Natural window in a rock on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, AZ
About this photograph
- Creator
- Margery H. Freeman
- Date created
- August 1982
- Location
- Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
- License
- This photograph copyright ©1982. All Rights Reserved
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Learn more
- Search LEARN NC for Arizona, AZ, canyons, Colorado Plateau, Colorado River, erosion, fossil record, Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park, national parks, natural window, North Rim, plateau, rivers, stratification, tributary, and uplifting.
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Natural window in a rock on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. At the correct angle, the Colorado River is visible through the window. The scale of the rock is apparent from the comparatively minuscule size of the visitors on top of it. The Grand Canyon is located on the Colorado Plateau. The plateau was uplifted as the Colorado River and its tributaries carved channels into the rock over a period of thousands of years. The result is the 277 mile-long Grand Canyon, which averages 4,000 feet deep as it meanders through the park. The park encompasses 1,218,375 acres of semi-arid land. It is a paleontological, geological, and archeological paradise; it offers a history of three of the four eras of geological time, as well as an excellent fossil record. It is biologically and ecologically significant as well, as it contains five of the seven North American life zones and three of the four desert types, and therefore is host to an incredibly broad range of flora and fauna, including many endemic species (species found exclusively in the park).
