The Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness is a 112,500 acres (455 km2) wilderness area located in northern Arizona and southern Utah, USA, within the arid Colorado Plateau region. The wilderness is composed of broad plateaus, tall escarpments, and deep canyons.
The Paria River flows through the wilderness before joining the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry, Arizona.
The U.S. Congress designated the wilderness area in 1984 and it was largely incorporated into the new Vermilion Cliffs National Monument proclaimed in 2000 by executive order of President Bill Clinton.
Both the wilderness area and the National Monument are administered by the federal Bureau of Land Management.
The Colorado Plateau and its river basins are of immense value in the Earth sciences, specifically chronostratigraphy, as the region contains multiple terrain features exposing miles-thick contiguous rock columns geologists and paleobiologists use as reference strata of the geologic record.
Read more about Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness: Human History, Vegetation, Recreation
Famous quotes containing the words cliffs and/or wilderness:
“Most of the folktales dealing with the Indians are lurid and romantic. The story of the Indian lovers who were refused permission to wed and committed suicide is common to many places. Local residents point out cliffs where Indian maidens leaped to their death until it would seem that the first duty of all Indian girls was to jump off cliffs.”
—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“What is most striking in the Maine wilderness is the continuousness of the forest, with fewer open intervals or glades than you had imagined. Except the few burnt lands, the narrow intervals on the rivers, the bare tops of the high mountains, and the lakes and streams, the forest is uninterrupted.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)