Eco-ing in the Canyon: Ferde Grofè's Grand Canyon Suite and the Transformation of Wilderness

Abstract

In the early decades of the twentieth century, many Americans harbored mixed feelings toward wilderness. On the one hand, the recent closing of the frontier increased an already strong affection for the nation's remaining open spaces. On the other, the land's potential for development had traditionally determined its value. The result was a contradiction discernable in both the ideology of the National Park Service and the best-known composition about a national park, Ferde Grofè's Grand Canyon Suite (1931). Borrowing from the relatively new field of ecocriticism, I propose several ways of hearing in the work a simultaneous celebration and conquest of the Grand Canyon. The goal is a better historical understanding of a love for wilderness that forever promises to turn wilderness into something else.