BRYCE CANYON A Geologic and Geographic Sketch of Bryce Canyon National Park

A GEOLOGIC AND GEOGRAPHIC SKETCH OF BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK

THE PARIA AMPHITHEATER

Below the Pink Cliffs lies the Paria amphitheater. (See Fig. 3, 4, 7). As seen from the rim of the plateau at Bryce Point, this great depression formed by the headwater tributaries of Paria River appears as a broad, semi-circular valley bordered on the north and west by broken slopes that terminate in cliffs, on the south and east by low ridges and terraces that form the borders of the flat land immediately along the streams. The grandeur of this vast amphitheater is best appreciated while standing on its floor, easily reached by the trails that pass through Bryce Canyon alcove, or by automobile road from the Park headquarters past the Triangle, down the "breaks of the Paria" and on through Tropic to Cannonville. From this view-point, the flat land is but a band of gravel cut into deep, narrow gullies; the ridges, inconspicuous from above, are mesas and headlands faced by cliffs hundreds of feet high, and the drainage system that from the rim of the plateau seems to consist of a main channel and a few orderly disposed branches is in reality a plexus of waterways—scores of ephemeral streams, hundreds of tributaries—all within canyons that combine in cutting the land into strips between angular grooves 50 to 200 feet deep. Cannonville is rimmed by brilliantly colored, beautifully banded red and white rocks. Northward along the Paria and its chief branch, Henrieville Creek, the land rises in steps cut into soft drab shale and hard yellowish thick-bedded sandstone to the base an an unscalable wall whose top lies more than 4,000 feet above the floor of the arena at Cannonville. The highest tier in the amphitheater is Table Cliffs, the grandest of plateau headlands. Its surrounding walls are fully 1,000 feet high and rise sheer from their bases except where supported by steep buttresses, indented by niches, or broken into decorative columns. As the headland towers high above the surrounding country, it also projects far out from the main mass of the Aquarius Plateau, and is painted in tones of pink, red, and white; it is visible from such distant view-points as the Henry Mountains, the Kaibab Plateau, Markagunt Plateau, Tushar Plateau, and from Navajo Mountain south of Glen Canyon.

Though built on an enormous scale, the Paria Amphitheater has been constructed by simple methods. Like the alcoves in the rim of the Pink Cliffs and the innumerable canyons that score the face of the Utah plateaus, this masterpiece of sculpture is a product of erosion, the work of streams still in existence. During the course of millions of years, the steep headwaters of the Paria have quarried the rocks at the base of the highlands to form a depression nearly 12 miles wide and nearly a mile deep.