Leave It As It Is

In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder, which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled. I want to ask you to do me one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country---to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind or anything else to mar the wonderful grandeur, the great loneliness and the beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve upon it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.
---Theodore Roosevelt