Grand Canyon Gondola Possibly in the Future
It’s not hard to find a stunning view while visiting the Grand Canyon National Park. Many tourists just choose to peek off the edge of the incredible monument, but thanks to the Skywalk, you can look down into the Grand Canyon from a clear glass walkway that extends over the great chasm. The one thing still unavailable is a means to descend down into this natural wonder of the world, but that may be changing within the next four years.
Developer R. Lamar Whitmer has been campaigning for the construction of a gondola that would take visitors of the iconic monument into its depths. The cable car would carry tourists down into the canyon near the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers, both sides of the canyon at their side. Unfortunately, that confluence is three hours away from Grand Canyon National Park, but this doesn’t worry Whitmer. He’s focusing on the full experience, and for the average tourist, visiting the bottom of the canyon isn’t as simple as it may seem. The gondola would change that forever, allowing anyone to visit the bottom with ease.
The gondola alone wouldn’t be a cheap addition to the world-famous landmark, but that’s not all the developer hopes to have approved. The gondola would be framed by its own attraction, complete with one of the Grand Canyon restaurants, a museum, Grand Canyon shopping outlets, hotels, and a walkway for tourists to see the canyon from this new angle. The entire attraction, as impressive as it would be, would cost $150 million to install, not to mention the cost of maintaining it, and there are understandably those who oppose.
Publicly battling these plans is “Save the Confluence”, one of several groups that strongly oppose the gondola. They fight the project because they believe that the proposed location for the new attraction is on holy ground, one spokesperson even referring to it as their church.
Many of the native Navajo in the area are against the project as well, defending the bottom of the canyon, a place that the Navajo deeply associate with spirituality and awe. There’s even some confusion over who legally owns the proposed construction site, but Whitmer, the project’s lead, remains optimistic about the attraction’s future.
Even taking into account what he calls “litigation time” to fully establish who owns the land, Whitmer predicts an opening date in
