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Geology

Geologic Features

The landforms and structures the rock makes — buttes, towers, faults, monoclines and the unconformities where time goes missing.

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By Feature Type

11 named features.

Butte

  • Cathedral ValleyCapitol Reef National Park
    Capitol Reef's remote northern basin of monolithic Entrada Sandstone 'temples' — including the ~400-foot Temple of the Sun — capped by the green Curtis Formation.
  • Monument ValleyMonument Valley
    The Navajo Nation's iconic red buttes and mesas on the Arizona–Utah line — De Chelly Sandstone cliffs on Organ Rock, capped by resistant Moenkopi and Shinarump.

Tower

  • Fisher TowersProfessor Valley
    Dark-red Cutler sandstone spires up to 900 feet tall near Moab — including the Titan — carved into fluted towers beneath a resistant Moenkopi cap.

Fault

  • Mitten Park FaultDinosaur National Monument
    The fault that ends Echo Park and starts Whirlpool Canyon — where the Green River cuts perpendicular across a Laramide-age structural break in the southern Uinta Mountains.

Monocline

  • San Rafael ReefSan Rafael Swell
    The tilted-on-end eastern rampart of the San Rafael Swell — a 75-mile monocline of Navajo and Wingate Sandstone cut into fins and slot canyons.

Anticline

  • San Rafael SwellSan Rafael Swell
    A 75-by-40-mile Laramide dome, breached and eroded into canyons and badlands — a whole stack of Colorado Plateau formations exposed in concentric rings.

Unconformity

  • Westwater Canyon Great UnconformityColorado Plateau
    The black inner gorge of Westwater — ~1.7-billion-year-old Vishnu Schist and Zoroaster Granite beneath a Great Unconformity that erases ~1.5 billion years, the only river-level Precambrian on the Colorado outside the Grand Canyon.

Other

  • Book CliffsBook Cliffs
    A 250-mile Cretaceous escarpment — Mesaverde shoreline sandstone and coal over Mancos badlands — and the world's textbook exposure of an ancient retreating seaway.
  • Colorado National MonumentUncompahgre Plateau
    Red Wingate canyons and monoliths — Independence Monument, the Coke Ovens — cut into the Uncompahgre Plateau above Grand Junction, floored by 1.7-billion-year-old basement.
  • Coyote ButtesVermilion Cliffs National Monument
    The Arizona–Utah border's fluted Navajo Sandstone slickrock — home of The Wave — where fossilized Jurassic dunes erode into curling, rhythmic troughs and fins.
  • Vermilion CliffsGrand Staircase
    The blazing red Jurassic escarpment forming the second step of the Grand Staircase — Moenave and Kayenta sandstone above House Rock Valley and the Paria.