Zion National Park

Bryce Canyon, Cedar Breaks, Kaibab Forest, North Rim of Grand Canyon (Illustrations)

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The Land of Flaming Canyons and Jeweled Amphitheatres

Touched by a light that hath no name,
A glory never sung,
Aloft on sky and mountain wall,
Are God’s great pictures hung.
—Whittier

Southward from the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude the surface of Western Utah descends in magnificent “Cyclopean steps” from the flattened summits of the Wasatch Mountains, 11,000 feet high, to 3,000 feet at the Rio Virgen, then ascends gently in Arizona to the colossal arch of the Kaibab Plateau, 9,000 feet in elevation and overlooking the Grand Canyon. These Titanic terraces and palisaded plateaus, more particularly the flaming canyons and jeweled amphitheatres cut from their color-saturated rock layers, form scenic spectacles without peer or rival on the globe. Nothing else is comparable to these wonderlands. To see them is both a thrilling adventure and an artistic delight.

Measured by civilization’s yardstick, the unknown land in which they lie is a frontier, still in the pioneer stage of existence. It is not so long since the forts along the way actually repelled Indian attacks; it is not so far to fastnesses where cougars come forth to prey on deer, or to desert valleys where wild mustangs range. On the edge of the plains are ruins of primitive dwellings of which the modern Indian knows nothing; in many a secluded canyon are the more inscrutable habitations of the cliff dwellers. The indomitable ranchers have built quaint, poplar-shaded villages with homes of adobe, and their farms are often fenced with stone.

It is a mysterious land of purple sage and empurpled distances, of incredible color, of sun-magic and the wizardry of wind and water. It is a place to drink in beauty, to form new conceptions of the divine.

Geologists recognize three subdivisions of the region from north to south: the High Plateaus; the Terraced Plateaus; the Grand Canyon Platform. From Cedar Breaks on the High Plateau it is more than 100 miles to Bright Angel Point on Grand Canyon’s rim; from Hurricane Ledge on the west, eastward to the Colorado River is more than 100 miles.

The country reveals fascinating chapters of geologic history. It is a region that has undergone great transitions, alternately sea bottom and mountain top; a region broken and tilted by tremendous displacements; a region scorched and branded by intense volcanic action; but more than all else, from the viewpoint of human interest, a region profoundly sculptured and given its most distinctive character by the beauty-creating genius of erosion.

From Cedar Breaks, cut into mountains 11,000 feet high, the vision has a sweep of 100 miles, and the vast terraces may be seen thrust out to the south like promontories into the sea. Where one succeeds another, the uppermost presents sinuous cliff walls, hundreds of miles in length and superbly distinctive in color and carving. More than 10,000 feet of strata are exposed, “a library of the ages in vivid bindings” that contains the fossil remains of creatures since the morning of life on earth. Each step down indicates the removal, by streams, rain, frost and wind, of all the rock-layers above it. From the Grand Canyon Platform, these 10,000 feet of strata have been completely swept away.

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