The Colorado Plateau

The Colorado Plateau is a vast, high tableland covering the Four Corners region where Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico meet — roughly 130,000 square miles of layered sedimentary rock lifted thousands of feet above sea level while staying remarkably intact. Rivers cutting down through that rising rock have carved it into the most concentrated collection of canyons, arches, mesas, and spires on Earth, including the Grand Canyon itself.

Because the plateau rose as a block without being crumpled into mountains, its rock layers remain nearly flat, so erosion has sculpted them into clean cliffs, terraces, and stone monuments of red, orange, and white. This single landform holds an unmatched cluster of national parks — Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef — along with Monument Valley and countless other red-rock wonders. It is the scenic core of the desert Southwest.

• Arches National Park
  The world's greatest concentration of natural arches contains
• Bryce Canyon National Park
  A natural amphitheater of red rock spires contains
• Monument Valley
  Towering sandstone buttes on the Navajo Nation contains
• The Grand Canyon
  A mile-deep gorge carved by the Colorado River contains
• Zion National Park
  A deep red sandstone canyon in southern Utah contains
• Four Corners
  The only place where four U.S. states meet related