Wingate Sandstone
The vertical red cliff-former of canyon country — latest Triassic–Early Jurassic dune sandstone that defines the architecture of the Colorado Plateau.
Also known as: Wingate
Mesozoic — the age of dinosaurs
The world back then
Late Triassic, roughly 200 million years ago. You're standing in a sand sea larger than today's Sahara — a low-latitude desert buried deep inside the supercontinent Pangaea, wind screaming over dune crests hundreds of feet tall, the sand rusted orange with iron. Blast-furnace heat, no shade, next to no water. Just dunes to every horizon, marching a grain at a time.
Now look at the seat you drew instead. You're flat on your back on a boat, watching that same red wall drift past, and the second the heat finds you, you roll off into the river. No dune to outrun, no sun handing down a sentence — the current does the work while you do nothing at all. Life still has teeth, sure. But cooling off in moving water while 200 million years of somebody else's very bad day slides by might be the best deal a human's ever been handed.
Recognize it in the field
- Typical color
- red-orange to brick red, with desert-varnish blackening on long-exposed faces
- Weathers as
- Massive sheer vertical cliffs — the defining cliff-former of the Colorado Plateau. Joints control vertical breakage; differential erosion of softer underlying Chinle creates the characteristic 'undercut cliff' profile.
- Grain
- fine to medium
Look for
- sheer vertical cliffs
- smooth, massive weathering
- well-cemented hard sandstone
- vertical jointing controls cliff geometry
- well-developed desert varnish on long-exposed faces
How this rock was made
An immense sand sea covered what is now the Colorado Plateau during the latest Triassic — a vast desert at low latitude, similar in scale to the modern Sahara. Cross-bedding preserved in the Wingate records dune migration directions and wind regimes from over 200 million years ago.
The setting: wind-blown desert dunes (eolian erg)
Massive cross-bedded sandstone with bedding sets up to 30 feet thick. Cross-bed orientations are used to reconstruct paleowind directions, which were dominantly from the north and northwest during deposition.
In the rock record
Part of the Glen Canyon Group.
↑ Younger — rests above
↓ Older — sits beneath
Where to see it
Regions: Colorado Plateau
- Capitol Reef National Park (Cathedral Valley, Waterpocket Fold)
- Canyonlands National Park (Island in the Sky, Needles)
- Colorado National Monument
- San Rafael Swell
- Indian Creek climbing area
- Arches National Park (lower walls)
- Glen Canyon / Lake Powell shorelines
Float past it: Cataract Canyon · Meander Canyon · Labyrinth Canyon · Stillwater Canyon · Westwater Canyon