Dox Castle is a summit located in the

Grand Canyon The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is long, up to wide and attains a depth of over a mile (). The canyon and adjacent rim are contained within Grand Canyon Nati ...

, in

Coconino County Coconino County is a County (United States), county in the North Central Arizona, North-Central part of the U.S. state of Arizona. Its population was 145,101 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The county seat is Flagstaff, Arizon ...

of northern

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 ...

, US. It is situated four miles north-northeast of Havasupai Point, two miles northwest of Evans Butte, and 2.5 miles southwest of

Holy Grail Temple Holy Grail Temple is a summit located in the Grand Canyon, in Coconino County, Arizona, Coconino County of northern Arizona, Southwestern United States, US. It is situated seven miles north-northeast of Havasupai Point, and two miles west-north ...

, where it towers above 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 ...

. Dox Castle was named by William Wallace Bass and

George Wharton James George Wharton James (27 September 1858 – 8 November 1923) was an American popular lecturer, photographer, journalist and editor. Born in Lincolnshire, England, he emigrated to the United States as a young man after being ordained as a Method ...

for Virginia Dox (1851–1941), who was the first white woman to visit this part of the Grand Canyon in 1891. Holy Grail Temple was originally named ''Bass Tomb'' by Virginia Dox, for William Bass, Dox's guide into the canyon. Impressed by her, Bass named Dox Castle shortly after she left.Lauren A. Wright and Bennie W. Troxel, ''Levi Noble: Geologist'', 2002, USGS, p. 8.
/ref> This butte's name was officially adopted in 1908 by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. According to the

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

system, Dox Castle is located in a

cold semi-arid climate Cold is the presence of low temperature, especially in the atmosphere. In common usage, cold is often a subjective perception. A lower bound to temperature is absolute zero, defined as 0.00K on the Kelvin scale, an absolute thermodynamic ...

zone, with precipitation runoff draining west to the Colorado River via Shinumo Creek. Dox Castle is composed of

Cambrian The Cambrian ( ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 51.95 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran period 538.8 Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Ordov ...

rock from the

Tonto Group The Tonto Group is a name for an assemblage of related sedimentary strata, collectively known by geologists as a '' Group'', that comprises the basal sequence Paleozoic strata exposed in the sides of the Grand Canyon. As currently defined, the T ...

, overlaying the

Proterozoic The Proterozoic ( ) is the third of the four geologic eons of Earth's history, spanning the time interval from 2500 to 538.8 Mya, and is the longest eon of Earth's geologic time scale. It is preceded by the Archean and followed by the Phanerozo ...

Unkar Group The Unkar Group is a sequence of strata of Proterozoic age that are subdivided into five geologic formations and exposed within the Grand Canyon, Arizona, Southwestern United States. The Unkar Group is the basal formation of the Grand Canyon S ...

at river level. Levi F. Noble named the

Dox Formation The Dox Formation, also known as the Dox Sandstone, is a Mesoproterozoic rock formation that outcrops in the eastern Grand Canyon, Coconino County, Arizona. The Dox Formation comprises the bulk of the Unkar Group, the older subdivision of the Gr ...

because of exposures in a tributary to Shinumo Creek below Dox Castle.Noble, Levi F, ''The Shinumo Quadrangle, Grand Canyon District, Arizona.'' (1914), Bulletin no. 549. US Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia. p. 53.

Gallery

File:Thomas Moran - The Chasm of the Colorado - L.1968.84.2 - Smithsonian American Art Museum.jpg, Dox Castle is centered in bullseye of this famous painting by

Thomas Moran Thomas Moran (February 12, 1837 – August 25, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family, wife Mary Nimmo Moran and daughter Ruth, took ...

.
"Chasm of the Colorado" (1873–74), a large canvas measuring 7 feet high by 12 feet wide, hung prominently in the US Capitol for over a half-century. File:Holy Grail Temple, Grand Canyon 2010.jpg, Holy Grail Temple centered with Dox Castle below to right, from southwest File:King Arthur, Guinevere, and Dox Castles.jpg, Dox Castle centered,

King Arthur Castle King Arthur Castle is a summit located in the Grand Canyon, in Coconino County of northern Arizona, US. It is situated one-half mile northwest of Guinevere Castle, one mile west of Excalibur, and two miles east-southeast of Holy Grail Temple, ...

upper left. From the west. File:Dox Castle, 1901.jpg, North aspect, 1901 File:Dox Castle 1901.jpg, Dox Castle circa 1901 File:Dox castle.jpg

References

External links

* Weather forecast
National Weather Service
* William Wallace Bass

{{Geology of the Grand Canyon area, , state=collapsed Grand Canyon Landforms of Coconino County, Arizona Colorado Plateau Grand Canyon National Park One-thousanders of the United States Sandstone formations of the United States Grand Canyon, North Rim Grand Canyon, North Rim (west)

Gallery

See also

References

External links