Navajo Sandstone
The pale, cross-bedded slickrock of the Colorado Plateau — an Early Jurassic fossil dune sea that builds Zion's big walls and Glen Canyon's bald domes.
Also known as: Navajo
Jurassic — the golden age of dinosaurs
The world back then
Early Jurassic, about 190 million years ago. You're standing in one of the largest deserts the planet has ever built — a sand sea the size of a subcontinent, dunes towering hundreds of feet, monsoon winds hauling grains for a thousand miles, a rare wet pond glinting between them. Vast, hot, and almost empty. Sand to every horizon and then some.
That endless desert is Zion's walls and the slickrock you can't stop scrambling on. The dunes ran a thousand miles for a hundred thousand years; your trip runs a week and ends at a shuttle. History's biggest sandbox, handed to its smallest, softest visitor for an afternoon.
Recognize it in the field
- Typical color
- white to pink, salmon, and red-tan — white where bleached, red where iron-stained
- Weathers as
- Massive cliff-former and rounded slickrock — domes, beehives, cuestas, and Zion's sheer walls; weathers into bald, cross-bedded rock.
- Grain
- fine to medium, well-sorted, well-rounded frosted quartz
Look for
- huge sweeping eolian cross-bedding, meters to tens of meters tall
- bald, rounded slickrock domes and cliffs
- white-to-red color banding
- frosted, well-rounded, well-sorted wind-worked sand
How this rock was made
One of the largest sand seas in the geologic record, on the arid western margin of Pangaea in the Early Jurassic, with seasonal/monsoonal winds and interdune ponds.
The setting: wind-blown dune sea (eolian erg) (wind-blown dune sea)
Thickens to the northwest; over 2,000 ft in Zion (NPS) and up to ~2,300 ft (700 m) at its maximum (Wikipedia).
In the rock record
Part of the Glen Canyon Group.
↑ Younger — rests above
↓ Older — sits beneath
Where to see it
Regions: Colorado Plateau
- Zion National Park (the big walls)
- Capitol Reef (Waterpocket Fold slickrock)
- Glen Canyon / Lake Powell (domes)
- Arches National Park
- Coyote Buttes / 'The Wave'
- San Rafael Reef
Float past it: Meander Canyon · Stillwater Canyon · Labyrinth Canyon