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By Jacob
By Jacob
Canyonlands National Park is 1 of 5 national parks located in Utah. It is located west of the town of Moab in south central utah. Its boundaries contain the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. Colorado is the same river that flows through the Grand Canyon downstream. It is through millions of years that has allowed this spectacular area to form and be designated a national park.
Rock found in Canyonlands had to come from somewhere. Millions of years ago the rocky mountains were formed and immediately began to be eroded away from the forces of wind and water. The forces of erosion broke down large pieces of rock into smaller pieces that could be more easily moved by water. These smaller pieces are called sedimentary rocks. Both wind and water moved these rocks to create layers of millions of years. Canyonlands is a very uniform geologic site, rock layers get younger and younger the higher in elevation that the layers rise. There is still something missing. Canyonlands has no canyons, it is just flat land. At the time of the rock layers forming the rock was closer to sea level.
The next process of geology was about to take place, uplift. All over North America the landscape began to change. The modern rocky mountains began to form as well as the Great Basin of Nevada. The process began to take place about 20 million years ago. Canyonlands National Park is part of the Colorado Plateau, an area made of mesas, like Island in the Sky, that the Colorado River Basin forms in its valleys. The area includes parks like Grand Canyon, Arches, Mesa Verde and Colorado National Monument. Some geologists believe that Colorado has risen 10,000 ft since the beginning of the uplift process. The Island in the Sky Visitor Center is at 5,666 ft in elevation. Surrounding Canyonlands and Arches are isolated mountain ranges formed by cooling melted rock that erosion had exposed. This includes the Las Sal Mountains to the east of the park. Other mountain ranges as well in southern Utah like the Henry mountains.
The same process of depositing rock began to wither away at it. The Colorado River began carving its way through the area with the Green River meeting it within the parks boundaries. Soon other streams and tributaries of the Green and Colorado began forming more canyons creating a rugged mesa over millions of years surrounded by steep canyon walls. This area is the Islands in the Sky District. The area now had its canyons that make it famous today.
I mentioned earlier that Canyonlands is a uniform geologic site which is generally true throughout the park. One area is the exact opposite, one of the spur roads in the Island of the Sky district leads to the Upheaval Dome. If you look at Google Earth and see Canyonlands you would likely notice Upheaval Dome. In this crater shaped area is a white dome that looks like something you would see in Badlands or Theodore Roosevelt National Park instead of Canyonlands. Lighter colored rock compared to the orange of the area. The rock layers are twisted and almost vertical suggesting a different past than the rest of the park. Geologists do not even agree on how the dome was formed, it has been rattled down to two main theories.
The first one is the Salt Dome Theory. A thick layer of salt lies beneath most of Southern Utah because of ancient inland seas similar to the Great Lakes. Under pressure from the growing rock sediment carried by the forces of erosion the salt began to rise like a bubble. This is where some of the salt came up in a dome like shape. The more supported and plausible theory is that a meteor the size of ⅓ of a mile impacted earth in the current Upheaval Dome area. As the area began to settle and the meteor was eroded away the salt layers rose up to fill this void creating the salt layer.
The other accessible area of the park is the Needles District home to monoliths of rock that can stand hundred of feet above the ground. During the previously mentioned uplift cracks began to form as the area rose thousands of feet. The softer rock was shaped in molded by erosion into the needles today due to the cracking of the rock.
I hope you find the geology of Canyonlands National Park interesting. For more information about the geology of the park visit the national park website or the United States Geological Survey.
Works Cited
“Geology.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, www.nps.gov/cany/learn/nature/geologicformations.htm.
“Needles (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, www.nps.gov/articles/cany-needles.htm.
“Upheaval Dome (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, www.nps.gov/articles/cany-upheaval-dome.htm.
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