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While Grand Canyon is most famous for vast views of towering cliffs, it holds additional geologic treasures, some as tiny as the delicate blue-green needles of a grandviewite crystal.

Pete Berry and partners developed the Grandview Mine from two mining claims filed in 1890. The Grandview Trail was built in 1892-1893 to service the mine to haul ore out of the canyon by pack train. The ore consisted mostly of copper sulfate minerals including cyanotrichite, brochantite, and chalcoalumite, along with copper carbonates such as azurite and malachite. Like many historic mines in Grand Canyon, including the Orphan Mine, the mineralized zone is in a breccia pipe, which is a cylindrical mass of highly fractured rock. In the Grand Canyon region, breccia pipes formed from the collapse of solution caverns in the Redwall Limestone. The highly porous brecciated rock in these features was mineralized by copper- and/or uranium-bearing fluids. Learn more here: <a href="http://www.nps.gov/grca/naturescience/cynsk-v25.htm" rel="nofollow">www.nps.gov/grca/naturescience/cynsk-v25.htm</a>