Nevada’s Valley of Fire - The Valley That Was Valley of Fire is a vivid land of bold cliffs of red and white sandstone set in the midst of the grandeur that is the Mojave Desert. So many stories of powerful earth forces, adapting life forms, and early man are all revealed in this Nevada State Park. Anyone visiting this park scarcely needs a reminder of the awesome power of the desert. The searing heat and lack of water seem almost unbearable, even in the winter the aesthetics of the place is overwhelming and the silence is profound. But in the past, the Valley was subjected to desert conditions even more demanding on life than the desert of today. For tens of millions of years the area that is now the park was a barren desert covered by lofty sand dunes. Wind carved and swirled the sands into fantastic formations of multi-angled layers. Thousand of feet of sand piled up in the region, carried there by winds from the erosion of other areas of highland around Nevada. Today, almost half-mile thick, these “fossil” dunes comprise the beautifully shaped red and white sandstone bluffs, the most scenic aspects of Valley of Fire. The perfectly-preserved, swirled layers of wind-blown sand illustrate a page of Mesozoic history more than 140 million years old. This sandstone, termed Aztec sandstone by geologists, extends over large areas of the Southwest. The sandstone varies in colour from deep reds and purples to tans and whites. Delicate and subtle changes in tones are thought to be the result of groundwater percolating through the sand and leaching the oxidized iron. By tracing individual layers of sandstone, one can follow the paths of ancient, slow-moving, subterranean waters. The passage of these waters altered and transformed the chemistry of mineral grains. The result is a pleasing, artistic intermingling of colours. It is a rather poetic place as well as unbelievable past geological history. ~JM Photo Credit: My Own Further Reading: Nevada State Parks: parks.nv.gov/parks/valley-of-fire-state-park/ Valley of Fire: valley-of-fire Desert USA: desertusa/nvval/ Gilgoff, J. (2005). Valley of Fire. Lulu. com. Eichhubl, P., Taylor, W. L., Pollard, D. D., & Aydin, A. (2004). Paleo-fluid flow and deformation in the Aztec Sandstone at the Valley of Fire, Nevada—Evidence for the coupling of hydrogeologic, diagenetic, and tectonic processes. Geological Society of America Bulletin, 116(9-10), 1120-1136. Dear Readers, Most of our posts are not reaching your news feed due to fbs filtering system. If you wish to enjoy our posts more often, use the following for information on how to go about it: tmblr.co/Zyv2Js1VWMUJ0.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 20:26:01 +0000
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