The Red Cliffs National Conservation Area is a National Conservation Area located in southwest

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 ...

, north of

St. George Saint George (;Geʽez: ጊዮርጊስ, , ka, გიორგი, , , died 23 April 303), also George of Lydda, was an early Christian martyr who is venerated as a saint in Christianity. According to holy tradition, he was a soldier in the ...

at the northeasternmost edge of the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...

. It is managed by the

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands, U.S. federal lands. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the BLM oversees more than of land, or one ...

as part of the National Landscape Conservation System, and was created as part of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009. The Red Cliffs National Conservation Area (NCA) is part of the larger multi-jurisdictional Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, which was created in 1996 to protect the habitat and populations of the

desert tortoise The desert tortoise (''Gopherus agassizii'') is a species of tortoise in the Family (biology), family Testudinidae. The species is native to the Mojave Desert, Mojave and Sonoran Deserts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico ...

and other species. Part of the NCA was designated in 2009 as the Cottonwood Canyon and Red Mountain wilderness areas, which are part of the

National Wilderness Preservation System The National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) of the United States protects federal government of the United States, federally managed Wilderness, wilderness areas designated for preservation in their natural condition. Activity on formally ...

. The Pine Valley Mountains and

Dixie National Forest Dixie National Forest is a United States National Forest in Utah with headquarters in Cedar City. It occupies almost two million acres (8,000 km2) and stretches for about across southern Utah. The largest national forest in Utah, it ...

are north of the NCA. The NCA is located within the watershed of the

Virgin River The Virgin River is a tributary of the Colorado River in the U.S. states of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. The river is about long.Calculated with Google Maps and Google Earth It was designated Utah's first wild and scenic river in 2009, during the ...

, a tributary of 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 ...

. There are over of non-motorized trails in the NCA.

Gallery

File:Red Cliffs Desert Reserve.JPG, alt=A photo of Cottonwood Canyon, Cottonwood Canyon File:Dtn st george.jpg, alt=St. George with the Red Cliffs and Pine Valley Mountains in the background, St. George and the Red Cliffs File:Yant Flat Top (49128303261).jpg, Top of Yant Flat trail: spectacular

cross-bedding In geology, cross-bedding, also known as cross-stratification, is layering within a stratum and at an angle to the main bedding plane. The sedimentary structures which result are roughly horizontal units composed of inclined layers. The origina ...

in fossil sand dunes in the Navajo sandstone File:Day 2 Yant Flat (40897323043).jpg, More geology & scenery along the Yant Flat trail, Red Cliffs NCA

References

External links

Red Cliffs National Conservation Area
- BLM page National Conservation Areas of the United States Bureau of Land Management areas in Utah Protected areas of Washington County, Utah Protected areas established in 2009 Units of the National Landscape Conservation System {{Utah-geo-stub