Grand Canyon 1909: The Egyptian City Erased from America’s Map

On April 5, 1909, the *Arizona Gazette* put a story about a city beneath the Grand Canyon on its front page. The article said an explorer named G. E. Kinkaid had travelled alone down the Colorado River, about 42 miles from El Tovar, and noticed marks high on the canyon wall. He climbed to an almost unreachable entrance and entered a network of passages cut straight through the rock.

The article did not describe a small shelter. It described hundreds of rooms, granaries, a metalworking shop, copper weapons, a seated statue, hieroglyphs, a burial chamber with male mummies, and a hall large enough for 50,000 people. It also named the Smithsonian and a “Professor S. A. Jordan” as the expedition’s sponsor and director. If the story were true, Egyptians or a people linked to the ancient East had reached North America thousands of years ago, built a major centre in the canyon, and then vanished.