Red Rock and Ancient Sand: Nine Sculpted Landscapes

The Vermilion Cliffs run roughly 30 kilometers along the Arizona-Utah border and expose stacked rock formations from the Permian Kaibab to the pale, wind-deposited Navajo Sandstone. Iron oxide gives the cliffs the red to orange color that names them.

Carved from Jurassic-age Navajo Sandstone in the Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, The Wave preserves the cross-bedded structure of ancient dunes as swirling bands of red, orange, yellow and white. Access is limited by a permit lottery because the formation is so fragile.

This slot canyon is cut into Navajo Sandstone, dune sand cemented roughly 190 million years ago. Flash flooding carved its narrow, sinuous passages and remains an active hazard today.

Delicate Arch is a freestanding arch about 16 meters tall, formed from the Slick Rock Member of the Jurassic Entrada Sandstone. Groundwater and surface water widened cracks in a sandstone fin until only a span between two pillars was left.

Rainbow Bridge spans about 88 meters and is cut from Navajo Sandstone. It is a natural bridge made by a stream breaking through a rock fin, not an arch made by erosion from above. The Navajo name it Nonnezoshe, meaning rainbow turned to stone.

The buttes and mesas of Monument Valley rise as much as 300 meters from Permian rock of the Cutler Group, about 270 million years old. A resistant caprock of Organ Rock Shale and de Chelly Sandstone protects softer siltstone below it.

Here the rock is the Claron Formation, laid down roughly 50 to 40 million years ago in ancient lakes, and frost and rainwater shape it into hoodoos. With more than 200 freeze-thaw cycles a year, the rim retreats about a foot every 50 to 65 years.

Away from the American Southwest, the Zhangye Danxia hills in Gansu show banded red, orange, yellow and green sandstone and siltstone deposited over roughly 24 million years. They were inscribed with the China Danxia UNESCO World Heritage property in 2010.

Uluru rises about 348 meters and is made of arkose, a feldspar-rich coarse sandstone laid down roughly 550 million years ago and later tilted nearly vertical. Its red color comes from rusting iron-bearing minerals on the surface, and it is sacred to the Anangu.