The Red Rock Country of Southern Utah

Long ago, good fortune introduced me to Red Rock Country, those hauntly beautiful Canyonlands of Southern Utah. Following college graduation in 1959, I traveled from Ohio to Seattle to start my first engineering job. Other than reaching Seattle to start work, sightseeing was my primary agenda for the next few weeks. Almost by accident I passed through the Colorado Plateau region, although I didn't know what it was called at the time. From that week on, the Colorado Plateau has acted like a big magnet, drawing me back more than thirty-eight times during the past forty-one years, from such diverse home sites as Seattle, Denver, Cincinnati and Austin. This magnet is not unique to me; I've met many folks in Moab Utah that first visited there on vacation, and were then drawn back time after time by the grandeur of the scenery and the dry moderate weather, until it became their permanent home. Finally, in 2001, it will become my home for seven months of the year.

It's no longer the Colorado Plateau to me, but rather Red Rock Country. The very heart of RRC (Red Rock Country) is Southern Utah. You can encompass the majority, and certainly the most beautiful portion of RRC by drawing a line from Moab in East Central Utah, to Canyon De Chelly in Northeastern Arizona, to the Grand Canyon, to Zion NP in Southwestern Utah, and back to Moab. In that modest "triangle", allowing for a bulge here and there, you will encompass six national parks (Canyonlands, Arches, Capital Reef, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Zion) and numerous national and state monuments (Grand Staircase, Cedar Breaks, Lake Powell, Natural Bridges, Antelope Slot Canyon, Coral Pink Sand Dunes, Kodachrome Basin, and Dead Horse Point); nowhere else in the US, probably the world, will you encounter so much extreme and haunting beauty.

It seems that nearly everyone after a few visits to RRC begins to wonder about the geology that made this area so unique in all the world. There are hundreds of books on the geology of RRC, but most of us do not have the time, nor maybe even the interest, to read even one of them. And yet, to enjoy the beauty of RRC to the fullest, you must have some appreciation of the geology. So, to fill that need, I'm going to attempt to condense those hundreds of books into what I hope is a fairly accurate, but greatly simplified version, and do it in just a few paragraphs.

The most striking features of RRC are the sheer red walls of sandstone, some over two thousand feet high. At one time those red walls were great sand deserts, much like the Sahara Desert of today. Over much of the past three hundred million years the elevation of RRC was much lower, often below "sea level". Due to continental drift, RRC moved slowly from south of the equator to its current location. During periods when the area was covered with a sea, a great thickness of limestone was deposited. Most of the major beds of limestone we see exposed in RRC today are in the Grand Canyon, formed about three hundred million years ago.

There are three broad categories of rock in the world today. They are sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic. For all practical purposes, the only metamorphic rocks in RRC are the basement rocks at the very bottom of the Grand Canyon. Metamorphic rock is formed when any type of rock has been under great pressure and temperature, and for such immense periods of time, that it has completely changed state into a new type of rock; i.e. limestone metamorphoses to marble. Igneous rocks always come from volcanic action. However, in many cases these rocks do not reach the surface and are exposed only by erosion. We now come to sedimentary rocks, and RRC is mostly composed of numerous types of sedimentary rocks. The grains that compose these rocks were carried to and deposited in their current location by rivers, streams, flood planes, and just as important, the wind. Pressure from layers above and water seeping down from above and carrying dilute acids, cemented these grains into the various rock formations we see exposed today. Before continuing, it is important to point out that the Grand Canyon is part of RRC, but because it was pushed up so much higher than the rest of RRC, the upper most layer of the Grand Canyon would be exposed only in the lower reaches in most other great canyons of RRC. Therefore, for the most part, the remainder of this short discussion of geology will be limited to the other great and beautiful canyons of Southern Utah and Northeastern Arizona.

Between what is left today and what has eroded away, there was once seven to fifteen thousand feet of sedimentary rock deposited in Southern Utah. That's a lot of grains of sand. Where did it all come from? Of course it came from all directions, but the vast majority is believed to have come from the east. Over the past 450 million years, there have been three sets of Rocky mountains. Two earlier sets, called the Ancestral Rockies, while eroding to "nubs" before being pushed up again, supplied much of the sediment for the rock formations we see in RRC today. The current Rockies are also eroding, and some of that sediment is filling Lake Powell behind Glen Canyon Dam today.

After hundreds of millions of years of collecting sediments, RRC was elevated. We're not talking nickel and dime stuff here, this whole huge area was raised nearly flat, but raised it was, around ten thousand feet. Please understand that flat does mean there were not faults and buckles, there were, and they contribute so much to RRC's great eye appeal today. No one understands the process which caused this elevation. It's not like the sub-ducting ocean plates which push up great mountain ranges. And of course, like most major geologic events, the process was very slow in terms of human time. Probably no more that a few millimeters a year. While this elevation was going on, the rivers and streams of the area were cutting down by a similar amount so they could still find their way to the ocean.

It is this erosion that gives RRC it's great appeal to tourist. We now see these massive red beds that were laid down between 130 and 270 million years ago. Why red? Because the sediments of that period carried a lot of iron which give them their color today. When you see thin layers of dark gray or black, the odds are that you are seeing a period when volcanic activity was high and these dark layers are volcanic ash. Other factors of interest: hard layers make sheer walls, soft layers make the slopes. Along with many other valuable chemicals, it is in these sloping layers that dinosaur bones and petrified wood have been found, also yellow cake, the basic source of uranium ore.

We all hate to learn a bunch of technical terms, especially outside of our field of endeavor. But here come a couple anyway because you'll see these two terms, anticline and syncline, used a great deal in RRC. In the simplest of definitions, anticlines are bumps and synclines are dips, varying greatly in size. These anticlines and synclines add much to the beauty of RRC.

If you find yourself in Moab some day, you can really appreciate the geology by driving fifteen miles down river from Moab on Route 279 and twenty-five miles up river on Route 128. At the end of the twenty-five mile drive be sure and stop to see the historic Dewey Bridge across the Colorado River. To enter Moab on my first visit in 1959, I had to drive across this bridge, and let me assure you my fingernails still haven't grown out. As you travel these roads be sure and watch for the anticlines and synclines. Some "-clines" can be measured in yards while others in many, many miles. Notice that a rock formation that may be fifteen hundred feet above you at one point along route 128, may soon be dipping beneath the river, sometime within a mile or so.

The "-clines" and the faults add so much to the beauty of RRC. While you are in Moab, be sure to observe the Moab fault. Drive north four miles from Moab and stop near the entrance to Arches NP. You are now parked on the center of the Moab fault. The rock at road level on the right side of your car really belongs on top of the fourteen hundred foot cliff on the left side of you car. Can you imagine what it was like when this enormous fault was formed. But of course it wasn't like that at all. It was formed by hundreds of earthquakes, probably hundreds or even thousands of years apart, with each quake resulting in a few more inches, or maybe even feet, of offset. Changes which took place in the earth hundreds of millions of years ago were much like the earthquakes and erosion taking place today. Today, RRC erosion is forming a new paradise in the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Western Mexico, probably to be viewed hundreds of millions of years in the future.

Red Rock Country does have it's "recent" addition of mountains; they are major mountains and all are laccoliths. That is, they were all formed by magma pushing up to form the mountain from underground "volcanos", but the magma rarely broke through the surface. Near Moab are the La Sals which exceed 12,000 feet, the Abajos near Monticello Utah exceed 11,000 feet as do the Henry's south of Hanksville Utah. Then there is poor lonely Navajo Mountain on the shores of Southern Lake Powell which exceeds 10,000 feet. These mountains add to the beauty of RRC and provide excellent opportunities for skiing in the winter.

This has been a quick and simple lesson on the geology of RRC. And I'm probably not the one to be explaining geology, as I must confess, I've never had a geology course in my life. Another geological factor that many are curious about are the names of the formations and the names and periods of time associated with the various layers of sedimentary rock found in RRC. To the left are three charts, a chart of the geological periods and their times before the present, one showing the names and stacking of the rock formations in the Grand Canyon, another for the formations in Moab Utah area of RRC. Rock formations are normally named for the location (area, town, creek, etc.) where they are first studied.

Before closing the discussion on geology, a brief explanation of "my" Moab "Rock Stack" is in order. There is nowhere in RRC where you can see the total "rock stack" as I have shown it on the left, in its entirety from one viewpoint. Within four miles of Moab you can see the stack from the Organ Rock Shale up through the Entrada Sandstone. To see the even younger formations you must drive twenty miles north of Moab watching the right side of the road.However, you will not see the Curtis Sandstone because it does not exist east of the Green River. There are some up-thrusts of the older formations very near Moab, but to see these older formations in their natural state, you must view them in Cataract Canyon, from either a white water raft on the Colorado, or a Jeep in the Needles or Maze sections of Canyonlands NP. In the Needles you will see the white Cedar Mesa Sandstone where it interfingers with red Cutler Arkose, caused by a waxing and waining sea. In the Island region you only see the Cutler Arkose; Cutler to the northeast, Cedar Mesa to the southwest where it forms the Natural Bridges.

NOTE: This site is here totally for your enjoyment. Most of the photographs used herein were taken by the author. No copyright is claimed so that you may copy the photos and use them for your non-commercial personal use.

NOW VISIT THESE RED ROCK AREAS

(Also By The J&S Fun Company)

Endless Beauty: The Sights Surrounding Moab

Arches & Canyonlands National Parks

Capitol Reef National Park & Escalante Country

Valley Of The Gods, Monument Valley & Antelope Canyon

Canyon De Chelly & The Grand Staircase

Lake Powell, Cottonwood Canyon, Paria River Wilderness

Supreme Beauty: Zion National Park

Not Truly RRC, But Children's Fairyland: Bryce Canyon N.P.

Red Rock Country Photo Album

Great Web Pages & RRC Travel Planning - Dirt Cheap