The monument's Geologic Resources Inventory report. Image from the NPS Geodiversity Atlas
Canyon de Chelly National Monument is on Navajo trust land at the edge of the town of Chinle, in Apache County, northeastern Arizona.
| Established | February 14, 1931 |
| Size | about 33,929 hectares (83,840 acres) |
| Preserves | one of the longest continuously inhabited American Indian communities in the United States, with a history going back at least 5,000 years |
| Cultural record | Archaic, Basketmaker, Ancestral Puebloan, a transitional period, historic Navajo and Pueblo, and early European contact |
| Highlights | alcoves and cliff dwellings with exceptional architecture, and one of North America's largest concentrations of pictographs and petroglyphs |
(National Park Service 2016a)
This page is part of the National Park Service's Geodiversity Atlas, a product of the Geologic Resources Inventory. Geodiversity means the whole range of a park's geologic and soil resources and processes — rocks, minerals, sediments, fossils, landforms and the processes that shape them — and the atlas supports education, geoconservation, and management that treats the living and non-living parts of an ecosystem together.
The rocks
The monument's colorful sheer cliffs are the work of millions of years of uplift and stream cutting. Its bedrock is mostly Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary rock, deeply eroded into Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto and smaller side canyons.
| Unit | Age |
|---|---|
| Chinle Formation | Triassic |
| Cutler Group, including the De Chelly Sandstone | Permian |
| Supai Formation | Pennsylvanian–Permian |
- The red cliffs are De Chelly Sandstone, rising from the wash as much as 366 m (1,200 ft).
- From the rims you look down on spires of erosion-resistant sandstone and caprock, such as Spider Rock and Face Rock, towering over the canyon floor (National Park Service 2016b).
Canyon de Chelly belongs to the Colorado Plateaus physiographic province and shares its geologic history and some of its formations with a region much larger than the monument.
Maps, reports and data
Geologic Resources Inventory map of Canyon de Chelly. Image from the NPS Geodiversity Atlas
The Geologic Resources Inventory produces digital geologic maps and reports for more than 270 natural resource parks, and many products are still in progress:
| Product | What it is |
|---|---|
| Scoping summaries | records of meetings where park staff and local geologists set the mapping plan and the report's contents |
| Digital geologic maps | GIS files, a user guide and supporting map information; newer ones add Google Earth data and online map services |
| Reports | the park's setting and significance, notable features and processes, management issues, and geologic history, built on the maps |
| Posters | a PDF view of the GIS data; newer ones add aerial imagery or shaded relief. Included with the reports |
| Projects | the basics of the program and every product for a park |
- The monument's products are listed in the NPS DataStore.
- A Soil Resources Inventory for the monument is complete and also in the DataStore.
White House ruins. Image from the NPS Geodiversity Atlas
More: photo gallery · park home · geologic time · explore regional geology · NPS geology · Arizona Geological Survey
Sources
Based on "NPS Geodiversity Atlas—Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. A photograph credited to the National Park Foundation is not reproduced.
In these publicationsCanyon de Chelly National Monument
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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