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The Geology Of Canyonlands National Park

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Canyonlands National Park, Chesler Park, copyright Kurt Repanshek

The colorful geology of Canyonlands National Park offers a mesmerizing landscape to explore/Kurt Repanshek

Baked by time like some multi-layer geologic tort, Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah features a landscape cut by canyons, rumpled by upthrusts, dimpled by grabens, and even pockmarked, some believe, by ancient asteroids.

Just outside of Moab rises a kaleidoscope of tilted and carved geology laid down over the eons. There’s the red and white Cedar Mesa sandstone, the grayish-green Morrison Formation, pinkish Entrada sandstone, and tawny Navajo sandstone, just to name some of the geologic layers. Stacked like pancakes, they help make Canyonlands the most rugged national park in the Southwest and, quite possibly, if you find yourself deep in the park’s Maze District, in the entire Lower 48 states.

In each of the park’s districts — Island in the Sky, Needles, Maze and Horseshoe Canyon — the remarkable effects of geologic time and its endless erosion on this sedimentary landscape rise about you.

If you could turn back the geologic clock, you would see the landscape flooded by oceans, crisscrossed by rivers, covered by mudflats and buried by sand. At various times through the millennia, the climate has resembled a tropical coast, an interior desert, and everything in between.

For hundreds of millions of years, material was deposited. Layer upon layer of sedimentary rock formed as buried materials were cemented by precipitates in the ground water. Each layer contains clues to its origin, such as patterns or fossils, which reveals the environment when it was deposited. For example, the colorful Cedar Mesa Sandstone occurred when periodic floods of iron-rich debris from nearby mountains inundated coastal dunes of white sand.

Along with sedimentation, movements in the earth’s crust altered surface features. The North American continent migrated north from the equator and the local climate and environment here changed dramatically.

Peer into the ragged maw of Canyonlands from the Island in the Sky District on the northern end of the park, and it’s no mystery how the park came by its name.

Spend the night at the Squaw Flat Campground in the Needles District and a morning hike into Chesler Park surrounds you with Creamsicle-hued minarets towering high above, like a king’s crown.

Though Canyonlands covers less than 350,000 acres, which is less than one-seventh the size of Yellowstone National Park, it feels much larger. No doubt it’s the park’s vastness and openness — you won’t find any forests here. Indeed, one old timer said that, “On a clear day, you can see the back of your own head.”

Spend a few minutes contemplating the natural forces, and the hundreds of millions of years that laid down these sediments and compressed these layers of rock. It’s really only recently that these layers have eroded to form the remarkable landscape seen today in Canyonlands National Park.

For Wild About Utah and National Parks Traveler, I’m Kurt Repanshek.

Comments

OUTSTANDING!  Great work, Kurt.  So far, I haven't heard any of these spots on the radio, but I'll be listening.


Thank you Traveler, Canyonlands a great place. Kurt I was interested in your post on the Galapagos Islands, I could not respond  as I was denied access, no big deal. In any case, at several Yosemite Park planing meetings the issue of just raising the fees during peak visitation periods was brought up. One hundred dollars seemed to be the starting point. It gave me pause as I thought about one gentleman on the listserve, in discussing fees and taxation in general, mentioned that they had not heard the term neoliberalism before in the context of economic policy.  

The term, and I am certainly not an expert, is derived from a meeting in Switzerland in 1947 called by the economist Frederick Hayek to develop "a market free from any intervention which would result in making everyone richer and create an economic utopia". One person in attendance, Mr. Milton Friedman, agreed, returned to the University of Chicago and began the neo-liberal school of economics, hence the term "the Chicago boys". The basic concepts included cut all government spending (austerity), eliminate governmental regulatory oversight, privatize all governmental assets and open free trade without interference. Both Mr. Hayek and Mr. Friedman received nobel prizes in economics. The Hayek (others), economic philosophy reverts back to the Harding/Coolidge years of the 1920s. 

 In any case, off the tread of the topic, please excuse, but the mania on raising fees on everything from parks to fire protection comes in part from neo-liberal economic policies of the last 40 years starting with President Reagan and continuing to this day. at least in the opinion of many citizens.  


Canyonlands is fascinating. Anyone looking out from Island in the Sky and comparing the landscape with a map sees that the Park covers only a fraction of the area and that the Park's boundaries are arbitrary. For the last few years a coalition of organizations has been advocating for a national monument to protect the remainder of the landscape. More information and details are at:  http://www.greatercanyonlands.org/


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