Rock Detail, Colorado National Monument

The soft light of a high desert evening illuminates the subtle shades and surfaces of a redrock sandstone face in Colorado National Monument near Grand Junction, Colorado. The folds of sand that were compressed into red rock eons ago have since been uplifted and eroded by water, ice, and gravity. The various degrees of strength and weakness in the rock face have determined which grains stay and which are carried away by each storm event. The resulting striations, patterns, and shapes fuel the imagination in numerous ways.

Named for the river rather than the state, the Monument is a 20,000 acre preserve of towering sandstone monoliths and deep canyons cut by tributaries of the nearby Colorado River. This is an exposed edge of the high Uncompahgre Plateau.

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