How much dirt would it take to fill up the Grand Canyon?

Bring your big-boy shovel—and a calculator. Around the world, countries have filled in bodies of water with “reclaimed land.” These range from ornamental uses in Dubai to straightforward waterfront fills. We'd need 1,000 cubic miles of dirt to fill the Grand Canyon.



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The Grand Canyon is open at both ends, and you cannot fill it up with a liquid. If you were able to close off both ends and divert the Colorado River, the answer would still be the same. The amount of water from a garden hose would evaporate faster than you could add water from it.

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The composition (sandstone) and presence of stromatolites indicate that this area was previously a very shallow sea. The rock layers in the Grand Canyon Supergroup have been tilted, whereas the other rocks above this set are horizontal.

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The canyon is 446 kilometres long by an average of 16 kilometres wide and 1.6 kilometres deep, which gives a volume of about 10 million billion (1016) litres. So by simple division Daisy would take about 1.8 million million (1.8 × 1012) years to fill the canyon.

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Over the centuries, the rocks, dirt and silt the Colorado brought down from the Grand Canyon and the rest of its vast drainage basin either settled on what are now the banks of the river or formed an immense delta at its mouth.

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If the Grand Canyon basin was filled, it would fill a lot of canyons, tributaries and river canyons beside the Grand Canyon both upstream and downstream.

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The Grand Canyon is 277 miles (446 km) long, up to 18 miles (29 km) wide and attains a depth of over a mile (6,093 feet or 1,857 meters).

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Although the Grand Canyon is known around the world for its vast vistas, beautiful colors, and incredible geology, it's a lot more than just a big hole in the ground! People have been living in and exploring Grand Canyon for thousands of years, forging human connections to this incredible landscape.

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The mystery of the Great Unconformity What's tricky about the Grand Canyon is that the rocks in its walls seem to be missing a big part of the picture. In 1869, a man named John Wesley Powell observed that several layers of rock that should've been in the Canyon walls were not present.

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About 900 people have died in the Grand Canyon. The leading cause of death is airplane and helicopter crashes, followed by falling from cliffs, environmental deaths (such as overheating), and drowning. On average, about 11 people die per year in the Grand Canyon.

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Called the Mariana Trench, the underwater canyon descends 35,827 feet (10,920 meters) — the Grand Canyon only averages about 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) in depth.

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You cannot walk to Africa from the Grand Canyon though unless you go up through Alaska then into Russia and all the way through Central Asia and into Africa.

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