Great Divide on AllMovie

Stephen Ghent, a rough miner (House Peters) promises to marry Ruth Jordan (Ethel Clayton) in name only. However, he breaks his vow and she resentfully turns her back on him. Then she gets caught in a landslide and he saves her, but she still isn't completely won over to him until she discovers he has been sending money to her mother in the East. This picture, based on the play by William Vaughn Moody, was either shot in the Grand Canyon, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, and director Edgar Lewis used the scenery to emphasize the dramatic mood. In the mid-1910s, when filmmaking was still in it early development stage, this was a big deal. It was also still novel for people to see faraway places on film, especially used within a fictional context.