Throwing things into the Grand Canyon:

Didst thou not promise us wagons that could safely be thrown into the Grand Canyon without even starting a nut…?
—The Automobile, June 15, 1921

What to do with the used safety razor blades? This is a joke of long standing and the best answer up to date is that they be thrown into the Grand Canyon.
—The Gillette Blade, Silver Jubilee Issue, September 1926

If all the jokes that ever were written about the Grand Canyon were thrown into the Grand Canyon, there would not be the slightest decrease in the flow of Grand Canyon jokes.
—Judge, 1930

DEVEREAUX: Destroy all modern artifacts…throw the cyclotrons and piles and isotopes and all the paraphernalia of the last century into the Grand Canyon, cover it with dust and proclaim, “It’s done!... Man is now saved!”
—Dore Schary, The Highest Tree, 1960

We will show you what real conservation is. It isn’t the locking up of all our natural resources and then throwing the key into the Grand Canyon (empty or full).
—American Paper Industry, v. 48, 1966

The gulf between the description of drug action… at the functional and behavioural level remains, for the most part, very wide. Attempts to bridge it seem, at times, like throwing candy floss into the Grand Canyon.
—Humphrey Rang et al., quoted in The Joyless Economy, by Tibor Scitovsky, 1976

Vince Evans can too throw a football into the Grand Canyon while standing next to it, as previously doubted here.
—John Underwood, “USC Is Right on Pitch,” Sports Illustrated, Nov. 29 1976

“Toil” means… all the marbles that we throw into the Grand Canyon of meaninglessness in a necessary but doomed attempt to fill it up….
—Peter Kreeft, Three Philosophies of Life, 1989

Albert Fine once threw a collection of my letters into the Grand Canyon, which I thought was a marvelous Fluxist gesture.
—The Print Collector’s Newsletter, 1992(?)

[Artist Ross] Birrell’s ongoing “Envoy” series features books thrown into the sea or void, including The Interpretation of Dreams thrown into the Gulf of Finland (2001); Brave New World thrown into the River Vurjan on the Norwegian-Russian border (2001); and Heidegger’s Being and Time thrown into the Grand Canyon (2012).
—Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary, ed. Adam Smyth and Gill Partington, 2014

“Fine,” Rosemary concedes. “We can throw out the itinerary for a few days….”
“Throw that thing into the Grand Canyon and let’s roll!”
Rosemary takes a deep breath and holds the binder out in front of her. She turns toward the edge of the canyon.
“Whoa there!” Logan holds up both hands. “Throwing it into the Grand Canyon is a metaphor.”
—Alison Cochrun, Here We Go Again, 2024