Shiva Temple

Shiva Temple is a summit of 7,646 feet within the Grand Canyon, in Coconino County, Arizona. It stands six miles north of the Hopi Point overlook on the South Rim, 2.5 miles south-west of Tiyo Point on the North Rim and two miles north-west of Isis Temple, rising 5,200 feet above the Colorado River. It is named after the Hindu deity Shiva, a name applied by Clarence Dutton, who began the practice of naming features in the Grand Canyon after mythological deities; Dutton held it to be the largest and most majestic of the canyon's buttes, with a broad, level, forested top. The name was officially adopted in 1906 by the United States Board on Geographic Names. In 1937 the American Museum of Natural History mounted expeditions to Shiva Temple and Wotans Throne on the premise that buttes isolated from the plateau for 100,000 years might have evolved new species. The party found Ancestral Puebloan dwellings, deer antlers and an empty Kodak film box left a month earlier by Emery Kolb and four companions, but no new species.

Where it is

Shiva Temple is a natural landmark near Grand Canyon, in Coconino County. It is one of the natural landmarks in this database, and appears in the statewide ranking of Arizona attractions.

How this ranking was reached

No official visitor count is published for Shiva Temple, so its score rests on public interest and tourism significance, and is capped below the level a measured attraction can reach. That is why the medium confidence above is not higher. The weighting is explained in full on the methodology page, and every axis is broken out under Facts and sources at the foot of this page.

Note on the data: No official visitor count is published for this attraction.

Sources

• Public interest: Wikimedia pageviews (en.wikipedia, human traffic), 2024
• Coordinates and designations: Wikidata(opens in a new tab)
• County: U.S. Census geography via FCC Area API, resolved from coordinates

Record last verified 2026-08-12.