Discovering The Colorado Plateau

The Colorado Plateau is America’s western treasure, home to the country’s highest concentration of national parks, monuments, wilderness areas, and state parks, and a near-endless bounty of wild, stunning landscape. Discovering the Colorado Plateau will explore this region through beautiful maps, full-color photography, and detailed descriptions of the area’s geography, history, and geology, as well as signature activities that encapsulate the best each locale has to offer. By purposefully shifting the focus away from the national parks, this book introduces readers to the various public lands and protected areas that are as exciting and wonderful as any of the major parks. Unlike any other book published recently about the Plateau, this book not only acts as a source of great information and imagery, but as a practical guide and a true celebration of one of America’s most beautiful and endangered lands.

Imagine seeing the varied landscapes of the earth as they used to look throughout hundreds of millions of years of earth history. Tropical seas lap on the shores of an Arizona beach. Immense sand dunes shift and swirl in Sahara-like deserts in Utah and New Mexico. Ancient rivers spill from a mountain range in Colorado that was a precursor to the modern Rockies. Such flights of geologic fancy are now tangible through the thought-provoking and beautiful paleogeographic maps, reminiscent of the maps in world atlases we all paged through as children, of Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau.Ron Blakey of Northern Arizona University is one of the world's foremost authorities on the geologic history of the Colorado Plateau. For more than fifteen years, he has meticulously created maps that show how numerous past landscapes gave rise to the region's stunning geologic formations. Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau is the first book to showcase Blakey's remarkable work. His maps are accompanied by text by Wayne Ranney, geologist and award-winning author of Carving Grand Canyon. Ranney takes readers on a fascinating tour of the many landscapes depicted in the maps, and Blakey and Ranney's fruitful collaboration brings the past alive like never before.Features: More than 70 state-of-the-art paleogeographic maps of the region and of the world, developed over many years of geologic research Detailed yet accessible text that covers the geology of the plateau in a way nongeologists can appreciate More than 100 full-color photographs, diagrams, and illustrations A detailed guide of where to go to see the spectacular rocks of the region

Color photos of the Escalante and the Paria river canyons and the adjacent plateau into which these rivers, with the help of rain & wind, have sculpted surreal, brightly colored galleries. The text by Charles Bowden deals with Mormon heroes, the Hole-in-the-Rock migration, and with John D. Lee, infamous for his part in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Written with the general reader in mind, this is the updated edition of the classic on the geology of the red rock and canyon country of the Fours Corners region of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Travel with Powell on his harrowing 1869 journey of exploration to descend the Green to the Colorado down to the foot of the Grand Canyon. This 9 x 12 book is overflowing with beautiful photos and details for your enjoyment.

In the next book in the award-winning Scout Moore series the ever-adventurous junior ranger ("I am ranger of my own backyard!") travels with her family to Yellowstone National Park, where they visit thermal features, watch wildlife, and gaze in wonder at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Along the way her younger brother Wesley insists they will find a dragon in the park, and he's partially proven right when they come across Dragon Spring. Their guide, Ranger Bob, is ever helpful in helping Scout Moore and her family discover the wonders of our first national park.