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Sneak Preview: The Grand Canyon Skywalk
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Located at the West Rim's Eagle Point, this 4,000-foot high cantilever-designed glass bridge extends 70 feet from the rim of the Grand Canyon. It is scheduled to open on March 28.
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Ted Robbins, NPR /
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Jutting out into space, the Grand Canyon Skywalk officially opened Tuesday. The Skywalk is located on the Hualapai American Indian reservation in Arizona.
It's a horseshoe-shaped glass-bottomed walkway extending 60 feet out over the edge of the Grand Canyon. The drop off below is 4,000 feet.
Television crews from around the world got their shots on the glass-and-steel platform, then moved off to make way for more TV crews.
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Before the media had its turn on the platform, a Hualapai elder named Emmit Bender chanted a blessing over the project, a blessing this tribe could use.
Half of the 1,500 Hualapai who live on the plateau next to the canyon are unemployed. Almost a third live below the poverty level. Their home is so remote that they have to truck in their water.
They tried opening a casino to boost the tribe's economic fortunes, but it failed. Now they have turned to tourism: air tours, jeep excursions, rafting trips. Still, the efforts have not been enough to sustain the Hualapai.
Sylvia Querta is one of the tribal members who now hopes that tourists will pay $25, or more, to experience the Skywalk, and a visitors' center yet to be built.
"I think the Skywalk represents economic progress," Querta said. "And I'm happy because this means more job opportunities."
But the Skywalk disappoints folks like Rob Arnberger, a former superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park. He says he understands the Hualapai need economic development. But he also says the skywalk is inappropriate for its setting.
It's not consistent with the values of what that great gash in the ground represents to the globe, to the world and to the peoples of the world that visit it," Arnberger said.
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