Time Beyond Imagining: A "Brief" History of the Colorado Plateau

Please forgive me for filling the feeds with such a long post, but I wanted to pull together an annotated list of the blog posts of my just completed journey through the geological history of the Colorado Plateau. It turned into a massive project that lasted more than a year, and included seventy different postings and more than a hundred photos. Don't feel compelled to try reading it, but I hope you enjoy it if you do. If it lacks precise continuity and style, remember that I had no idea how it would end when I started it and I had no editor! I've been taking students on the plateau for twenty years, and it has proven to be one of the best places on the planet to learn earth history.

Time Beyond Imagining, the first post back in June of 2008 introducing the concept that would guide the entire series. I had no idea what I was getting into!

Time Beyond Imagining - An Intro to the Colorado Plateau, a first introduction to the sweep of the landscape that I would be covering through the series.

Time Beyond Imagining - The Oldest Rocks on the Colorado Plateau: The oldest rocks are exposed at only a few places, including deep in the Grand Canyon

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 2: A discussion of the 12,000 feet of sediments hidden deep in the depth of the Grand Canyon dated at around 1 billion years

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 3: LIFE!: The first appearance of complex life during the Cambrian Period

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 4: Something is Missing! Journeying up the walls of Grand Canyon through the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 5: Seeing Red Looking at the Mississippian Redwall Limestone in Grand Canyon

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 6: Seeing Red (Really!) We rise up through the walls of the Grand Canyon to the Permian rocks of the Supai Group and Hermit Shale

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 7: Mountains Rise: Permian rocks are exposed throughout the plateau country. We leave the Grand Canyon and explore some of these other places

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Old Salt I was beginning to realize that the project would be longer than I thought. We explore the formation and effects of salt precipitation in Late Paleozoic time

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Sand! A return to the Grand Canyon and the prominent Coconino Sandstone near the rim

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: A Final Transgression Looking at the top two layers in the Grand Canyon and related rocks on other parts of the plateau.

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: On to the Grand Staircase An introduction to the Mesozoic history of the plateau country, which lies outside the Grand Canyon. We start exploring the other wonderful parks out there

The Grand Staircase and the Geologic Time Scale A diagram of the Grand Staircase, the younger rocks of the Colorado Plateau

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Into the Triassic An introduction to the widespread Triassic rocks of the Plateau. It would prove to take a number of posts!

Mid-week Mystery Sample: What is it? A short departure to discuss the identity of a Triassic fossil from the plateau. A fairly long discussion followed!

Mid-week Mystery Sample: What is it? Heck if I actually know! I admit to my ignorance...

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Ash and Wood A study of the paleontology of one of our unusual parks: Petrified Forest in Arizona

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: This Yellow is NOT Mellow The Chinle also contains mineable uranium deposits; I wade into the controversy

Leetso, the Yellow Monster A continuation of the heritage of uranium on the plateau

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: The Real Jurassic Parks The Jurassic rocks of the plateau are responsible for much of the spectacular scenery in the region. This was the introduction

The Colorado Plateau Story: the real Jurassic Parks Follows the story of the Kayenta and Wingate formations, and three unique and little known parks: Capitol Reef National Park, and Colorado and Vermillion Cliffs National Monuments.

The Real Jurassic Parks: Navajo! The Navajo Sandstone forms some of the best photography opportunities: this was a discussion of Antelope Canyon, a beautiful slot canyon

Antelope Canyon, A Real Jurassic Park An excuse to show more pictures of Antelope Canyon!

Zion: A Real Jurassic Park First part of look at one of our "crown jewel" national parks

Zion: A Real Jurassic Park, Part 2 A hike to Angels Landing in Zion National Park

The Real Jurassic Parks: Capitol Reef (Oh, and Sheep Blogging) A return to Capitol Reef and an excuse to show off one of my favorite bighorn sheep pictures

The Real Jurassic Parks: The San Rafael Group An introduction to another group of Jurassic formations, including the all-important Entrada Sandstone. A busy semester had begun and posts were becoming sparser at times. I was realizing the project was going to take some time, and I stopped using the word "brief"!

The Real Jurassic Parks: Goblin Valley and the Entrada Sandstone One of Utah's unique and isolated state parks

The Real Jurassic Parks: Kodachrome Basin (and a great resource!) Another fantastic Utah State Park and a link to an e-book on the geology of Utah's parks and monuments

The Real Jurassic Parks: Arches National Park An intro to Arches National Park, one of my personal favorites

The Real Jurassic Parks: Arches National Park, continued. And an Eminent Threat. After several weeks I got back to work with a continued exploration of Arches, and discussed new threats to parks in the region

The Real Jurassic Parks: Where are the Dinosaurs? A look at wonderful Dinosaur National Monument and a rotten political situation there

The REAL Jurassic Parks were really Cretaceous I thought the Jurassic would provide the most posts in the series, and therefore had no idea how long I would spend in the Cretaceous. This was the introduction

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Cedar Mountain Formation The only dinosaur dig I ever took part in was in an early Cretaceous formation in Montana, but it was related to the Colorado Plateau. This post turned into seven part story on our adventure

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Story of a DinoDig Much of the story was trying to get there in the first place: what is geokarma?

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: Every Cloud has a Golden Lining We drive through Yellowstone and arrive at the dig site

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the story of a Dino-Dig What we were looking for and why it was important. What is a deinonychus?

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Dino-Digging Begins This is what grunt work is all about

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the story of a Dino-Dig wraps up We started finding bones!

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Final Discovery We found a dinosaur that invariably is the last entry in a dinosaur dictionary...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The View is Nice but Access is a Problem... Back on the plateau, we are introduced to the remaining Cretaceous rocks and two archaeological parks, Hovenweep and Canyons of the Ancients National Monuments

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: Walled Cities and Tragedy More on the Canyons of the Ancients and a walled medieval-aged city...in southern Colorado!

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Tragedy at Castle Rock Pueblo A haunted place...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Mancos Sea An interesting formation that some geologists curse at...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Green Table An exploration of the famous cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Black Mesa story I wade into the coal mining controversy and get more comments than any other entry in the series

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: A City in the Wilderness Life had become busy and it was a month before I returned to the plateau with a discussion of Chaco Culture National Historical Park

And The Old World Passed Away... The Geologic History of the Colorado Plateau And another month passed! I tried to find the words to describe the profound events at the end of the Cretaceous Period

Time Beyond Imagining - A not-so-brief History of the Colorado Plateau Another long gap, but I was finally talking about the last 65 million years of Colorado Plateau history with an intro to the crustal deformation that was beginning to effect the region

Time Beyond Imagining - Land of Giant Lakes A discussion of the origin of the rocks at Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks National Monument. I thought I was close to the end, but I was still wrong, after a full year!

Fire Down Below - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau Another month of blogging on other things and I returned to the Cenozoic history of the region with a discussion of the volcanic activity that started to emerge on the plateau, including Shiprock

Fire Down Below II - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau The laccolithic mountains of the plateau country

Fire Down Below III - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau I find I have almost no pictures of Navajo Mountain despite having driven around it dozens of times...

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape Cenozoic events led to a truly scrambled landscape with a mystery-of-the-day

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape in Unaweep Canyon More mysterious canyons at Unaweep and Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape in Colorado An exploration of Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a canyon that shouldn't be there

Time Beyond Imagining - A Really Scrambled Landscape on the Colorado Plateau The opening discussion of one of the great plateau mysteries: why is there a Grand Canyon?

Time Beyond Imagining - Unscrambling History and the Origin of the Grand Canyon The complicated story continues

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau I thought I was almost finished, but found that much happened in the final few million years of the story. This is the story of the San Francisco Peaks Volcanic Field

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau Part 2 A look at the volcanoes in the western Grand Canyon and how they formed massive lakes in the Grand Canyon, some 200 miles long!

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau Pt. 3 The story of a stupendous rhyolite eruption at the Jemez Caldera in New Mexico

Time Almost Beyond Imagining: Who Do the Magic that Hoodoo? My favorite title for a discussion of a unique park near the Jemez Caldera, Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau and Deep Time Although I had reached the last million years of a two billion year history, I felt a need to try and describe the immensity of geologic time, using the ruins of Bandelier National Park and the Jemez Caldera

Time Beyond Imagining - Where did the Ancient Enemy Go? The "disappearance" of the Ancestral Pueblo people is explored at Bandelier National Monument

Time Beyond Imagining: Why Can't We Touch the Venus de Milo? Once again, I thought I was done, but found a series of fascinating (to me) stories about research in the limestone caverns on the plateau. I began with a rant about preserving these wonderful caves that took us to Rome and Paris, of all places

Holy Crap, Batman! The Bat Cave is Full of it! Bat Cave in western Grand Canyon, and bat-sh*t. Lots of it, sort of

Holy Smokes, Batman, that crap is on fire! I was saving my best titles to the last, I guess. A horrific crime against science at Rampart Cave in the Grand Canyon

Of Rat Pee and Uranium and Scavengers...The Underground Story of the Ice Ages on the Colorado Plateau What the caves on the plateau tell us, and how.

Time Beyond Imagining - A Final Struggle for Life on the Colorado Plateau I imagine the death of the very last mammoth on the Colorado Plateau

Time Beyond Imagining: The End of the Story, or the Beginning? In the final post of the series, I discuss the arrival of humans on the plateau, and how humans change the land they occupy. I also tip my hat to Ken Burns and his series on "The National Parks: America's Greatest Idea". The parks are the laboratories in which I and my students study the history of the earth.

So there you go: 71 posts that tell a story encompassing 2 billion years as it is exposed on a very special part of the earth's surface: the Colorado Plateau, covering parts of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Congratulations if you ever made it through the whole thing. I never realized I was writing the equivalent of an entire book, but it was a story I truly enjoyed telling, and I also deeply appreciated the feedback that many of you provided.

Heading Out to the Back of Beyond on the Colorado Plateau!

Geotripper may go quiet for a week or two, as I will be on the road with twenty of my best students out on the Colorado Plateau, the incredible region surrounding the Four Corners. I've been dreaming of this trip for a year now, as I had to start making group camping reservations last July! It's getting crowded in some of the places like Grand Canyon and Zion, but I've learned over the years that there are some pretty quiet places out there as well. When I started blogging a decade ago, one of my first ideas was a blog series about the places we visit on our field studies journey. I am reposting the introduction both for my students, but for anyone out there who might be traveling in the region and might want to know a little more about the lands they are passing through.

From July 1, 2008:

Please forgive me for filling the feeds with such a long post, but I wanted to pull together an annotated list of the blog posts of my just completed journey through the geological history of the Colorado Plateau. It turned into a massive project that lasted more than a year, and included seventy different postings and more than a hundred photos. Don't feel compelled to try reading it, but I hope you enjoy it if you do. If it lacks precise continuity and style, remember that I had no idea how it would end when I started it and I had no editor! I've been taking students on the plateau for twenty years, and it has proven to be one of the best places on the planet to learn earth history.

Time Beyond Imagining, the first post back in June of 2008 introducing the concept that would guide the entire series. I had no idea what I was getting into!

Time Beyond Imagining - An Intro to the Colorado Plateau, a first introduction to the sweep of the landscape that I would be covering through the series.

Time Beyond Imagining - The Oldest Rocks on the Colorado Plateau: The oldest rocks are exposed at only a few places, including deep in the Grand Canyon

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 2: A discussion of the 12,000 feet of sediments hidden deep in the depth of the Grand Canyon dated at around 1 billion years

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 3: LIFE!: The first appearance of complex life during the Cambrian Period

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 4: Something is Missing! Journeying up the walls of Grand Canyon through the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 5: Seeing Red Looking at the Mississippian Redwall Limestone in Grand Canyon

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 6: Seeing Red (Really!) We rise up through the walls of the Grand Canyon to the Permian rocks of the Supai Group and Hermit Shale

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 7: Mountains Rise: Permian rocks are exposed throughout the plateau country. We leave the Grand Canyon and explore some of these other places

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Old Salt I was beginning to realize that the project would be longer than I thought. We explore the formation and effects of salt precipitation in Late Paleozoic time

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Sand! A return to the Grand Canyon and the prominent Coconino Sandstone near the rim

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: A Final Transgression Looking at the top two layers in the Grand Canyon and related rocks on other parts of the plateau.

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: On to the Grand Staircase An introduction to the Mesozoic history of the plateau country, which lies outside the Grand Canyon. We start exploring the other wonderful parks out there

The Grand Staircase and the Geologic Time Scale A diagram of the Grand Staircase, the younger rocks of the Colorado Plateau

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Into the Triassic An introduction to the widespread Triassic rocks of the Plateau. It would prove to take a number of posts!

Mid-week Mystery Sample: What is it? A short departure to discuss the identity of a Triassic fossil from the plateau. A fairly long discussion followed!

Mid-week Mystery Sample: What is it? Heck if I actually know! I admit to my ignorance...

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Ash and Wood A study of the paleontology of one of our unusual parks: Petrified Forest in Arizona

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: This Yellow is NOT Mellow The Chinle also contains mineable uranium deposits; I wade into the controversy

Leetso, the Yellow Monster A continuation of the heritage of uranium on the plateau

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: The Real Jurassic Parks The Jurassic rocks of the plateau are responsible for much of the spectacular scenery in the region. This was the introduction

The Colorado Plateau Story: the real Jurassic Parks Follows the story of the Kayenta and Wingate formations, and three unique and little known parks: Capitol Reef National Park, and Colorado and Vermillion Cliffs National Monuments.

The Real Jurassic Parks: Navajo! The Navajo Sandstone forms some of the best photography opportunities: this was a discussion of Antelope Canyon, a beautiful slot canyon

Antelope Canyon, A Real Jurassic Park An excuse to show more pictures of Antelope Canyon!

Zion: A Real Jurassic Park First part of look at one of our "crown jewel" national parks

Zion: A Real Jurassic Park, Part 2 A hike to Angels Landing in Zion National Park

The Real Jurassic Parks: Capitol Reef (Oh, and Sheep Blogging) A return to Capitol Reef and an excuse to show off one of my favorite bighorn sheep pictures

The Real Jurassic Parks: The San Rafael Group An introduction to another group of Jurassic formations, including the all-important Entrada Sandstone. A busy semester had begun and posts were becoming sparser at times. I was realizing the project was going to take some time, and I stopped using the word "brief"!

The Real Jurassic Parks: Goblin Valley and the Entrada Sandstone One of Utah's unique and isolated state parks

The Real Jurassic Parks: Kodachrome Basin (and a great resource!) Another fantastic Utah State Park and a link to an e-book on the geology of Utah's parks and monuments

The Real Jurassic Parks: Arches National Park An intro to Arches National Park, one of my personal favorites

The Real Jurassic Parks: Arches National Park, continued. And an Eminent Threat. After several weeks I got back to work with a continued exploration of Arches, and discussed new threats to parks in the region

The Real Jurassic Parks: Where are the Dinosaurs? A look at wonderful Dinosaur National Monument and a rotten political situation there

The REAL Jurassic Parks were really Cretaceous I thought the Jurassic would provide the most posts in the series, and therefore had no idea how long I would spend in the Cretaceous. This was the introduction

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Cedar Mountain Formation The only dinosaur dig I ever took part in was in an early Cretaceous formation in Montana, but it was related to the Colorado Plateau. This post turned into seven part story on our adventure

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Story of a DinoDig Much of the story was trying to get there in the first place: what is geokarma?

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: Every Cloud has a Golden Lining We drive through Yellowstone and arrive at the dig site

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the story of a Dino-Dig What we were looking for and why it was important. What is a deinonychus?

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Dino-Digging Begins This is what grunt work is all about

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the story of a Dino-Dig wraps up We started finding bones!

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Final Discovery We found a dinosaur that invariably is the last entry in a dinosaur dictionary...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The View is Nice but Access is a Problem... Back on the plateau, we are introduced to the remaining Cretaceous rocks and two archaeological parks, Hovenweep and Canyons of the Ancients National Monuments

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: Walled Cities and Tragedy More on the Canyons of the Ancients and a walled medieval-aged city...in southern Colorado!

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Tragedy at Castle Rock Pueblo A haunted place...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Mancos Sea An interesting formation that some geologists curse at...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Green Table An exploration of the famous cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Black Mesa story I wade into the coal mining controversy and get more comments than any other entry in the series

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: A City in the Wilderness Life had become busy and it was a month before I returned to the plateau with a discussion of Chaco Culture National Historical Park

And The Old World Passed Away... The Geologic History of the Colorado Plateau And another month passed! I tried to find the words to describe the profound events at the end of the Cretaceous Period

Time Beyond Imagining - A not-so-brief History of the Colorado Plateau Another long gap, but I was finally talking about the last 65 million years of Colorado Plateau history with an intro to the crustal deformation that was beginning to effect the region

Time Beyond Imagining - Land of Giant Lakes A discussion of the origin of the rocks at Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks National Monument. I thought I was close to the end, but I was still wrong, after a full year!

Fire Down Below - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau Another month of blogging on other things and I returned to the Cenozoic history of the region with a discussion of the volcanic activity that started to emerge on the plateau, including Shiprock

Fire Down Below II - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau The laccolithic mountains of the plateau country

Fire Down Below III - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau I find I have almost no pictures of Navajo Mountain despite having driven around it dozens of times...

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape Cenozoic events led to a truly scrambled landscape with a mystery-of-the-day

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape in Unaweep Canyon More mysterious canyons at Unaweep and Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape in Colorado An exploration of Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a canyon that shouldn't be there

Time Beyond Imagining - A Really Scrambled Landscape on the Colorado Plateau The opening discussion of one of the great plateau mysteries: why is there a Grand Canyon?

Time Beyond Imagining - Unscrambling History and the Origin of the Grand Canyon The complicated story continues

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau I thought I was almost finished, but found that much happened in the final few million years of the story. This is the story of the San Francisco Peaks Volcanic Field

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau Part 2 A look at the volcanoes in the western Grand Canyon and how they formed massive lakes in the Grand Canyon, some 200 miles long!

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau Pt. 3 The story of a stupendous rhyolite eruption at the Jemez Caldera in New Mexico

Time Almost Beyond Imagining: Who Do the Magic that Hoodoo? My favorite title for a discussion of a unique park near the Jemez Caldera, Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau and Deep Time Although I had reached the last million years of a two billion year history, I felt a need to try and describe the immensity of geologic time, using the ruins of Bandelier National Park and the Jemez Caldera

Time Beyond Imagining - Where did the Ancient Enemy Go? The "disappearance" of the Ancestral Pueblo people is explored at Bandelier National Monument

Time Beyond Imagining: Why Can't We Touch the Venus de Milo? Once again, I thought I was done, but found a series of fascinating (to me) stories about research in the limestone caverns on the plateau. I began with a rant about preserving these wonderful caves that took us to Rome and Paris, of all places

Holy Crap, Batman! The Bat Cave is Full of it! Bat Cave in western Grand Canyon, and bat-sh*t. Lots of it, sort of

Holy Smokes, Batman, that crap is on fire! I was saving my best titles to the last, I guess. A horrific crime against science at Rampart Cave in the Grand Canyon

Of Rat Pee and Uranium and Scavengers...The Underground Story of the Ice Ages on the Colorado Plateau What the caves on the plateau tell us, and how.

Time Beyond Imagining - A Final Struggle for Life on the Colorado Plateau I imagine the death of the very last mammoth on the Colorado Plateau

Time Beyond Imagining: The End of the Story, or the Beginning? In the final post of the series, I discuss the arrival of humans on the plateau, and how humans change the land they occupy. I also tip my hat to Ken Burns and his series on "The National Parks: America's Greatest Idea". The parks are the laboratories in which I and my students study the history of the earth.

So there you go: 71 posts that tell a story encompassing 2 billion years as it is exposed on a very special part of the earth's surface: the Colorado Plateau, covering parts of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Congratulations if you ever made it through the whole thing. I never realized I was writing the equivalent of an entire book, but it was a story I truly enjoyed telling, and I also deeply appreciated the feedback that many of you provided.

A Look Back at Ten Years of Geotripping: Time Beyond Imagining

I had no idea!

Almost ten years ago, on January 7, 2008, I posted the first entry on Geotripper. I had no idea where it would go, or how long it would last. A century, I guess, in blog years. I had not done a lot of writing before starting the blog, but I had a great many digital images to share, and some occasional stories to go with them. We will reach a couple of milestones this year, the 2,000th post, and possibly 3 million total hits, depending on how accurate Google counter is (Stat counter says 1.8 million). It's also been a wonderful opportunity to meet so many people from all over the world as they respond to posts. 

So...this week I am dredging through some of the archives to find some of my favorite posts from over the years. I'm starting with my first organized blog series on the geologic history of the Colorado Plateau, "Time Beyond Imagining". I began the series in July of 2008, and finished much later in October of 2009. There was enough material that I eventually compiled the story into a field guide I produced for the AAPG.

In any case, if you have any interest at all in the geology of the Four Corners region, and want to learn more about this fascinating landscape, check out the story below...


From July 1, 2008:

Please forgive me for filling the feeds with such a long post, but I wanted to pull together an annotated list of the blog posts of my just completed journey through the geological history of the Colorado Plateau. It turned into a massive project that lasted more than a year, and included seventy different postings and more than a hundred photos. Don't feel compelled to try reading it, but I hope you enjoy it if you do. If it lacks precise continuity and style, remember that I had no idea how it would end when I started it and I had no editor! I've been taking students on the plateau for twenty years, and it has proven to be one of the best places on the planet to learn earth history.

Time Beyond Imagining, the first post back in June of 2008 introducing the concept that would guide the entire series. I had no idea what I was getting into!

Time Beyond Imagining - An Intro to the Colorado Plateau, a first introduction to the sweep of the landscape that I would be covering through the series.

Time Beyond Imagining - The Oldest Rocks on the Colorado Plateau: The oldest rocks are exposed at only a few places, including deep in the Grand Canyon

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 2: A discussion of the 12,000 feet of sediments hidden deep in the depth of the Grand Canyon dated at around 1 billion years

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 3: LIFE!: The first appearance of complex life during the Cambrian Period

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 4: Something is Missing! Journeying up the walls of Grand Canyon through the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 5: Seeing Red Looking at the Mississippian Redwall Limestone in Grand Canyon

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 6: Seeing Red (Really!) We rise up through the walls of the Grand Canyon to the Permian rocks of the Supai Group and Hermit Shale

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau, Part 7: Mountains Rise: Permian rocks are exposed throughout the plateau country. We leave the Grand Canyon and explore some of these other places

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Old Salt I was beginning to realize that the project would be longer than I thought. We explore the formation and effects of salt precipitation in Late Paleozoic time

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Sand! A return to the Grand Canyon and the prominent Coconino Sandstone near the rim

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: A Final Transgression Looking at the top two layers in the Grand Canyon and related rocks on other parts of the plateau.

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: On to the Grand Staircase An introduction to the Mesozoic history of the plateau country, which lies outside the Grand Canyon. We start exploring the other wonderful parks out there

The Grand Staircase and the Geologic Time Scale A diagram of the Grand Staircase, the younger rocks of the Colorado Plateau

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Into the Triassic An introduction to the widespread Triassic rocks of the Plateau. It would prove to take a number of posts!

Mid-week Mystery Sample: What is it? A short departure to discuss the identity of a Triassic fossil from the plateau. A fairly long discussion followed!

Mid-week Mystery Sample: What is it? Heck if I actually know! I admit to my ignorance...

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: Ash and Wood A study of the paleontology of one of our unusual parks: Petrified Forest in Arizona

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: This Yellow is NOT Mellow The Chinle also contains mineable uranium deposits; I wade into the controversy

Leetso, the Yellow Monster A continuation of the heritage of uranium on the plateau

Time Beyond Imagining - A Brief History of the Colorado Plateau: The Real Jurassic Parks The Jurassic rocks of the plateau are responsible for much of the spectacular scenery in the region. This was the introduction

The Colorado Plateau Story: the real Jurassic Parks Follows the story of the Kayenta and Wingate formations, and three unique and little known parks: Capitol Reef National Park, and Colorado and Vermillion Cliffs National Monuments.

The Real Jurassic Parks: Navajo! The Navajo Sandstone forms some of the best photography opportunities: this was a discussion of Antelope Canyon, a beautiful slot canyon

Antelope Canyon, A Real Jurassic Park An excuse to show more pictures of Antelope Canyon!

Zion: A Real Jurassic Park First part of look at one of our "crown jewel" national parks

Zion: A Real Jurassic Park, Part 2 A hike to Angels Landing in Zion National Park

The Real Jurassic Parks: Capitol Reef (Oh, and Sheep Blogging) A return to Capitol Reef and an excuse to show off one of my favorite bighorn sheep pictures

The Real Jurassic Parks: The San Rafael Group An introduction to another group of Jurassic formations, including the all-important Entrada Sandstone. A busy semester had begun and posts were becoming sparser at times. I was realizing the project was going to take some time, and I stopped using the word "brief"!

The Real Jurassic Parks: Goblin Valley and the Entrada Sandstone One of Utah's unique and isolated state parks

The Real Jurassic Parks: Kodachrome Basin (and a great resource!) Another fantastic Utah State Park and a link to an e-book on the geology of Utah's parks and monuments

The Real Jurassic Parks: Arches National Park An intro to Arches National Park, one of my personal favorites

The Real Jurassic Parks: Arches National Park, continued. And an Eminent Threat. After several weeks I got back to work with a continued exploration of Arches, and discussed new threats to parks in the region

The Real Jurassic Parks: Where are the Dinosaurs? A look at wonderful Dinosaur National Monument and a rotten political situation there

The REAL Jurassic Parks were really Cretaceous I thought the Jurassic would provide the most posts in the series, and therefore had no idea how long I would spend in the Cretaceous. This was the introduction

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Cedar Mountain Formation The only dinosaur dig I ever took part in was in an early Cretaceous formation in Montana, but it was related to the Colorado Plateau. This post turned into seven part story on our adventure

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Story of a DinoDig Much of the story was trying to get there in the first place: what is geokarma?

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: Every Cloud has a Golden Lining We drive through Yellowstone and arrive at the dig site

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the story of a Dino-Dig What we were looking for and why it was important. What is a deinonychus?

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Dino-Digging Begins This is what grunt work is all about

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the story of a Dino-Dig wraps up We started finding bones!

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Final Discovery We found a dinosaur that invariably is the last entry in a dinosaur dictionary...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The View is Nice but Access is a Problem... Back on the plateau, we are introduced to the remaining Cretaceous rocks and two archaeological parks, Hovenweep and Canyons of the Ancients National Monuments

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: Walled Cities and Tragedy More on the Canyons of the Ancients and a walled medieval-aged city...in southern Colorado!

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Tragedy at Castle Rock Pueblo A haunted place...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Mancos Sea An interesting formation that some geologists curse at...

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The Green Table An exploration of the famous cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: the Black Mesa story I wade into the coal mining controversy and get more comments than any other entry in the series

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: A City in the Wilderness Life had become busy and it was a month before I returned to the plateau with a discussion of Chaco Culture National Historical Park

And The Old World Passed Away... The Geologic History of the Colorado Plateau And another month passed! I tried to find the words to describe the profound events at the end of the Cretaceous Period

Time Beyond Imagining - A not-so-brief History of the Colorado Plateau Another long gap, but I was finally talking about the last 65 million years of Colorado Plateau history with an intro to the crustal deformation that was beginning to effect the region

Time Beyond Imagining - Land of Giant Lakes A discussion of the origin of the rocks at Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks National Monument. I thought I was close to the end, but I was still wrong, after a full year!

Fire Down Below - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau Another month of blogging on other things and I returned to the Cenozoic history of the region with a discussion of the volcanic activity that started to emerge on the plateau, including Shiprock

Fire Down Below II - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau The laccolithic mountains of the plateau country

Fire Down Below III - a Geological History of the Colorado Plateau I find I have almost no pictures of Navajo Mountain despite having driven around it dozens of times...

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape Cenozoic events led to a truly scrambled landscape with a mystery-of-the-day

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape in Unaweep Canyon More mysterious canyons at Unaweep and Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Time Beyond Imagining: A Scrambled Landscape in Colorado An exploration of Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a canyon that shouldn't be there

Time Beyond Imagining - A Really Scrambled Landscape on the Colorado Plateau The opening discussion of one of the great plateau mysteries: why is there a Grand Canyon?

Time Beyond Imagining - Unscrambling History and the Origin of the Grand Canyon The complicated story continues

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau I thought I was almost finished, but found that much happened in the final few million years of the story. This is the story of the San Francisco Peaks Volcanic Field

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau Part 2 A look at the volcanoes in the western Grand Canyon and how they formed massive lakes in the Grand Canyon, some 200 miles long!

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau Pt. 3 The story of a stupendous rhyolite eruption at the Jemez Caldera in New Mexico

Time Almost Beyond Imagining: Who Do the Magic that Hoodoo? My favorite title for a discussion of a unique park near the Jemez Caldera, Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

Time Almost Not Beyond Imagining: Recent Volcanism on the Colorado Plateau and Deep Time Although I had reached the last million years of a two billion year history, I felt a need to try and describe the immensity of geologic time, using the ruins of Bandelier National Park and the Jemez Caldera

Time Beyond Imagining - Where did the Ancient Enemy Go? The "disappearance" of the Ancestral Pueblo people is explored at Bandelier National Monument

Time Beyond Imagining: Why Can't We Touch the Venus de Milo? Once again, I thought I was done, but found a series of fascinating (to me) stories about research in the limestone caverns on the plateau. I began with a rant about preserving these wonderful caves that took us to Rome and Paris, of all places

Holy Crap, Batman! The Bat Cave is Full of it! Bat Cave in western Grand Canyon, and bat-sh*t. Lots of it, sort of

Holy Smokes, Batman, that crap is on fire! I was saving my best titles to the last, I guess. A horrific crime against science at Rampart Cave in the Grand Canyon

Of Rat Pee and Uranium and Scavengers...The Underground Story of the Ice Ages on the Colorado Plateau What the caves on the plateau tell us, and how.

Time Beyond Imagining - A Final Struggle for Life on the Colorado Plateau I imagine the death of the very last mammoth on the Colorado Plateau

Time Beyond Imagining: The End of the Story, or the Beginning? In the final post of the series, I discuss the arrival of humans on the plateau, and how humans change the land they occupy. I also tip my hat to Ken Burns and his series on "The National Parks: America's Greatest Idea". The parks are the laboratories in which I and my students study the history of the earth.

So there you go: 71 posts that tell a story encompassing 2 billion years as it is exposed on a very special part of the earth's surface: the Colorado Plateau, covering parts of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Congratulations if you ever made it through the whole thing. I never realized I was writing the equivalent of an entire book, but it was a story I truly enjoyed telling, and I also deeply appreciated the feedback that many of you provided.

The REAL Jurassic Parks were really Cretaceous

As any knowledgeable fifth-grader could tell you, few of the dinosaurs in the movie Jurassic Park had anything to do with the Jurassic Period. Most of the species in the movie lived during the Cretaceous Period, many millions of years later, including the velociraptors, tyrannosaurs, triceratops, and the ornithomimus herd. Offhand the only Jurassic dinosaurs I can recall from the movie were the massive brachiosaurs that occupied just a few scenes. The premise (from the sequels anyway) of the animals living in some kind of ecologically balanced paradise would be unlikely at best. The mixing of predator and prey species from long separated periods would lead to disaster, as most of the species would have no evolved defenses to predator attack methods. And of course, the whole "reconstitute a dinosaur" from old dinosaur DNA mixed with frog DNA idea is a real stretch anyway, although interesting results are coming from research with wooly mammoth DNA.

In any case, we continue onwards on our march through the geology of the Colorado Plateau. Cretaceous sediments are an important part of the Colorado Plateau sequence, and they reveal a changing world, including new plants (the angiosperms), a host of diverse new dinosaur species and many other animals. At the end of the period, the dinosaurs (and many other species) disappeared forever and a new world emerged in the Plateau country. A final transgression and regression of a shallow sea was followed by widespread deformation of the crust, and the rise of the region above sea level. The most recent era, the Cenozoic, our own time period, was beginning.

The Cretaceous formations of the Colorado Plateau are not as colorful as the Jurassic and Triassic sediments, but several national parks and monuments have been established in areas containing Cretaceous sediments, and in some cases the scenery is quite spectacular. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Capitol Reef National Park are two of the more striking examples, but other parks that are not really known for their rocks are also notable, including Mesa Verde National Park, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Hovenweep National Monument, and Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Important formations include the Cedar Mountain Formation, the Dakota Sandstone, the Mancos Shale, and the Mesa Verde Group.

Today's photograph is a sunset view of Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon, one of the eeriest (but not in the scary sense) parks I've ever visited on the Plateau. The rocks are part of the Mesa Verde Group.

More soon!

A Present-Day Gondwanaland Forest

I am using today's post as a bridge back to my continuing story of the real Jurassic Parks (and Cretaceous Parks) on the Colorado Plateau in the southwestern United States. But those parks are in mostly desert environments today, and it can sometimes take a lot of imagination to see the tropical forests that existed in the region during Jurassic or Cretaceous time (of course, imagination is not a bad thing). On the other hand, there is a place in the world that has been detached from any other continent for more than 80 million years, thus preserving some elements of the Mesozoic ecosystems that existed at the time. There was a lot more to see just an achingly short time in the past, only a few hundred years ago.

I am speaking of New Zealand, land of kiwis and hobbits (thank you Peter Jackson, I enjoyed the movies a lot)

New Zealand consists mainly of two major islands, divided from each other across the narrow Cook Strait. The North Island includes Auckland, a city built on dozens of volcanoes, Rotorua, a geyser wonderland sitting in the midst of a huge caldera complex, and the big active volcanoes including Ruapahu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro. The South Island includes the city of Christchurch, and a series of spectacular mountain ranges including the Southern Alps (remember the spectacular opening sequence of "The Two Towers"?), and the Kaikoura Range that drops 9,000 feet right into the Pacific Ocean (sort of like Big Sur, but three times higher).

Because the island mass separated from other continents prior to the mass extinctions of the late Cretaceous, mammals were present, but never evolved to dominate the ecosystems as they did elsewhere in the world, and eventually went extinct, except for some bat species. With the loss of the dinosaurs, the only vertebrates in position to take over the terrestrial habitat were the birds. With no reptilian or mammalian predators, the birds were able to evolve a flightless existence (flight is an expensive energy proposition if it is not necessary for survival). Eventually a number of very large birds evolved, including ten species of moas. The largest stood over 9 feet tall. They were mainly plant-eaters, but an extremely large eagle lived on the island as the top predator.

Unfortunately, the arrival of humans on the islands around 700 years ago spelled doom for the moas, and when they were gone the large raptors lost a main food source and went extinct as well. Only the kiwi, the small forest dwelling bird, survives today.

The trees on the island provide the other link to the past. I have included some of the huge tree ferns that evoke Jurassic forests in the pictures above (the moas aren't real. Really). The ferns in the third photo line the opening of a 75-foot deep explosion pit at Orakei Korako Geothermal Area on the North Island. I really would not have been surprised if we had been attacked by a few velociraptors in the forest there...

The ancient tree that captured my imagination the most was the Kauri tree (second photo), one of the bulkiest trees on the planet, rivaling even the Sequoia trees in my own backyard of the Sierra Nevada. The most mature trees are not quite 200 feet high, but their trunks remain thick practically to the crown. Their history extends back into Jurassic time. They once covered much of the islands, but unfortunately their wood is strong, mostly knot-free, and attractive. Something like 95% of the original forests have been cut down, and old-growth forests are exceedingly rare and precious. The trees are now protected by law, but ironically, dead trees in swamps are not, and the wood is durable enough that some of the trees from the swamps are still utilized legally, despite having been dead for hudreds or thousands of years.

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: A City in the Wilderness

I started a brief history of the Colorado Plateau eight months ago, never imagining what an extensive project it would become. I have been working my way through time, from two billion years ago to the present day. Several months ago, thinking I was approaching the end of the narrative, I started to describe the parks displaying Cretaceous rocks, the last period of the dinosaurs (the Mesozoic era), and I find I am beginning the twelfth entry just for that period. But what a fascinating place we are exploring today! Chaco Culture National Historical Park is also just a bit eerie...

The New Mexico plateau country south of Farmington is a barren looking landscape dissected by the occasional shallow arroyo. The treeless terrain is populated by a few Navajo families who graze animals on the arid grasslands. At the end of a 13 mile gravel road, in one of the most isolated and lonely parts of the reservation, one can witness the ruins of Chaco Canyon. For 300 years, beginning about 800 A.D., this was the center of the Ancestral Puebloan universe. The park preserves a collection of some of the most ambitious architectural developments of the Puebloan peoples, with numerous villages of great kivas, plazas and great houses that are unrivaled in their complexity. Some were 4-5 stories high. The villages lay along carefully measured lineations and alignments. Thousands may have lived or traded or worshiped in this shallow canyon. The dwellings included some 200,000 ponderosa beams that had to be hauled from Mt. Taylor or the Chuska Mountains, some 30 miles away.

The Great Houses were constructed at the base of cliffs of the Mesa Verde Group, specifically the shales of the Menefee Formation, and the cliffs of the Cliffhouse Sandstone. The canyon was deepened as the soft Menefee was eroded, undercutting the cliffs, which then collapsed into the gorge. This process was recognized by the Puebloans. At Pueblo Bonita, the builders had tried to buttress a huge rock that threatened to break away from the cliff, and one could say they were successful, in that the rock did not fall until 1941, when it destroyed 60 rooms in the pueblo. The debris can be seen on the left side of the top photo.

The inhabitants of the region were also cognizant of their skies; the cliffs of the canyon contain petroglyphs and and pictographs that may include pictures of the 1054 A.D. supernova that produced the Crab Nebula, and Halley's Comet. The Sun Dagger on Fajada Butte marks the location of a ray of morning sun on the morning of the Winter Solstice.

One other remarkable feature of the park are the roads that radiate out from the canyon, pointing in all directions. The roads run in exceedingly straight lines, sometimes for many tens of miles, and sometimes straight up cliffs (see the bottom photo). Rocks were cleared for a width of fifteen feet and more. They are hard to see from ground level today, but are apparent in aerial photos and satellite images.

Chaco Canyon is a special place to visit; it is difficult to get there, but is well worth the effort. There is a modest campground, a visitor center, and an interesting network of trails. Check it out!

We have reached the end of the Cretaceous Period! This was the beginning of huge changes on the Colorado Plateau, both in the landscape and for the ecosystems. The seas retreated for the final time, and the land began to be twisted and deformed. The entire region began to rise, and erosion began to strip away the thousands of feet sediments that had accumulated during the preceding 500 million years or so. The dinosaurs, and something like two thirds of all the species in existence at the time were obliterated. The world had changed...

More later!

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: Walled Cities and Tragedy

A walled city of 400-500 people, surrounded by tilled fields, and constantly subject to attack during its short existence in the 13th century. A castle complex in England or France? No, it is one of the more intriguing sites on the Colorado Plateau that is almost unknown to the millions of tourists who pass through the region every year.

We have been working our way through the geological history of the Colorado Plateau, and in our most recent posts we have been reviewing the late Cretaceous sediments that formed along the margins of an inland sea that divided the North American continent into two. The Dakota Sandstone originated in the beaches of that sea, and forms an important capstone across the "fertile crescent" of southern Colorado and Utah. It is covered by the rich Dove Creek Soils that provided the Ancestral Pueblo people with corn, squash and beans (beans are still grown across the region today).

About 165,000 acres in the region are preserved as Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, which has to be one of the unique parks in the American West. Where most parks include campgrounds, carefully labeled overlooks and exhibits, various visitor services and efforts to attract tourists, Canyons of the Ancients has none of these things. If anything, the administrators of the park would just as soon discourage visitation. Why? Because the park was established to preserve one of the densest concentrations of archaeological resources in the country, and they have almost no resources with which to do the job. The park lacks the spectacular cliff dwellings that are so characteristic of Mesa Verde National Park, and most of the ruins lie beneath hills and mounds of rubble. And yet it is a treasure...

I have had only a few opportunities to explore the mysteries of Canyons of the Ancients, but I learned more in those few trips about life in the Southwest than pretty much all of my previous journeys in the region. With little prior background, I participated in a geo-archaeological field trip to the head of Sand Canyon in 2003. We first paid a visit to the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, which has conducted many of the surveys of the ruins in the monument. Along with the Anasazi Heritage Center, it serves as source of information on the park.

We drove across the beanfields, and I quickly became aware that ancient villages were scattered everywhere across the mesa surface, including right in the middle of some of the modern pastures as sage-covered mounds that the farmer's plows avoided. When we reached the end of the road, we got out of our vehicles, and wandered through the pinon forest to the upper rim of Sand Canyon. It was a little tricky finding a pathway through the boulders and rocks that lay scattered across the surface. Still kind of ignorant, I had not stopped to think how boulders and rocks did not fit with the topography, which was composed primarily of fine-grained soils. It was at that moment that our trip leader pointed out that we had reached the center plaza of a huge Ancestral Pueblo village that once housed 400-500 people. Looking around, I realized that every single boulder and rock around me was once part of a wall or a kiva. Look at the two photos above. Hidden beneath a pinon forest, little evidence can be seen indicating the presence of a village.

It was an amazing complex. An eight-to-ten foot high masonry wall surrounded the entire city. Water for the hundreds of people was provided by a single spring that was fed by the groundwater from an area of only a few acres. The village contained some 420 rooms, 95 ceremonial kivas and 14 towers. And yet it was built and then abandoned within a period of only 30 or 50 years in the late 1200's. Things did not go well at the end; environmental degradation and drought had caused stressful conditions, and evidence found at the site suggested the population was an aggregation of several scattered smaller villages in the region, come together for defensive purposes. Researchers also found evidence that an attack may have brought an end to the existence of the village itself, with burning of buildings and unburied bodies, victims of a violent death.

I don't know that I ever could have had the patience to do the actual excavation work, but the science of archaeology has always fascinated me. In so many ways the methods and technology of archaeology parallel those used in historical geology and paleontology, but there is an emotional component to archaeology that doesn't exist in fossil work. We are working with the remains of our immediate ancestors. They lived lives different from ours, and yet there are enough clues to understand something of their beliefs and hopes and fears.

We drove back to our dorm at Fort Lewis College in Durango. It was an enlightening trip.

In the next post, a discussion of another site at Canyons of the Ancients, the Castle Rock Complex.

The Cretaceous Parks of the Colorado Plateau: The View is Nice but Access is a Problem...

Looking for a good fixer-upper in Utah/Colorado? Have I got a place for you! This is one of a continuing series on the geology of the Colorado Plateau. It's taking a lot longer than I thought it would, and I thank you for your patience if you are still following the story! For several months we have been making our way forward through geologic time via some of the most beautiful places on the planet. For the early Cretaceous, we took a brief foray into Montana for a 1994 dinosaur dig in a layer (the Cloverly Formation) that was a substitute for the very similar Cedar Mountain Formation of the Colorado Plateau.

The remaining Cretaceous layers of the Colorado Plateau reveal events that ultimately separated the North American continent into two parts, with a shallow sea that ran from Canada to Mexico. The fluctuating shoreline left a mixture of sands, silt and mud that accumulated to depths of several thousand feet. When the land was exposed, plants grew in profusion in the tropical conditions. Coastal lagoons and swamps produced a rock that would eventually be a two-edged sword to the inhabitants of the region: coal. The formations include the Dakota Sandstone, the Mancos Shale, and the Mesa Verde Group (which includes a number of- formations that go by several names in different parts of the plateau region).

The story began with the rise of a mountain range in far west California and Nevada…where the Sierra Nevada stands today, a series of volcanoes spewed ash and lava. Deep underground, the magma cooled slowly to form the granitic rocks that make up the mountains we know today in places like Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. Intense compression of the crust east of the Sierras in Nevada and western Utah caused huge sheets of crust to slide over each other forming a second series of mountains that shed vast amounts of sediment across what is now the plateau country.

The Dakota Sandstone and related formations are found across the region, from Montana to Arizona, and well into the Great Plains. It is usually exposed as a yellowish sandstone with prominent crossbedding. It formed as sea level rose and spread a blanket of beach sands across the region. Dinosaurs wandered across these beaches, but left only footprints and practically nothing else. No one would mistake it for a grand scenery-maker like the Navajo Sandstone, but it is a significant part of two unique national monuments: Hovenweep and Canyons of the Ancients.

Neither park is known for its geology; they were established for the Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) ruins that are found there. But geology played an important part in the life of the people who lived there centuries ago. At Hovenweep, the only layers are the Dakota Sandstone and the underlying Morrison Formation. The Dakota forms a resistant caprock that is topped by rich soils. In places, canyons have been carved into the softer rock underneath. The best-known ruins surround the head of Little Ruins Canyon, at the park visitor center and campground complex.

People live with the resources they have in the regions in they inhabit, and one can appreciate the difficulties of life in this harsh environment. But, despite the cold winters and hot summers, the soils were in an ideal location for growing beans and corn; high enough above the desert to get sufficient moisture, but low enough to have a longer growing season. Hovenweep sits in the middle of a “fertile crescent” that extended from Utah’s Cedar Mesa to Mesa Verde in Colorado. Thousands of people once lived here, and the land supported their needs, but droughts or other factors caused them to abandon the region in the 1300’s.

However much we may idealize their existence, one cannot deny the artistry of their architecture. Their structures follow the boulders and are built so well that they have perched there for centuries. So much is not known about their choices; why on the rocks? Defense seems the most logical reason, but defense from whom? And why put a four-story tower inside a canyon, rather than on the rim, where you could use it as a lookout?

Hovenweep is one of those overlooked gems of the National Park System. If you ever visit Mesa Verde National Park or Natural Bridges National Monument, it isn't much farther to get to Hovenweep, and is well worth the effort. Many of the ruins remain unexcavated, and the feel is far more wild than the paved trails of Mesa Verde.

Canyons of the Ancients will be covered in the next post!