Vermilion Cliffs

The Vermilion Cliffs are a line of steep, brilliantly colored sandstone escarpments running roughly 30 kilometers along the Arizona-Utah border, part of the Grand Staircase sequence of sedimentary rock layers that record hundreds of millions of years of deposition across the Colorado Plateau. The cliffs expose several distinct rock formations, most prominently the reddish, cross-bedded Permian-age Kaibab and Toroweap layers overlain by later Triassic and Jurassic units including the Moenkopi, Chinle, and the pale, wind-deposited Navajo Sandstone, whose ancient dune bedding is visible in the rock's sweeping curved layering. Iron oxide minerals within the sandstone give the cliffs their vivid red to orange coloration, from which they take their name, and differential erosion of the alternating hard and soft rock layers has produced dramatic stepped terrain, including the swirling sandstone formation known as The Wave within the same Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness.