Geography of Arizona - Deserts - Painted Desert

Painted Desert

The Painted Desert is a broad area of badlands located on the Colorado Plateau in Northern Arizona. It covers at least 146 square miles (380 km2), and stretches from 30 miles (48 km) north of Cameron, near the Grand Canyon, ending just beyond the Petrified Forest. The Painted Desert derives its name from the multitude of colored sediments and bentonite clay seen from its Chinle rock formation, left exposed by erosion. In the southern portion of the desert, the remains of a Triassic period coniferous forest have fossilized over millions of years. Most of the Painted Desert is located within the Navajo Nation, and is only accessible by foot.

Read more about this topic:  Geography Of Arizona, Deserts

Famous quotes containing the words painted and/or desert:

    The sleeping and the dead
    Are but as pictures; ‘tis the eye of childhood
    That fears a painted devil.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
    Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
    I have it in me so much nearer home
    To scare myself with my own desert places.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)