Colorado Plateau

The Colorado Plateau is a large, elevated region of the southwestern United States, where rivers have carved deeply eroded landscapes into nearly horizontal sedimentary rock layers.

Colorado River: A major river flowing from the Rocky Mountains through the southwestern United States to the Gulf of California. Its incision produced the plateau’s most extensive canyon system.
Colorado Plateau Province: A physiographic province in the southwestern United States defined by elevated, relatively undeformed crust. It is the broader regional unit that includes the plateau’s distinct landscapes.
Monument Valley: A landscape of sandstone buttes and mesas on the Arizona–Utah border within the Navajo Nation. Its isolated buttes display the erosion of resistant sandstone layers.
Navajo Nation: A sovereign Indigenous nation whose territory spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Much of the plateau lies within Navajo homelands, including Monument Valley.
Colorado River Compact: A 1922 agreement dividing Colorado River water among the river basin states. Its allocations govern major water claims originating on and around the plateau.
Grand Canyon: A vast canyon in northern Arizona carved mainly by the Colorado River. It exposes a deep cross-section of the plateau’s layered rocks.
Sedimentary rock: Rock formed from accumulated mineral or organic particles, or from minerals precipitated from solution. Most visible plateau layers are sedimentary rocks deposited over long spans of time.
Arches National Park: A national park in Utah containing more than 2,000 documented natural sandstone arches. Its arches show how fractures and erosion sculpt plateau sandstone.
Hopi: An Indigenous people and sovereign tribal nation based in northeastern Arizona. Hopi communities maintain enduring cultural ties to the plateau’s mesas and surrounding lands.
Glen Canyon Dam: A concrete arch dam on the Colorado River in northern Arizona, completed in 1966. Its reservoir transformed Glen Canyon and altered downstream river flows.

Linked from 27 pages