Question: How many visitors are there to the Grand Canyon National Park each year?
About the article "Grand Canyon", section "Grand Canyon tourism".

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Grand Canyon may refer to:  The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, United States (the best-known "Grand Canyon") *Grand Canyon National Park, surrounding the canyon in Arizona *Grand Canyon Village, Arizona, a community within the national park Grand Canyon may also refer to: 
The known history of the Grand Canyon area stretches back 10,500 years, when the first evidence of human presence in the area is found.
Native Americans have inhabited the Grand Canyon and the area now covered by Grand Canyon National Park for at least the last 4,000 of those years.
Ancestral Pueblo peoples, first as the Basketmaker culture and later as the more familiar Pueblo people, developed from the Desert Culture as they became less nomadic and more dependent on agriculture.
A similar culture, the Cohonina, also lived in the canyon area.
Drought in the late 13th century likely caused both groups to move on.
Other people followed, including the Paiute, Cerbat, and the Navajo, only to be later forced onto reservations by the United States Government.
In September 1540, under direction by conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado to find the fabled Seven Cities of Gold, Captain Garcia Lopez de Cardenas led a party of Spanish soldiers with Hopi guides to the Grand Canyon.
More than 200 years passed before two Spanish priests became the second party of non-Native Americans to see the canyon.
U.S. Army Major John Wesley Powell led the 1869 Powell Geographic Expedition through the canyon on the Colorado River.
This and later study by geologists uncovered the geology of the Grand Canyon area and helped to advance that science.
In the late 19th century, the promise of mineral resources—mainly copper and asbestos—renewed interest in the region.
The first pioneer settlements along the rim came in the 1880s.
Early residents soon realized that tourism was destined to be more profitable than mining, and by the turn of the 20th century the Grand Canyon was a well-known tourist destination.
Most visitors made the gruelling trip from nearby towns to the South Rim by stagecoach.
In 1901 the Grand Canyon Railway was opened from Williams, Arizona, to the South Rim, and the development of formal tourist facilities, especially at Grand Canyon Village, increased dramatically.
The Fred Harvey Company developed many facilities at the Grand Canyon, including the luxury El Tovar Hotel on the South Rim in 1905 and Phantom Ranch in the Inner Gorge in 1922.
Although first afforded federal protection in 1893 as a forest reserve and later as a U.S. National Monument, the Grand Canyon did not achieve U.S. National Park status until 1919, three years after the creation of the National Park Service.
Today, Grand Canyon National Park receives about five million visitors each year, a far cry from the annual visitation of 44,173 in 1919. 
John Hance (1840 – January 26, 1919) is thought to be the first non-native American resident of the Grand Canyon, US.
He opened the first tourist trail in the canyon in the late nineteenth century.
He started giving tours of the canyon after his attempts at mining asbestos failed, largely due to the expense of removing the asbestos from the canyon.
"Captain" John Hance was said to be one of the Grand Canyon's most colorful characters, and it had been declared by one early visitor that "To see the canyon only and not to see Captain John Hance, is to miss half the show."
Hance delighted in telling canyon stories to visitors, favoring the whopper of a tale over mere facts.
With a straight face, Hance told travelers how he had dug the canyon himself, piling the excavated earth down near Flagstaff (a dirt pile now known as the San Francisco Peaks).
Despite such questionable claims, Hance left a lasting legacy at the Grand Canyon, dying in 1919, the year the Grand Canyon became a National Park.
Hance was the first person buried in what would become the Grand Canyon Pioneer Cemetery. 
Famed for its dramatic rapids and canyons, the Colorado is one of the most desirable whitewater rivers in the United States, and its Grand Canyon section – run by more than 22,000 people annually – has been called the "granddaddy of rafting trips".
Grand Canyon trips typically begin at Lee's Ferry and take out at Diamond Creek or Lake Mead, and range from one to eighteen days for commercial trips and from two to twenty-five days for private trips.
Private (noncommercial) trips are extremely difficult to arrange because the National Park Service limits river traffic for environmental purposes; people who desire such a trip often have to wait more than 10 years for the opportunity.
Several other sections of the river and its tributaries are popular whitewater runs, and many of these are also served by commercial outfitters.
The Colorado's Cataract Canyon and many reaches in the Colorado headwaters are even more heavily used than the Grand Canyon, and about 60,000 boaters run a single section above Radium, Colorado, each year.
The upper Colorado also includes many of the river's most challenging rapids, including those in Gore Canyon, which is considered so dangerous that "boating is not recommended".
Another section of the river above Moab, known as the Colorado "Daily" or "Fisher Towers Section", is the most visited whitewater run in Utah, with more than 77,000 visitors in 2011 alone.
The rapids of the Green River's Gray and Desolation Canyons and the less difficult "Goosenecks" section of the lower San Juan River are also frequently traversed by boaters.
Eleven U.S. national parks – Arches, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Petrified Forest, Rocky Mountain, Saguaro, and Zion – are in the watershed, in addition to many national forests, state parks and recreation areas.
Hiking, backpacking, camping, skiing and fishing are among the multiple recreation opportunities offered by these areas.
Fisheries have declined in many streams in the watershed, especially in the Rocky Mountains, because of polluted runoff from mining and agricultural activities.
The Colorado's major reservoirs are also heavily traveled summer destinations.
Houseboating and water-skiing are popular activities on Lakes Mead, Powell, Havasu and Mojave, as well as Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Utah and Wyoming, and Navajo Reservoir in New Mexico and Colorado.
Lake Powell and surrounding Glen Canyon National Recreation Area received more than 2 million visitors per year as of 2007, while nearly 7.9 million people visited Lake Mead and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in 2008.
Colorado River recreation employs some 250,000 people and contributes $26 billion each year to the Southwest economy. 
Tusayan is approximately two miles from the south entrance to Grand Canyon National Park.
The town's businesses mainly serve tourists visiting the park.
Grand Canyon Airlines and Air Grand Canyon are headquartered on the grounds of Grand Canyon National Park Airport in Tusayan.