Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon

(www.nps.gov/brca)

Positioned at the top of a vast geological feature known as the "Grand Staircase," The area under Bryce Canyon was a sea floor 144 million years ago, and for 60 million years sediments were deposited on it . As the sea retreated, the area again was under water--only this time under a giant freshwater lake. The sediments washing into it from the surrounding highlands became the reddish-pink rocks of the Claron Formation which we see exposed at Bryce Canyon.

About 10 million years ago, uplift began which raised the Colorado Plateau high above sea level. Bryce Canyon is not a canyon, it is an amphitheater worn into the edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau by the action of the Paria River's tributaries, wind and ice. Bryce Canyon's colorful sedimentary rocks are part of a delicate landscape. Erosion has shaped colorful Claron limestones, sandstones, and mudstones into thousands of spires, fins, pinnacles, and mazes. Collectively call ed "hoodoos," these colorful and whimsical formations stand in horseshoe-shaped amphitheaters along the eastern edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau in Southern Utah as a silent witness to the relentless agents of weathering and erosion.

Little is known of the native American inhabitants of the park area prior to Mormon pioneer settlement. Bryce Canyon is named for Ebenezer Bryce who came to the Paria Valley with his family in 1875. Bryce built a road to the plateau top to retrieve firewood and timber and built an irrigation canal to raise crops and animals. Local people called the canyon with the strange formations near his home "Bryce's Canyon." The Bryces moved to Arizona in 1880, but the name remained.

As southern Utah developed, Reuben and Minnie Syrett--who homesteaded just outside the present park boundaries--brought their friends to see the intricately eroded formations. By popular demand, they developed sleeping and eating facilities on the canyon rim. When the area was set aside as a national monument in 1923, the Union Pacific Railroad bought out the Syrett's interests and began to construct Bryce Canyon Lodge intending to make the Bryce Canyon area part of their new "Loop Tour" of the southwest. The Syrett's then built "Ruby's Inn" on their own land just north of the park.

In 1924, Bryce Canyon National Monument was declared Utah National Park. The Bryce Canyon Lodge was finished in the same year and still serves park visitors. This National Historic Landmark has been renovated to provide modern safety and conveniences, while maintaining the character of the 1930's. In 1928 an act of congress doubled the amount of protected land and changed the name to Bryce Canyon National Park.