The pueblos of Wupatki glow red because they were built of red rock. The Northern Sinagua people used the reddish sandstone of the Triassic Moenkopi Formation as the main building stone for their pueblos — rock that, in the eastern part of the monument, stands in vivid contrast to the gray limestone of the west.
The monument
| Location | about 42 km (26 mi) north of Flagstaff, Coconino County, Arizona |
| Proclaimed | December 9, 1924 |
| Area | about 14,334 ha (35,422 acres) |
| Archeological sites | more than 2,700, across the Painted Desert on the southwestern Colorado Plateau |
Most sites date to the 12th and 13th centuries. They range from scatters of stone tools and pottery sherds to single-room field houses and several large, free-standing pueblos of 50 to 100 rooms. The monument was first set aside to protect the Citadel and Wupatki Pueblos, built by the people archeologists call the Northern Sinagua; later boundary changes brought in more pueblos. Several American Indian tribes lived in the region at various times, and it preserves a record of clan migrations and wide-reaching trade.
Crack in Rock Mesas. From the National Park Service Geologic Resources Inventory.
The rocks
| Rock | Age | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Moenkopi Formation — red sandstone and siltstone | Early Triassic (252–245 million years ago) | eastern Wupatki; the pueblos' building stone |
| Kaibab and Toroweap Formations — calcareous sandstone and cherty limestone | early Permian (299–270 million years ago) | western Wupatki, forming the broad Antelope Prairie and its cliffs and ledges |
| Basalt lava flows | Pliocene and Pleistocene | erosion-resistant caps on several mesas in the west and south, erupted from the San Francisco volcanic field to the south |
The monument's main structure is the Black Point Monocline, an asymmetric fold trending northeast–southwest that cuts across the monument and separates the Permian rocks from the younger Triassic ones.
Part of the geologic map of Wupatki National Monument. Credit: National Park Service, Geologic Resources Inventory.
Where the detail lives
Wupatki belongs to the Colorado Plateaus physiographic province. The NPS Geodiversity Atlas, drawn from the Geologic Resources Inventory, covers the full variety of a park's rocks, landforms, soils and the processes that shape them. The inventory produces geologic maps and reports for more than 270 natural resource parks, and a Soil Resources Inventory has been completed for Wupatki; both are in the NPS DataStore.
Sources
Based on "NPS Geodiversity Atlas—Wupatki National Monument, Arizona," National Park Service, a work of the United States government in the public domain. It cites Graham (2011).
이 페이지가 속한 매거진Wupatki National Monument
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