Red Rock Canyon Geology

KEYSTONE THRUST

This fault shows the Cambrian Bonanza King formation (gray) folded over Aztec sandstone (red).

AZTEC SANDSTONE

As the wind shifted the sands back and forth, angled lines developed in the sand known as “cross beds”.

FLASH FLOODS

This wash was cut in thirty minutes in 2004 by a flash flood.

The Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area [RRCNCA] is located just a few miles west of Las Vegas and encompasses 195,819 acres within the Mojave Desert. Red Rock is an area of world wide geologic interest and beauty.

Click the sections below to learn more about Red Rock Canyon geology:

KEYSTONE THRUST

Breaking the mold

The Keystone Thrust Fault is, like the famous San Andreas Fault (a break between two major rock bodies along which the break is vertical) the Keystone is horizontal. It began as gray limestone layers were pushed east during the end of the age of dinosaurs and ultimately "ramped" up through Jurassic Aztec Sandstone. Estimates of total eastward movement along this fault are as high as 40 miles.

img: This fault shows the Cambrian Bonanza King formation (gray) folded over Aztec sandstone (red).

ERODED ROCKS

...winds of change:

Erosion is nature's master sculpture. Wind, rain, ice, growing crystals, gravity, and weak natural acids all take their turn, wearing away seemingly immutable rock. Like artists, each force has its own distinctive signature, creating the diversity of scenic wonder we see today.

PETRIFIED WOOD

ROCK HARD LIFE FORMS

Fossils such as petrified (or permineralized) wood are some of the key clues used to reconstruct past environments. Most of the fossil logs found in Red Rock Canyon belong to a genus of extinct

CROSS BEDDING

As wind-blown sand piles up into dunes, the windward sides of the dunes have a gentler slope than the steep leeward sides. The resulting pattern of curving, angled lines called cross beds, leaves a record of the direction of the prevailing winds at the time.

SPRING MOUNTAINS

The Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is located on the east side of the Spring Mountains, the highest mountain range in southern Nevada. This landscape of biological and geological diversity as we currently know it is only a snapshot taken from a continuum of constant change that spans millenia.

CONGLOMERATE

Conglomerate is rock made up of smaller rocks and pebbles cememted together. Shinarump Conglomerate, which is widespread throughout the Western U.S., contains quartz, sandstone, basalt and fragments of petrified wood.