SPECTACULAR AND WONDROUS GEOLOGIC SIGHTS FROM DEAD HORSE POINT STATE PARK, UTAH

Dead Horse Point State Park is in the heart of the Canyonlands region of Utah between Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. The views are spectacular, sublime, awe-inspiring, and majestic, and would be hard to surpass anywhere. The mood of the vistas changes by season and time of day. One of nature's engineers, in this instance the Colorado River and its tributaries, has carved and exposed strata of Late Pennsylvanian to Early Jurassic age within the past 5 million years. These strata have a cumulative thickness of 2700 to 3600 feet, depending upon which direction one looks.

The park is located in the Paradox fold and fault belt of the Paradox Basin. The regional structural setting was created by the (1) movement of salt in the Paradox Formation (intermittently active from the Pennsylvanian to the present day), (2) Late Cretaceous-early Tertiary Laramide orogeny, and (3) late Tertiary-Quaternary regional uplift. These structural events have locally folded and fractured the rocks in a manner that favored the deposition or accumulation of economic natural resource deposits (hydrocarbons, uranium, and potash). The signs of human activity to extract these deposits are apparent as one approaches the park or looks from the canyon edge.

Since the preeminent attraction of Dead Horse Point State Park is its viewpoints, most of the unique sites associated with the park are not within its boundaries. Examples include the Cane Creek and Shafer anticlines, laccolithic La Sal Mountains, solar evaporation ponds, Monument upwarp, and Gooseneck of the Colorado River.