Show all who enter the colorado plateau area must marvel at the splintered cliffs its ragged mountains and sharp edged bluffs mesas and buttes the stately mon olitha and majestic canyons etched from frota layers of 0 hard bard rock A new prospector slings sling a geiger counter over his shoulder pokes some sandwiches into his pack sack dimas to the base of the rl and there rinds a bed i sea shells they are exactly like the shells he has seen on a west coast mst beach they are shaped and colored the same sa e many have the same iridescence but they are solid rock and if be he is curious and he must be or he be there he wonders how sea shells can be found over one thousand miles from shore and over one mile higher than tidewater this tg s fie newcomers first brush bruh with u colorado orado plateau geology later h he will rub oft off some paleontology and be exposed to ir cheol egv to increase his hi interest in natu natural r al history one of the last primitive areas in the united states state s the plateau was also one of the fi first explored by white man ind and visited by fa ther escalante in 1776 before 1950 it wag was inaccessible except to the few hardy intrepid wanderers who wanted to get away from front it 11 all they could and still can get over miles from a railroad the eaily geographers called this ahei aiea the great american desert and any prospector who has carried water for a week as he hunts the illusive radioactive uranium will agree e aiex next t the embryo geologist will notice that rocas are in layers in most places these layers lavers arc are level one uon upon another but others he notices are tilted bent othessa twisted and in some cases go in all angles perhaps at no other place has the geological history of the earth been revealed reveal d on s so vast a scale here can be read the history of the world preserved preserved in the canyons and cli cliffs S with surfaces k kepi bare by he the arid climate E every very me mesa s a butte escarpment is capped by a hard bard stratum which 1 forms its edge the gentler slopes are but softer weaker strata with no li bird ird rock to protect them from erosion |