Navajo Bridge and Interpretive Center

Condors, a canyon and a free walk in the sky

⏱ 30-60 minutes👤 All agesFree

Before the bridge, crossing here meant the ferry at Lees Ferry, a few miles upstream, and the river claimed lives in high water; the ferry's last sinking, in June 1928, came while the bridge was under construction. Work on the steel arch began in June 1927, traffic first rolled across in January 1929, and at the time it was the highest steel arch bridge in the world. About 7,000 people arrived in more than 1,200 cars for the dedication that June, and the Marble Canyon Lodge just up the road was already open to serve them. Originally called the Grand Canyon Bridge, it was renamed Navajo Bridge by the Arizona legislature in 1934. The old span is 834 feet long with an 18-foot roadway, and as traffic and truck sizes grew it became a hazard. So a new 909-foot bridge with a 44-foot roadway was built alongside with a matching arch profile and opened to traffic in May 1995 — a rare case of highway engineers deliberately preserving a historic view. The two bridges remain one of only a handful of road crossings of the Colorado along hundreds of miles of river. Walking the old span, you see the new one in parallel, and the pair frame Marble Canyon's opening upstream toward Lees Ferry and downstream into the Grand Canyon's first gorge.

Condor watching rewards a slow visit. The birds were brought back from the brink through captive breeding and have been released in the Vermilion Cliffs since the 1990s; the cliffs below the bridge and its steel girders are favored perches. Mornings and late afternoons are often best, when thermals build or fade. Do not approach or feed them — they are wild, protected and curious enough to land near people. River rafts from Lees Ferry also pass beneath the bridge on their first day, which makes a fine photograph from above.

Practicals: from Page, drive about 40 minutes south on US 89 and then west on US 89A; parking lots sit at both ends of the bridges, with the interpretive center on the west side. The walk across and back takes twenty to thirty minutes. Bring a telephoto lens for condors and a jacket for the canyon wind. Continue a few minutes west to the Lees Ferry turnoff, or on along the Vermilion Cliffs toward House Rock Valley and the Paria Plateau.