Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures - Canyonlands National Park

My next series of posts about the Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures will follow along on a birthday trip that we took back in March of 2019 hitting up some of the parks in southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado.

You can find more Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures as well as my Geological State Symbols Across America series at my website Dinojim.com.

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Canyonlands National Park
Canyonlands is one of Utah's big 5 National Parks, and probably the least visited of all of them. The park consists of three distinct districts, Island in the Sky, The Needles, and The Maze. All three districts are time consuming to get to and at least a couple of hours drive between each one. We ended up hitting up Canyonlands in two separate trips, visiting Island in the Sky district in 2019 and the Needles district in 2020. The districts are distinctly divided by the Green and Colorado Rivers, with the confluence of the rivers forming a "Y" shape. The top middle of the Y is the Island in the Sky, the right of the Y is the Needles, and the left is the Maze.

The first stop was the Island in the Sky district and here is the entrance sign from there.

 Here is a great display from the Island in the Sky Visitor's Center showing the rock units across the canyons and some information from each rock unit. Canyonlands, like its neighbor parks, sits within the Colorado Plateau. This is an area of the United States encompassing the Four Corners region, and surrounding areas, where the ground is being pushed upwards. This causes a great increase in elevation of the land surface, and when the land surface is being pushed up, rivers erode downwards at an increased rate. The area has rocks that cover a tremendous range of ages and these pictured here are only a small portion of everything in the region. At the bottom and the top, the Organ Rock Shale is Permian in age, ~270 million years old, to the Navajo Sandstone, which is Jurassic in age, ~180 million years old.

We are usually limited to one relatively easy hike per day, due to physical limitations, and for this trip we decided on Whale Rock. Whale rock is a dome of Navajo Sandstone. The Navajo Sandstone is a preserved prehistoric desert that used to cover large parts of the American west. The reason that geologists know that the Navajo Sandstone was a prehistoric dune is because of the prominent cross bedding located within the beds. Cross bedding preserves the internal structures of sand dunes. Whale Rock is the rock we are currently standing on top of, after having completed the hike, looking towards the southwest. 

View from the top of Whale Rock looking towards the south, a bit to the left of the above photo.

 A panorama to the right of the above shots looking more to the southwest. This is a long distance shot of what is known as Upheaval Dome.

 After leaving Whale Rock we traveled down the road to get a closer look at Upheaval Dome. Here is a close up view looking down into the eroded dome from the same direction as the picture above, only much closer. Upheaval Dome is a mystery. Here all of the rocks are bent upwards towards a peak, that has since been eroded away. This is what is known as a dome. But how did it form? There are two theories. One is that there used to be a layer of salt under the ground from a prehistoric basin (like the Bonneville Salt Flats). Then other rocks were deposited on top of the salt layer. Over time the salt got squished upwards into the mushroom shape, distorting the rocks around it.

Another, and the more popular theory, is that this is the site of a prehistoric meteorite impact. When the meteorite struck the surface everything was forced downward initially, but then the rocks rebounded from the impact, causing everything to be pointed upwards. The reason the dome is now a "basin" is because as the rocks are bent, the rocks at the top portion of the dome crack. These cracks consolidate the water, restricting the erosion to these areas. Eventually the dome becomes a basin as the rocks are washed away.

What is known, though, is that this is a mishmash of rocks at the base of the dome with the White Rim Sandstone, a Permian desert deposit, is mixed up and faulted with the overlying Moenkopi Formation, a series of interbedded sandstones, siltstones, and shales from a Triassic tidal flat environment. The upper cliff edge is the Wingate Sandstone, another Jurassic desert sandstone, a little older than the overlying Navajo Formation, with the Chinle Formation in between, forming the slopes of the canyon walls. The Chinle Formation is also Triassic in age and represents a wide variety of interbedded rock units (sandstone, conglomerate, siltstone, shale) from river and lake deposits.

 View of the Wingate Sandstone (I believe), showing the cross bedding in the distance. The rock units themselves are deposited horizontally here, while the cross bedding is the angled lines through the units. These are formed from sand, as it is pushed over the dune crest and rolls down the leeward side, or slipface. This creates an ordered layer of sand on the slipface side of the dune and that is what is preserved as cross bedding. This rock unit is topped by the Kayenta Formation, which divides the Navajo Sandstone from the Wingate Sandstone. The Kayenta Formation is a Jurassic age series of sandstones, shales, and limestones from a meandering river environment that frequently preserves dinosaur tracks.

 A bit further to the south is the Grand View Point, here looking towards the west. Off in the distance is the Green River canyon, which eventually joins up with the Colorado River to the left of this picture.


The view towards the southeast from the Grand View Point, overlooking the Colorado River canyon in the distant. The confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers is towards the right in this picture.

This is a display showing the features from the above picture. The cliff edges are created from more resistance rock overlying softer rock. Typically in this region that means sandstones are the more resistant rocks. Currently, I am standing on a sandstone layer within the Kayenta Formation, while the edge and flatter region before the main canyon down below is the White Rim Sandstone.

 View from Grant View Point looking towards the Confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. The steep cliff faces here are made up of the Wingate Sandstone.

 On the way out of the Island in the Sky district we stopped at the Shafer Canyon Overlook. Here is a view of Shafer Canyon looking down on the rather steep Shafer Trail Road switchbacking down the canyon walls. From here we headed to Arches during the 2019 trip but we came back to Canyonlands in 2020 to hit up the Needles district to the south.

 While within the Needles district we decided to take a hike on a rather rainy day at Cave Spring, which is a historic cowboy camp. The hike took us up and around the sandstone ledge seen here. The sandstone unit here is the Permian age Cedar Mesa Sandstone (~286 million years old), which is just slightly older than the formations seen above in the Island in the Sky district. The Cedar Mesa Sandstone is a near-shore sand dune deposit (the whiter, more resistant layers) which has frequent river and lake deposits (the redder, softer layers seen on the picture as the bottom layer).

The Cedar Mesa Sandstone is known to be a fantastic aquifer, and that is because water soaks up easily into the gaps between the sand in the sandstone. Many aquifers nationwide are actually within sandstones because of the porous nature of the rock. Here we have the actual Cave Spring, where the water that had soaked into the overlying sandstone is seeping out on top of a more water resistant layer below. And although we are in the desert with very little water nearby, this cave/alcove has abundant water and plant life just stemming from the cave walls. These caves were not only the location of a fairly recent cowboy camp, but also housed many Native American settlements throughout its history.

The trail took us up that overlying sandstone block within the Cedar Mesa Sandstone. The Cedar Mesa Sandstone is a rather thick unit, with many individual beds, as you can see here, looking between some of the small canyon walls towards the west.

A view on top of the Cedar Mesa Sandstone within this area looking towards the southwest.

Back down below the local cap of the Cedar Mesa, looking at the lower sandstone/siltstone beds that the spring was flowing along on top of. You can see the cross bedding of the overlying sandstone pretty well from this angle.

Further to the west is a road that nearly gets to the Confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers. Here is a view from as close as you can drive, the Big Spring Canyon Overlook, looking towards the confluence towards the west. The Needles District is named for the features seen here which are throughout the district. These are vertical spires composed of the Cedar Mesa Sandstone, the same as at the Cave Spring above. The spires are formed from erosion along cracks, or joints, that naturally form a checkerboard pattern within the Cedar Mesa Formation. The cracks then consolidate the water, causing more erosion in these areas, further widening the cracks until only individual spires are left. The valley of the canyon here is the Elephant Canyon Formation, also Permian in age, formed from shallow coastal marine deposits.

References

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51048/51048-h/51048-h.htm

https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1327/report.pdf

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/1998JE000587#:~:text=impact%20at%20the-,dome.,(Figures%204%20and%205).

Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures - Bryce Canyon National Park

My next post about the Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures is another post playing catch-up with trips from long ago with a trip in 2009 down to southern Utah's National Parks. Unlike most of the other parks in Utah, I have yet to go back to Bryce Canyon but hopefully sometime in the future. 

You can find more Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures as well as my Geological State Symbols Across America series at my website Dinojim.com.

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Bryce Canyon National Park
Bryce Canyon is one of Utah's most famous National Parks and it is truly a beauty to behold. While we were there we ended up doing one of the trails where you can hike down amongst the hoodoos, which I highly recommend.


Doing the entrance sign shot before it became routine.

Bryce Canyon, much like the other nearby National Parks including Zion National Park and Grand Canyon National Park, are part of the Colorado Plateau. This is a large area covering the four corners region where the rocks have been severely forced vertically upwards. And like those nearby parks, Bryce Canyon covers a large range of geological formations, however there really is only one formation that is the star of the show here; the Claron Formation.

 The Claron Formation forms the Pink Cliffs part of Bryce Canyon and is broken up into two individual members: the Pink Limestone Member, which forms the reddish hoodoo rocks of the Pink Cliffs, and the slightly younger White Limestone Member, which is right on top of the Pink member seen here along the rim of the canyon in the distance.

 The White and Pink Limestone Members of the Claron Formation were deposited during the Eocene Period, approximately 60 to 50 million years ago. During that time, this part of Utah was covered by a vast lake, depositing thick layers of calcite that eventually consolidated into limestone. The Claron Formation also includes beds of siltstone and dolostone (like limestone but with dolomite instead of calcite). Limestone is also the same rock that caves form in because they dissolve in slightly acidic water.

 Bryce Canyon is located at such an elevation that the temperature fluctuates above and below freezing frequently within the same day. In fact, it fluctuates across the freezing point more than 200 days a year.

One of limestone's properties is that it has a tendency to crack along parallel lines, called joints. When the cracks start to form within the limestone, water then is able to seep into those cracks. Water seeps into the cracks during the warmer days then freezes during the colder nights. This expansion of the water creates what is known as "ice wedging", which physically pushes the rock pieces apart. 

 Eventually the ice wedging slowly breaks the edges of these cracks enough for pieces to start to break off. Over time the vertical, parallel cracks start to widen leaving behind these pinnacles of rock. These are the structures known as hoodoos. If you know anything about caves as well, you know that most cave formations have a smooth surface due to the water dissolving the calcite in the rocks and redepositing it as cave formations. That same dissolution is happening here, which gives the hoodoos their smooth surface appearance, as compared with the more rough and angular arches at Arches National Park.

Different layers within the limestone erode at different paces, especially along the bedding planes, creating these balancing rock structures and hoodoos that have thicker and thinner parts.

But overall they provide the viewer with a beautiful effect during a lovely hike amongst the hoodoos as well as overlooking from above.

The cracks within the limestone have become large enough that rather steep valleys are all that remains of the rocks in this area. And since the valleys now concentrate the water, the valleys are where the most erosion occurs, further emphasizing the already steep valleys.

Looking up one of the narrow valleys with a bridge of limestone still connecting various pieces, or more likely, a fallen hoodoo. 

 View across the hoodoos from near the end of our hike. The red coloration is due to a large percentage of iron and oxygen within the limestone when it was deposited, creating rust. The upper White Limestone Member had much less oxygen and/or iron when it was deposited, leaving behind a stark white rock. The differences in the coloration throughout the Pink Limestone Member are due to the variations of the amounts of iron and oxygen during initial deposition.

 Here is an overlook into the surrounding valley, off into the older rock units surrounding Bryce. The White Limestone Member can be seen to the left of the photo as well.

References

https://www.nps.gov/articles/nps-geodiversity-atlas-bryce-canyon-national-park.htm

https://www.usgs.gov/science-support/osqi/yes/national-parks/geology-bryce-canyon-national-park#:~:text=The%20Tertiary%20rocks%20are%20primarily,well%20as%20sandstone%20and%20shale.

http://www.zionnational-park.com/bgeology.htm

https://www.nps.gov/brca/learn/nature/hoodoos.htm

Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures - Timpanogos Cave NM

My next post about the Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures was yet another one long ago. The closest park to our home and we had visited it twice in 2008 and 2009. Will need to go back at some point and grab a real entrance sign shot. 

You can find more Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures as well as my Geological State Symbols Across America series at my website Dinojim.com.

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Timpanogos Cave National Monument
Timpanogos Cave is easily the closest National Park to our home, within an hours drive, and so was the first one we visited when we moved out here. 

Entrance sign shot. There's not really an "Entrance Sign" like most other parks, just the wall in front of the main Visitor's Center.

Timpanogos Cave is located within the Wasatch Mountains. It is quite a hike to get up to the cave entrance from the visitor's center and most of it is uphill, although along a paved trail. When you get up high enough you actually have quite splendid views into the Provo Valley.

From the Visitor's Center, the trail climbs up over 1,000 feet and passes through several rock formations along the way.

Here is an artists rendering of the formations that you walk by, or through, along the trail up to the caves located within the Deseret Limestone. I will have to keep a better track of the specific formations that I photographed next time the I go. Image courtesy of the NPS.

Here is a man-made tunnel going through the rocks. Without a better picture, or returning to the park to verify, I'd say this is the Tintic Quartzite. This is based on coloration of the rocks and some other online sources. Limestone has a tendency to be slightly to very grey, while quartzite is often whiter. There is also a fault here, running right through the rock on the left side of the tunnel.

 I'd say this is likely the same Tintic Quartzite with another man-made tunnel carved out of it. The quartzite formed from sand located at the edge of a shallow sea 540 million years ago at the start of the Cambrian. Over time that sand was cemented together to form a sandstone and eventually metamorphosed under heat and pressure, melting the sand grains together, forming the quartzite. River pebbles are often composed of quartzite because quartzite is a very, very strong and durable rock.

 View over looking the American Fork Canyon, which is where the cave sits. Most of the rocks in the lower portion of the photo appear to be Tintic Quartzite, while you can see some of the grey limestones further up the canyon walls.


Another piece of the Tintic Quartzite along the trail.


The cave itself is located within the Deseret Limestone. The Deseret Limestone was initially deposited within a large sea 340 million years ago during the Mississippian Period, and is composed of the animals that used to live in that sea. During this time Utah was located much closer to the equator, allowing for warmer climate animals and formations to occur, such as carbonate deposits. Limestone is made up of mainly two minerals, calcite and dolomite. Calcite (CaCo3) is calcium carbonate, while dolomite (CaMg)CO3)2) is similar to calcite except that it has magnesium wedged into the structure. This actually makes it harder for dolomite to dissolve, but not impossible, as we can see here since the Deseret Limestone is composed primarily of dolomite. There are also some fossils located within the Deseret Limestone, like corals, however I didn't see any while I was there.

The way traditional limestone caves form, is from the slow dissolution of the limestone by groundwater or underwater streams. Groundwater is naturally slightly acidic from the mixture of carbon dioxide with the water, forming carbonic acid. This acid dissolves the calcite and dolomite very easily, especially compared to other minerals, and so as the water moves through the limestone some of it is slowly dissolved over time. Then as the water drips off upper parts of the newly formed cave, some of that dissolved calcite is left behind. This creates the cave formations that caves are so famous for. This type of rock is known as travertine, a type of limestone.

When the water is able to flow down the sides of the cave walls, or along large cave formations, this creates what is known as "flowstone" as seen here. All of these different cave formations are all created by the same minerals, just by differing processes.

Cave formations that hang from the ceiling are known as stalactites (hold "tight" to the ceiling) and the ones on the ground are known as stalagmites (might make it to the ceiling). When they connect, they are known as a column, as is seen here.

Here is a view of some stalactites flowing down from some flowstone further up. This type of formation is also sometimes known as "cave bacon" because of the crinkled and folded way that it forms makes it look like bacon. 

 Here are some of the more delicate cave formations in Timpanogos Cave, like soda straws and helictites, which are small spiral shaped formations.

 Some more soda straws and helictites. The soda straws are the formations that look like, well, soda straws. They are the precursors to stalactites, which will eventually be built up into the traditional conical cave formation.

References

https://www.nps.gov/tica/learn/nature/geologicformations.htm

https://thelifeofyourtime.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/timpanogos-cave-national-monument/

Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures - Glen Canyon NRA

My next post about the Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures was another one long ago. The year is 2009 when the wife and I took our puppies down to go camping at Lake Powell, also known as the Glen Canyon NRA.  

You can find more Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures as well as my Geological State Symbols Across America series at my website Dinojim.com.

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Glen Canyon National Recreation Area
Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, also known more commonly as Lake Powell, is a rather large reservoir on the border of Utah and Arizona. It's a great place to go camping, but even a more fun place to take a boat and explore the canyon. Unfortunately this trip was long ago before I was collecting entrance signs, so no entrance sign shot for this one (yet).


Here is the view driving into the main canyon from the south. The geology within the Glen Canyon NRA is fantastic. There are rocks absolutely everywhere! The formation of the area occurred when the entire Colorado Plateau was forced vertically upwards. The reason for this is complicated and I won't go into it right here, but just know that this entire region is being pushed up vertically. Because the region is being pushed upwards, rivers in this region, specifically the Colorado River, are quickly eroding downwards into the ground, creating monumental canyons such as the Grand Canyon. Glen Canyon, upstream of the Grand Canyon, is also along the Colorado River. The Colorado River is dammed just across the Arizona border by the Glen Canyon Dam ,creating Lake Powell within Glen Canyon.

Glen Canyon NRA is so large that it covers a wide variety of rocks depending where within the canyon you are located. We camped near Bullfrog and stayed in this general vicinity for our entire trip so the rocks that we saw are all generally the same age and formation. Most of the rocks within the canyon are sandstones of various ages. The rocks above are rocks within the San Rafael Group, a late Jurassic (170 to 160 million year old) formation of rocks. 

 
The rocks within Lake Powell sometimes form nice little islands that is possible to walk around. Here is one such island. All of the sandstone pictured here are likely the Entrada Sandstone, a member of the San Rafael Group. Although many of the sandstone units have a tendency to look alike. The Entrada is an aeolian sandstone, meaning that it formed from prehistoric sand dunes. The bed lines seen in the foreground are what is known as cross bedding, formed from the stacking of sand over a sand dune, creating parallel lines that often form at an angle to the way the rock unit (bed) is laying.

 Within the Entrada sandstone I found these weird nodules as well. This is an iron oxide concretion within the sandstone. They likely contain goethite, as well as hematite where it is reddest according to sedimentologist Dr. Marjorie Chan of the University of Utah.

Some more iron oxide concretions within the sandstone. These are more common in the Navajo Formation, known colloquially as "Navajo berries". It is uncertain exactly how they form though.

 Walking with the puppies along the slickrock surfaces of the Entrada Sandstone.

 View into the distance of what is likely the Romana Sandstone, another Late Jurassic sandstone, which lies on top of the Entrada Sandstone.

Nice, puppy free, view of the Entrada Sandstone.

 View across the water from the Entrada Sandstone island.

 View of the lake from our campsite near Bullfrog.

References

http://www.npshistory.com/publications/glca/nrr-2016-1264.pdf

Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures - Golden Spike NHP

My next post about the Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures was from a long time ago. We are jumping back to 2008 when we first moved out to Utah and started hitting up the parks in our new home state. 

You can find more Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures as well as my Geological State Symbols Across America series at my website Dinojim.com.

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Golden Spike National Historic Site
Golden Spike is the second closest park to our home, but it is still a good few hours drive to get from our side of the Great Salt Lake to the northern side where the park sits.

A lovely entrance sign to greet us after a several hours drive.


The Golden Spike National Historic Site honors the location where the transcontinental railroad was completed, joining the railroad from the west, the Central Pacific Railroad, with the Union Pacific Railroad from the east. Pictured here are recreations of the trains that met at the Golden Spike ceremony, the Jupiter on the left and No. 119 on the right.

 The geology here is slim but I'll do what I can. Seen here is a live demonstration recreating when the trains come together at the last tie for the Golden Spike Ceremony.

The crossing sign getting to the Visitor's Center. Golden Spike National Historic Site is located near the northern shore of the Great Salt Lake. The largest lake in the United States after the Great Lakes. The lake, and the park, sit within a portion of the United States known as the Basin and Range. This is an area where north-south running mountain ranges are spaced between north-south running valleys. The Basin and Range starts in mid-Utah at the Wasatch Mountains and runs west through all of Nevada to the Sierra Nevada mountains. These alternating mountain and valley lines were formed from what is called extension. The plate within this region is slowly expanding outward and the expansion of the plate is causing very large pieces of the plate within the region to rotate. The rotation tilts the large blocks, resulting with a corner of the block pointing up in the air. This corner becomes the mountain ranges in the region, while the area between these blocks is filled with sediment, forming the valley floors. It is in this region that the Great Salt Lake and the Golden Spike NHS sit.

 Between where the two trains meet is a copy of the last tie that was laid down upon completion of the Transcontinental railroad. The tie itself was made of laurelwood. It was then laid down with four spikes; 2 made of gold, one of silver, and one a combination of silver and gold. The source of the spikes were from multiple places across the west. I had hoped I could figure out where the metal specifically came from but that is apparently an impossible task.

One of the golden spikes was from David Hewes, a San Francisco contractor who casted a spike from his own personal gold (possibly from California?). The next spike was a forged spike made out of silver from the Railroad Commissioner in Nevada. The 25 ounces of silver came from the Virginia City assayers E. Ruhling & Co (with the silver possibly from Nevada?). The mixed silver and gold spike came from Arizona, which was actually a plated iron spike with gold on the head and silver on the shaft. The final gold spike was a 9.5 oz spike made from $200 worth of  gold that came from Frederick Marriott, a proprietor of the San Francisco New Letter newspaper company.

View of the plaque on the last tie that reads "The last tie laid on completion of the Pacific Railroad, May 1869".

Close up view of the trains surrounding the final tie.

References

https://www.nps.gov/gosp/learn/historyculture/four-special-spikes.htm