Valley of Fire State Park

Valley of Fire State Park covers about 46,000 acres of the Mojave Desert in Clark County, Nevada, roughly 16 miles south of Overton and 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Its defining red sandstone, the Aztec Sandstone, formed from shifting sand dunes about 150 million years ago and was later reshaped by complex regional uplift and faulting followed by extensive erosion; the park also contains limestone, shale and conglomerate. The red rock often appears to be on fire when it catches the sun's light, which gave the park its name, and its rough floor and jagged walls display brilliant eroded sandstone formations and fossilized dunes across a basin roughly 4 by 6 miles wide, with elevations ranging from 1,320 to 3,009 feet. The park borders Lake Mead National Recreation Area near the Virgin River confluence to its east, was designated Nevada's oldest state park in 1935, and became a National Natural Landmark in 1968, preserving a geological record spanning some 150 million years. This entity documents Valley of Fire State Park specifically as a geological formation.