It encompasses three major canyons: de Chelly, del Muerto and Monument, all carved by streams in the Chuska Mountains. Canyon de Chelly National Monument This landscape in northeastern Arizona preserves the ruins of indigenous tribes ranging from Ancestral Puebloans to the Navajo. Like Cedar Breaks, the higher elevation creates a cooler weather system with more precipitation than the lower, more arid areas along the Grand Staircase. These amphitheatres are home to thousands of hoodoos formed by freeze-thaw weathering and stream erosion of the rocks in the Claron Formation.
Bryce Canyon National Park Technically the main feature of this park is not a canyon, but a collection of huge amphitheatres that lie on the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. An evaporite salt bed lies beneath the park, which is responsible for the sandstone fins, arches and spires in the Entrada Formation. Arches National Park Arches National Park is located just north of Moab, Utah, and contains the highest density of natural arches in the world (over 2,000) amidst 119 square miles of desert. Uplift increased the velocity and power of the Colorado River, which firstly eroded individual plateaus within the Colorado Plateau Province, and more recently (5-6 million years ago) began canyon-cutting, creating reefs and slot canyons. 66 million years ago, these layers underwent uplift ranging from 5,000 (at the bottom of the staircase) to 10,000 feet (at the top of the staircase) after subduction movement of the Pacific Plate at the Hurricane Fault pushed up the North American Plate.
These sediments were deposited at different points in history, ranging from 60 million years ago in Cedar Breaks National Monument to 1.8 billion years ago in the Grand Canyon National Park, and everything in between. The Grand Staircase is shaped by history, and a variety of processes spanning hundreds of thousands of years. Pink Cliffs Pink and red Claron Formation limestone found in Cedar Breaks National Monument and Bryce Canyon National Park Grey Cliffs Grey and white limestone and sandstone (lacking in iron oxide) in the Kaiparowits and Wahweap Formations round in Bryce Canyon National Park White Cliffs Navajo Sandstone found in Zion National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Canyonlands National Park Vermillion Cliffs Formations coloured by red iron oxide and bluish manganese found in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Capitol Reef National Park and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Chocolate Cliffs Red sandstone in the Moenkopi Formation found in Grand Canyon National Park Modern geologists have since divided the steps into individual rock formations. He divided the formations into 5 steps going from youngest to oldest: Pink Cliffs, Grey Cliffs, White Cliffs, Vermillion Cliffs and Chocolate Cliffs. In the 1870s, Geologist Clarence Dutton identified the concept of a staircase for the region, with each layer forming giant steps. The Grand Staircase refers to a sequence of sedimentary rock layers found on the Colorado Plateau stretching from Cedar Breaks National Monument in the north, through Bryce Canyon National Park and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, down into Zion National Park and out to Grand Canyon National Park. By Peter Coney, from the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection This expedition during the summer of 2018 spanned the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Colorado, with the team visiting 15 National Parks, 16 National Monuments, a number of State Parks, Historic Sites, recognised Recreation Areas, and places of interest. Kathy Ho and Dave Berry from the LABScI team at Stanford started the trip in their home state of California, with Gemma Gordon and Anil Madhavapeddy from Cambridge joining them in Nevada. The field trip expedition was funded by a grant from the National Geographic Society, and the technology development was funded by the University of Cambridge.
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