Painted Desert
The Painted Desert is a desert area on the Colorado Plateau in the US state of Arizona . It is located at about 1,800 meters above sea level and stretches in an arc of about 250 km on the north bank of the Little Colorado River between the east of the Grand Canyon in Coconino County via Navajo County to Apache County . In the west it begins between the Little Colorado River and the Echo Cliffs, in the east it ends at the southern end of the Defiance Plateau , at the valley of Black Creek.
In a narrower sense, only the badlands belong to the Painted Desert , which are characterized by strongly weathered round peaks made of multi-layered rock. They are built up from the Chinle Formation , a rock formation from the Upper Triassic ( Keuper ), which was deposited about 228 to 201 million years ago and is also exposed in other parts of the Colorado Plateau ( Zion National Park , Canyonlands National Park ). It is made up of conglomerates , sandstones , clay slate , siltstones , clay and volcanic ash . The diverse colors - predominantly red and yellow tones, but also white and dark layers are present - prompted the first Spanish explorers to call the area El Desierto Pintado as early as 1540 . In 1864 the geologist John Strong Newberry declared the translation of the Spanish name into English as today's official name.
The southwest part of the Navajo Indian Reservation belongs to the Painted Desert as does the northern part of the Petrified Forest National Park . Like its visitor center, it is also called the Painted Desert . There is also the Painted Desert Inn , a hotel / rest house from the 1930s in the typical adobe style of the region, which was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987 and has served as the museum of the national park since a renovation in 2006.
Web links
Coordinates: 35 ° 4 ′ 30 ″ N , 109 ° 47 ′ 24 ″ W.