Canyonlands National Park

At the heart of the Colorado Plateau, the Green and Colorado rivers meet at the bottom of a maze of canyons more than 1,000 feet (300 m) deep. Canyonlands National Park, the largest national park in Utah at about 527 square miles (1,366 km²), divides naturally along those rivers into three land districts. Island in the Sky is a broad mesa with overlooks such as Mesa Arch and Grand View Point. The Needles is a field of banded sandstone spires, and the Maze is among the most remote country in the contiguous United States.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the law creating the park on September 12, 1964. Below the confluence, the Colorado churches through Cataract Canyon, one of the most demanding whitewater runs in the West. In a detached section called Horseshoe Canyon, the Great Gallery displays life-sized painted human figures thousands of years old, made by Archaic peoples, and Ancestral Puebloan granaries survive in the Needles. The writer Edward Abbey, a frequent visitor, called Canyonlands the most weird, wonderful, magical place on earth.

• The Colorado River
  The river that carved the Grand Canyon fed by
• Utah
  The Beehive State, red rock and the Great Salt Lake located in
• Arches National Park
  The world's greatest concentration of natural arches near
• Capitol Reef National Park
  Utah park along the Waterpocket Fold, a 100-mile wrinkle in Earth near
• The Colorado Plateau
  The high red-rock heart of the Southwest part of