Heading south on the Scenic Drive, the rock layers visibly lean to the east, a direct view of the great tilt that formed the Waterpocket Fold. Reddish-brown Moenkopi and the gray and burgundy Chinle line the road near a pull-off at Danish Hill.
Look straight down the road. Everything's leaning. Those layers tilt down to your left, and that lean is the Fold. You can pull off at Danish Hill on the way back for a longer look. Nearly ten thousand feet of sediment piled up here, the oldest about two hundred seventy million years old. The reddish-brown tidal mud at the bottom is the same Moenkopi that's in The Castle, with the gray and burgundy Chinle above it. Then, between about seventy-five and thirty-five million years ago, the west side rose about seven thousand feet and the whole stack tipped. So the old rock surfaces in the west, the young rock near the east boundary, and a car on Highway twenty-four drives through time, forward one way and back the other.
Photo: Famartin / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0