The Canyon Lands Section of the

Colorado Plateau The Colorado Plateau is a physiographic and desert region of the Intermontane Plateaus, roughly centered on the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States. This plateau covers an area of 336,700 km2 (130,000 mi2) within w ...

is a physiographic section of the larger Colorado Plateaus province, which in turn is part of the larger

Intermontane Plateaus In the context of physical geography, the Intermontane Plateaus is one of eight physiographic regions of the contiguous United States. The region consists mostly of plateaus and mountain ranges lying between the Rocky Mountains on the east and ...

physiographic division in the

Western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, the Western territories, and the West) is List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau. As American settlement i ...

Description

The Canyon Lands are a desolate, but spectacularly scenic sandstone area of southeastern

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

and northeastern

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

. Dominated by canyons (as the name implies) this section has four large upwarps between which are structural basins. Very little faulting is associated with the upwarps or basins. Other distinctive features of the Canyon Lands Section are the

laccolith A laccolith is a body of intrusive rock with a dome-shaped upper surface and a level base, fed by a conduit from below. A laccolith forms when magma (molten rock) rising through the Earth's crust begins to spread out horizontally, prying apart ...

ic mountains, like the

Henry Mountains The Henry Mountains is a mountain range located in the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of Utah that runs in a generally north-south direction, extending over a distance of about . They were named by Almon Thompson in honor of Joseph Henr ...

and the

La Sal Mountains The La Sal Mountains or La Sal Range is a mountain range located in Grand and San Juan counties in the U.S. state of Utah, along the border with Colorado. The range rises above and southeast of Moab and north of the town of La Sal. This range i ...

. These are structural

domes A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a m ...

. The turbid San Juan River flows into the region from the east, through a deep meandering gorge, which, with its tributaries, drains a far-reaching area, including the

La Plata Mountains The La Plata Mountains are a small subrange of the San Juan Mountains in the southwestern part of Colorado, United States. They are located on the border between Montezuma and La Plata counties, about northwest of Durango. Their name is Spanish ...

, the

San Juan Mountains The San Juan Mountains is a high and rugged mountain range in the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico. The area is highly mineralized (the Colorado Mineral Belt) and figured in the gold and silver mining industry ...

and other lesser ranges on the

Continental Divide A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not ...

, the

Chuska Mountains '' The Chuska Mountains () are an elongate range on the southwest Colorado Plateau and within the Navajo Nation whose highest elevations approach 10,000 feet. The range is about 80 by 15 km (50 by 10 miles). It trends north-northwest and is c ...

, and enormous areas of mesa land in the interior of the basin. From the

Wasatch Range The Wasatch Range ( ) or Wasatch Mountains is a mountain range in the western United States that runs about from the Utah-Idaho border south to central Utah. It is the western edge of the greater Rocky Mountains, and the eastern edge of the Gr ...

and

Aquarius Mountains The Aquarius Mountains are a 45-mi (72 km) long mountain range in southeast Mohave County, Arizona. The range lies in the northwest of the Arizona transition zone, and at the southwest of the Coconino Plateau, a subsection of the Colorado Pla ...

on the west come other, but lesser, silt-laden streams, all carving the deep, winding canyons which have given this country its name and developed a weirdly dissected landscape. The

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

is the largest such stream. In northeastern Arizona is

Monument Valley Monument Valley (, , meaning "valley of the rocks") is a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by a cluster of sandstone buttes, with the largest reaching above the valley floor. The most famous butte formations are located in northeas ...

, where sharp spires, obelisks, and tower-like masses of rock rise hundreds of feet above their surroundings. At the eastern margin of the Canyon Lands is the

Mesa Verde Mesa Verde National Park is a national park of the United States and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado, and the only World Heritage Site in Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Pueblo ...

, a huge

cuesta A cuesta () is a hill or ridge with a gentle slope on one side, and a steep slope on the other. In geology, the term is more specifically applied to a ridge where a harder sedimentary rock overlies a softer layer, the whole being tilted somew ...

that has been deeply dissected by streams. Here in great recesses in the canyon walls are found the ruins of ancient cliff dwellings. East of the

Little Colorado River The Little Colorado River () is a tributary of the Colorado River in the U.S. state of Arizona, providing the principal drainage from the Painted Desert region. Together with its major tributary, the Puerco River, it drains an area of about in ...

are the brilliantly colored areas known as the Painted Desert. Here the rocks show gorgeous colors in strata that are gently inclined and present a series of cliffs that are slowly migrating as weathering and erosion proceed. The area north of the canyon of the San Juan River has several surfaces varying from above sea level. There are bold escarpments bordering some of these plateaus, canyons with steep walls, and a group of mesas called the Tables of the Sun, and several national monuments containing natural bridges. The Canyon Lands terminate, approximately, at a third, intermittent barrier formed by the Paria Plateau, Black Mesa, and the

mass.

Geology

Perhaps the dominant physical feature within the area is the

San Rafael Swell The San Rafael Swell is a large geologic feature located in south-central Utah, United States about west of Green River. Measuring approximately , the swell consists of a giant dome-shaped anticline of sandstone, shale, and limestone that wa ...

occupying the majority of

Emery County, Utah Emery County is a County (United States), county in east-central Utah, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 9,825. Its county seat is Castle Dale, Utah, Castle Dale, and the largest city is Huntington, Utah, Hu ...

. This feature is a large northeast trending upwarp approximately long and wide that is part of a much larger, double-plunging anticline (e.g., dome) structure. This large, regional fold exposes rocks of Pennsylvanian through

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...

age. Resistant beds of sandstone are exposed as hogbacks on the steeply upturned east and west flanks of the anticline and are referred to locally as "reefs." Three perennial rivers (the Muddy, San Rafael, and

Price A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation expected, required, or given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, especially when the product is a service rather than a ph ...

) flow eastward across the

into the

Green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a com ...

and Colorado River systems.

References

{{coord, 37.07, -110.39, display=title,source:googlemaps, region:US-AZ_type:adm1st Colorado Plateau Physiographic sections Regions of Utah Regions of Arizona

Description

Geology

See also

References