand Canyon
By Kathleen W. Redman 		  
1     Think about a very deep hole. This hole is so deep that it is hard to see the bottom. It is a very long hole. It is like a huge crack in the Earth. There is a river in the bottom of it. There is a hole like that in the United States. It is called the Grand Canyon.
 
2     Millions of years ago, most of the area was at or below sea level. The Colorado River flowed over a large plain. About 70 million years ago, part of the plain was squeezed up a mile high. Powerful waves were sent toward the east. The waves created the Rocky Mountains. The Grand Canyon began to appear. For the next five to six million years, the Colorado River, wind, rain, ice, and gravity made the Canyon wider and deeper. Now it is about ten miles wide. In some places, it is more than a mile deep!
 
3     Geologists can tell much about how our Earth looked millions of years ago by looking at the layers of rock in the Grand Canyon. Most of the rock in the Grand Canyon could only have been formed at the bottom of the sea. They have found fossils of corals, mollusks, and sea lilies in the rock. They have even found fish teeth there!

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