A walkway of glass and steel that will jut 70 feet over the edge of the Grand Canyon, allowing tourists to “float” above the rocky floor at almost five times the height of the tallest building in Britain, was slowly pushed into place yesterday.

The U-shaped Skywalk, which will give tourists a breath-taking view at 4,000ft above the floor of the canyon, is in the Hualapai Indian Reservation, Arizona, about 120 miles east of Las Vegas. Tickets are expected to cost $25 (£13) and tourists will have to wear special slippers to protect the glass floor.

The Skywalk is the brain-child of David Jin, a local investor who has spent ten years bringing his plan to fruition. Mr Jin, originally from Shanghai, offered to pay for the $30 million project with his own money. Under the resulting contract, the Hualapai will own the Skywalk but Mr Jin will collect up to half the revenue from ticket sales for the next 25 years. Before the deal was struck, more than a third of the tribe’s 2,200 members lived in poverty and struggled to persuade tourists to travel 21 miles over an unpaved road to their reservation, which offers Old West-themed villages and rides around the canyon rim.

Weighing 500 tonnes, with a four-inch glass floor and massive steel anchors that will be driven nearly 46 feet into the Grand Canyon’s bedrock, the Skywalk is yet another example of the lengths to which Las Vegas entrepreneurs will go to compete with global pleasure centres such as Dubai. It also demonstrates the changing fortunes of Native American tribes, many of which have turned themselves into hugely lucrative tourist operators.

Mark Johnson, the architect of the project, says that the Skywalk is built to withstand winds of 100mph and to hold several hundred people simultaneously without bending, although no more than 120 people will be allowed on at one time. Oversized shock absorbers will stop it from wobbling.

Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, the Apollo astronaut who was the second man to walk on the Moon, is to attend an opening ceremony on March 20, when he will lead a “first walk”.

Not all tribe members are pleased with the development, however. “We have disturbed the ground,” said Dolores Honga, a 70-year-old tribal elder who regularly performs traditional dances along the canyon rim. “Our people died right along the land there,” she said. “It’s spiritual ground.”

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