Arizona & Utah
Southwest, USA · Sedona · Grand Canyon
3 places pinned — click any one for its story.
The place
The American Southwest holds the most spectacular geology on the continent — the Grand Canyon, the red rocks of Sedona, and the canyon country of southern Utah: Zion, Bryce, Arches, and the slot canyons of the Colorado Plateau. Two billion years of rock laid bare under a huge desert sky.
Places I visited
History & facts for each spot — with a “then & now” archival photo where one exists. Every one has its own page; open it for the full write-up and all the photos.
Red sandstone buttes standing over Oak Creek — three hundred million years of iron-stained sand, and the light on it at either end of the day is the whole point.
Full history & photos →Read more on Wikipedia →
A high pine town on Route 66 at 7,000 feet — Lowell Observatory up the hill is where Pluto was found in 1930.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Flagstaff, Arizona, 1887 LCCN2002737259 — Wikimedia Commons
A mile deep, a couple of billion years of rock in the walls, cut by the Colorado — no photograph has ever managed the scale of it.
Full history & photos →Read more on Wikipedia →Archival photo: GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO, MOUTH OF PARIA CREEK, LOOKING WEST FROM PLATUEAU - DPLA - 24ab571e4579ad80c80eaf3e9bd0ee6d (page 1) — Wikimedia Commons