Officials at Grand Canyon National Park say one visitor died and at least fifteen others remain missing or unaccounted for, after a major flash flood raged through parts of the canyon over the weekend.

The flooding prompted evacuations, and damage to critical infrastructure is being assessed as lodging within the park was temporarily shut down on Sunday.

“Grand Canyon National Park will implement Stage 4 water restrictions on the South Rim beginning at noon on August 31 in response to the significant flash flooding that occurred along Bright Angel Canyon on August 29,” park officials said in a statement.

Significant damage was reported along the Transcanyon Waterline, a major source of water to facilities within the park. “The waterline is currently not operational, leaving the park with limited water reserves and requiring significant water conservation measures to ensure available supplies can be maintained,” officials said on Sunday.

The sudden flooding occurred near Bright Angel Creek beginning on Saturday, following an intense period of localized rainfall.

More than five dozen visitors were reportedly evacuated by helicopter from the inner canyon, according to the Associated Press. Arizona Department of Public Safety assisted with evacuations, and officials are still assessing damage to infrastructure as the search for several unaccounted visitors remains underway.

National Park Service officials confirmed that the body of a 46-year-old man was recovered Sunday night near Crystal Rapids, and as searches continue, officials have requested that the public please assist in providing any information about their possible whereabouts.

“The National Park Service is asking anyone who knows of hikers or backpackers who were in the inner canyon along the Bright Angel Creek corridor on August 29, as well as anyone who had a campground reservation in the affected corridor, to provide information to the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch (ISB),” National Park Service officials said in a statement released by Grand Canyon Office of Communications on Sunday.

“This includes individuals who may have been traveling along the North Kaibab Trail from the North Kaibab Trailhead to Phantom Ranch, staying at Bright Angel Campground, or traveling or staying in the area known as ‘the Box’ north of Phantom Ranch.”

Officials also said the floods had been severe enough to wash out several footbridges and even dislocate some large boulders in portions of the Colorado River, altering sections of the river channel, and potentially making some of them unsafe.

Stage 4 water restrictions will remain in effect on the park’s South Rim, and year-round residents have been asked to use water sparingly while repairs remain underway.

Beginning in 2023, efforts began to modernize the park’s water system, culminating in a $208 million rehabilitation project that would provide water for the roughly 1,600 residents of Grand Canyon Village and the millions of annual visitors who enjoy the park.

Damage assessments continue, and National Park Service officials have warned that additional summer storm activity could affect the region.

“Additional thunderstorms and heavy rainfall are possible today and Monday, which could result in additional flash flooding, debris flows, rockfall and changing trail and river conditions,” officials said.

Anyone with information about individuals who remain unaccounted for in Grand Canyon National Park has been asked to contact the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch Tip Line at 888-653-0009.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

A thousand years ago, feasts in what’s now northern Georgia state included cacao from Central America.

Potsherds discarded after an 11th-century feast at Etowah—an Indigenous city just north of what’s now Atlanta—contained traces of cacao, a raw ingredient of chocolate. The chemical residue and ancient DNA reveal that not only did the Mississippian people who built the city have excellent taste, they also had trade connections that reached at least 3,000 kilometers to Central America. And in a sense, chocolate may have helped build the Mississippian mounds.

Ancient dirty dishes

University of South Carolina archaeologist Adam King and his colleagues found fragments of ancient DNA from Theobroma cacao in the inner surfaces of potsherds from long-ago feasts at Etowah. Fruit from the cacao tree contains beans that, when dried and roasted, produce chocolate in all its glorious forms. Cacao only grows in the tropics, which means the nearest actual cacao trees would have been at least a 3,000-kilometer trek away from the woodlands of the eastern US. And that means the Mississippian people who lived in Etowah must have had continent-spanning trade connections.

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The Grand Canyon, one of America’s most famous landmarks, may have been created when an ancient supercontinent cracked apart, according to new research.

Roughly 800 million years ago, the supercontinent Rodinia broke apart in a gradual process, taking close to 300 million years. Now, an international team of researchers says that an analysis of the Grand Canyon’s interior rock reveals it may have been exposed long before geologists previously suspected.

The geologists investigated an ancient cliff face that extends for thousands of kilometers and marks a boundary of the Grand Canyon, detailing their findings in a recent paper published in the journal Geology.

Forming the Grand Canyon

Geologists believe the Colorado River slowly carved out the Grand Canyon over five to six million years. A team of international scientists led by the UK’s University of Southampton turned back the clock to study how the environment changed in much more remote periods.

Simulations and computer models were essential to the researchers’ work. They utilized landscape evolution data and reconstructed plate tectonics over massive time scales to better understand how North America fared in the destruction of Rodinia.

Before there was a “Grand Canyon,” the team claims that their work reveals there was likely a “great escarpment,” an earlier landform of rocky cliffs produced in Rodinia’s demise. These cliffs would have been a kilometer high, with a crystalline floor at their base resembling the one now at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. They say this great escarpment would have encompassed much of the western United States, covering parts of Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Illinois.

Rocks of the Grand Canyon

Erosion along this great escarpment eventually produced the Grand Canyon and exposed some of America’s most ancient rocks.

“Our paper suggests the Canyon’s basement rocks were progressively brought to the surface as part of an immense escarpment that developed during the breakup of an ancient supercontinent,” said lead author Thomas Gernon, Professor of Earth Science at the University of Southampton. “The findings also shed light on the formation of the Great Unconformity, a mysterious gap in the rock record that spans over a billion years.”

One of the biggest surprises is that what is now the Grand Canyon and some of South America and Brazil’s major escarpments once occupied the same positions relative to the continent’s perimeter. They believe that about eight kilometers of rock were ripped away as the escarpment moved inland from the continental margin. Known physical evidence of extreme erosion before the formation of the Grand Canyon corroborates this finding.

“This long-lived tectonic landscape provides a missing piece in understanding why erosion associated with the Great Unconformity varies so dramatically across the southwestern US,” Gernon explained. “Our work suggests that tectonic uplift related to continental rifting and breakup created both steep slopes and high ground, providing the mountainous terrain that rivers and glaciers could readily erode.”

Forming North America

The team’s findings don’t stop at the Grand Canyon, though. They suspect that the mountainous rim exerted a massive influence on North America’s development, including the flow of rivers, locations of sediment buildup, and when flooding occurred; all of which could have been driven by the great escarpment.

“By comparing Grand Canyon’s ancient history with active landscapes like the Great Escarpment of South Africa, we’re able to see North America’s most iconic geologic landmark in an entirely new light,” Professor Gernon concluded.

“Our findings could help geologists reinterpret other ancient continental interiors where similarly large gaps occur in records, offering a better understanding of how Earth’s continents have changed over hundreds of millions of years.”

The paper, “Exhumation of Grand Canyon’s Basement Along the Great Escarpment of Laurentia,” appeared in Geology on August 17, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.

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