Checkerboard Mesa is a Navajo Sandstone summit of about 6,520 feet, just southwest of the East Entrance. Its face carries a natural grid of near-horizontal grooves along old dune layers crossed by vertical joints. Sources word the cause of the vertical lines differently, from heat and moisture to freezing and thawing. The small parking area is the one east-side stop open to vehicles over 19 feet, and NPS lists it for stargazing and telescopes, though it has no restrooms. Crazy Quilt Mesa, to the west, is closed to recreational use, and NPS places the park's darkest skies on this east side. The East Rim Trail starts just inside the East Entrance booth, at a small Trailhead sign.
In a couple hundred yards, turn left across oncoming traffic into the small parking area and stop. If the car going off cuts me out, tap play, because Boone has a three-minute tale after this. That pale summit is Checkerboard Mesa, standing about nine hundred feet above the highway, and you can see where it got the name. Two different things drew that grid. The level grooves follow coarser layers of sand in the old dune bedding. The vertical ones are cracks from the rock swelling and shrinking with heat, cold and moisture. A geologist named Gregory noticed something better. In some of these cracks the filling is harder than the rock around it, so the cracks stand out as tiny walls, outlining the squares. Stay on the pullout. Crazy Quilt Mesa, just west of here, is a closed research natural area, and nobody may hike its top or slopes. The rock changes near the East Entrance. The Carmel Formation sits on top there, younger than anything in the main canyon, with fossil clams, snails and corals from a warm shallow sea. The entrance station is less than half a mile east of here, and the park ends just past it. When you leave, head left out of the parking area.
Photo: NPS Photo / Caitlin Ceci · Public domain