Which canyon did Coronado's expedition become the first Europeans to see?

Coronado’s expedition became the first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon.

In September 1540, García López de Cárdenas led about 13 Spanish soldiers from Coronado’s expedition to the canyon’s South Rim. Hopi guides helped direct the party, which probably reached the rim somewhere between today’s Desert View and Moran Point. From above, the soldiers could see the Colorado River far below but were unable to descend to it.

The Spanish badly misjudged the canyon’s scale. Their estimate of its width was relatively close, but they thought the river was only about six feet wide, even though it is vastly broader in reality. The expedition’s report helped place the canyon into European geographic knowledge.

“First Europeans” refers to documented European visitors, not first people to encounter the canyon. Indigenous peoples, including ancestral Puebloan communities and the Havasupai, had known and used the Grand Canyon region for centuries before the 1540 expedition.