Field Trip 8: Red Rock Canyon State Park

Chapter 8 - Red Rock Canyon State Park

Introduction

Red Rock Canyon State Park, like Vasquez Rocks Natural Area (Chapter 4), is probably a place you’re familiar with, even if you have never been there in person. It has served as the backdrop for countless movies, TV shows, and car commercials. The steep and colorful cliffs have been weathered into accordion-like bellows, resulting in dramatic badland topography that serves as the perfect scenery to set an adventurous, Wild West mood.

The well-exposed and easily accessible strata make for an ideal outdoor classroom for the study of sedimentary and volcanic rock, as well as weathering processes, mass wasting, faulting, and stream erosion.  

This field trip could be added to a visit to Vasquez Rocks Natural Area, as Vasquez Rocks is on the way as one leaves L.A., but this would also make for a long day (bad poetry intended). One could also make this a first stop for the multi-day field trip into Owens Valley (Chapter 9).

All stops are accessible by charter bus.

Academic parking fee waivers may be granted (parking fees are assessed at the visitor center parking lot, “Stop 2” in this itinerary). Call the park visitor center for information: (661) 839-6553. Note that the website for Red Rock Canyon State Park states that the visitor center is closed in winter and summer.

Geography

Red Rock Canyon State Park (RRC) is situated within the El Paso Mountains, at the junction of three of California’s twelve geomorphic (physiographic) provinces, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Basin and Range, and the Mojave Desert. RRC lies within the Basin and Range, with the Garlock fault along its southern margin separating it from the Mojave Desert. The Sierra Nevada Frontal fault delineates the Basin and Range from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west.

Map of California's 12 geomorphic provinces. - CC 

The arid climate of RRC means sparse vegetation and excellent exposure of the bedrock. This rock is vividly colored and hosts a wide assemblage of fossils, mainly ancient mammals, making this place a natural draw for geologists.

Geology

The geologic processes of the surrounding geomorphic provinces have helped author the geologic story of RRC. Extension of the crust in the Basin and Range initially rifted open a basin, creating a topographic lowland into which rivers flowed from ancestral highlands in the Mojave Desert; this is evidenced by the composition of grains in sedimentary rock at RRC. Subsequently, the Sierra Nevada Mountains started growing, which is revealed by a change in the lithology of the grains contained in younger strata at RRC.  

Site map for Red Rock Canyon State Park.

Dove Springs Formation

As has been discussed in previous chapters, tectonic stresses can compress the crust, leading to uplift, as well as stretch the crust, resulting in subsidence. The process of subsidence created the depositional setting for the rocks exposed at RRC.  Starting around 19 million years ago, tectonic stresses stretching the crust, possibly related to Basin and Range extension, caused subsidence and the formation of basins. In one of these basins, meandering streams, draining the ancestral highlands in the Mojave Desert, flowed across floodplains, eventually emptying into a shallow lake, where fine to sand-sized sediments accumulated over time. This ancient environment, with abundant freshwater, a fertile floodplain, and a shallow lake would have provided ideal ecologic conditions for terrestrial flora, mainly grasslands, and fauna. In fact, this is the story preserved in the strata at RRC. The strata contain an abundance of mammalian fossils, including: early horses, camels, mastodons, rhinoceroses, wild dogs, pronghorn antelopes, deer, sabertooth cats, weasels, geese, a rabbit, a squirrel, a skunk, and a wolverine. Additionally, the fossil assemblage includes reptiles like alligators, lizards, and snakes. Flora fossils include pinyon pines, locusts, cypress, acacia, and palm trees (Prothero, 2011 and Sharp and Glazner, 1993). Interbedded in the stratum of mud, silt, and sandstone are ash and lava flows, signifying that volcanic eruptions were also part of this ancient environment. It was probably a setting very similar to the ecosystem in which the Barstow Formation formed, as discussed in the previous chapter (Sharp and Glazner, 1993). The fossils also tell us that this ancient ecosystem was cooler and wetter because the fossil plants would have required around 15 inches of annual rainfall, as opposed to the yearly rainfall of about 5 inches that this area receives today (Sharp and Glazner, 1993). Finally, these strata tell us some of the story of the Sierra Nevada Mountains because the stratigraphically highest beds contain grains of granitic rock from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, indicating that the southern Sierras started to grow and shed sediment around 7 million years ago (the age of the youngest strata at RRC).

Together, the strata of mudstone, siltstone, and sandstone layers, interbedded with rhyolite tuff and basalt, comprise the Dove Spring Formation, representing one of the longest and most complete records of middle Miocene strata anywhere in the world. Radiometric dating techniques (analyzing the amount of radioactive decay of certain minerals to obtain a numeric age for the rock) and paleomagnetic signatures (the magnetic alignment of certain minerals contained in rock) tell geologists that the Dove Springs Formation was formed between 7 and 14 million years ago (Prothero, 2011). These dates are further substantiated by the assemblage of fauna and flora preserved as fossils in the formation.

Badland topography at Bryce Canyon National Park. 

More recently, the Dove Springs Formation has been tilted and uplifted along the El Paso fault (Carter, 1980), a major branch of the Garlock Fault, exposing the colorful strata. The rainbow of white, cream, beige, brown, pink, red, and green strata comes from the chemical weathering of minerals of the tuff layers. Volcanic ash commonly yields vivid hues as it weathers. Mechanical weathering has made a system of joints through the cuestas, creating fractures along which rainwater has infiltrated and eroded.   This process called slope wash is especially effective at eroding fine-grained, poorly cemented grains and ash, resulting in carving-out deep, closely-spaced vertical gullies in cliff faces (scarp slopes) and producing the badland topography at RRC. Other places with similar geology and climate, like Cedar Breaks National Monument, Bryce Canyon (see photo above) National Park, and Badlands National Park exhibit even more striking examples of badland topography. Other destructive geologic processes shaping the landscape of RRC include mass wasting and stream erosion. The former is mostly in the form of rockfall, while the latter happens mainly during flash floods when the dry stream channels suddenly must transport torrents of water.

Learning Objectives

Through participation in this field trip students should be able to:

1. Identify landforms and locate position on a topographic map
2. Identify sedimentary rocks
3. Identify volcanic (extrusive) rocks
4. Describe the texture of sedimentary rocks
5. Describe the texture of volcanic (extrusive) igneous rocks
6. Recognize rockfall in the field
7. Recognize badland topography
8. Differential between the dip slope and the scarp slope
9. Identify a fault based on the disruption of strata
10. Using the relative position of the hanging wall and footwall, identify a fault as normal or reverse

Key Vocabulary

• Badland topography – a landscape with closely spaced drainages on steep slopes made of weakly cemented, fine-grained sediments; typically in arid climates with little vegetation
• Bedding contact – the planer contact between two types or ages of rock
• Channel bars – piles of alluvium (sediment deposited by a stream) in the middle of a stream channel that water would be forced to flow around.
• Cuesta – a hill or ridge of tilted strata, steep on one side gently sloping on the other, often capped by a resistant rock layer.  
• Dip – the amount of tilt of a planer surface, like a bedding plane, measured in degrees from horizontal
• Dip slope – the slope of a hill that is more or less parallel to the dip/tilt of the rock layers beneath
• Fault – a fracture in Earth’s crust along which movement has occurred
• Scarp slope – the slope opposite the dip slope, where the slope surface is close to perpendicular to the orientation of the rock layers
• Stream terrace – topographically flat surface elevated above the active stream channel representing the past position of the stream bed or flood plain for the stream  

Pre Field Questions

Read this webpage, Geologic summary of Red Rock Canyon Links to an external site. then answer the following question:

1. Why would the rocks of RRC be of special interest to paleontologists?
2. In what ancient environment did these rocks form?
3. About how long ago did the rocks form? How do geologists know?
4. What is the geologic name of the rock formation at RRC?
5. Provide a few examples of the different species of plants and animals that have been recovered from the rocks at RRC.

En Route Talking Points: I-605 north, I-210 west, CA-14 north

• I-605 north
  • The 605 takes us across part of the Los Angeles Basin. This incredibly deep basin formed from roughly 16 million to about 1 million years ago as tectonic forces slowly peeled the Transverse Ranges away from the Peninsular Ranges, rifting open a series of basins. The sea flooded these pits as they slowly opened, meaning what is today the metropolis of Los Angeles and Orange counties were once at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. All the while, sediment being eroded from the continental highlands filled these depressions with silt, sand, and gravel, up to 6 miles in thickness.
  • San Gabriel River
    • The San Gabriel River Freeway (formal name for I-605)
      • Follows a path of least resistance from river erosion
      • River erosion creates natural pathways
      • Pathways become footpaths
      • Footpaths become horse trails
      • Horse trails become thoroughfares
      • Thoroughfares become highways
    • River transports sediment from the San Gabriel mountains to its base level, the Pacific Ocean
    • Whittier Narrows water gap. The San Gabriel River and Rio Hondo River, just to the west, have created the Whittier Narrows by eroding faster downward than the hills have been uplifted, resulting in carving a topographic saddle, a “water gap”, 2 miles wide and 800 feet deep, bisecting the Puente Hills into 2 parts: the Montebello Hills to the west and Whittier Hills to the east. For a more detailed description read the excellent discussion in Geology Underfoot in Southern California, “Vignette 9 – A Boon to Communication, The Whittier Narrows”
    • Similarly, Santa Ana River erosion has created water gaps through hills that are now occupied by the 91 and 57 freeways
  • Whittier and Puente Hills (east of the 605) are being actively uplifted along the Whittier fault, which runs along the base of these hills; this fault is active as evidenced by the recent Whittier (1987, M 5.9), Chino Hills (2008, M 5.5), and La Habra (2014, M 5.1) earthquakes.
  • Montebello (Repetto) Hills (west of the 605)
    • Western extension of Puente Hills
    • Like Puente Hills, the Montebello Hills are made up of steeply tilted, south-dipping sedimentary rock that is typical of sediment in the LA Basin: mudstone, siltstone, sandstone, and conglomerate
  • On a clear day point out the San Gabriel Mountains making up the northern skyline and its highest peak, the 10,064 feet tall Mt San Antonio, a.k.a. Mt Baldy.
  • San Gabriel Mountains
    • Mountains at the northern end of the 605 freeway
      • Part of the Transverse Mountain Range, which also includes the Santa Susana, Santa Monica, and Santa Ynez Mountains the Northern Channel Islands to the west, and the San Bernardino Mountains and Little San Bernardino Mountain, including Joshua Tree National Park, to the east 
      • Compressional tectonic forces have rapidly uplifted the San Gabriel Mountains in the past 5 million years
        • Could be growing as fast or faster than the Himalayan Mountains (Prothero, 2011), at a rate as fast as 70 feet per 1000 years (Sylvester and Gans, 2016)
        • Rapid uplift evidenced by very deep, steep canyons, like Arroyo Seco or Big Tujunga Canyon and triangulated ridges
        • Mountain range is being uplifted along 2 faults, the San Andreas fault along the north side and the Sierra Madre-Cucamonga fault zone along the south side
          • Sierra Madre fault zone
            • Runs along the foot of mountains
            • Has facilitated as much as 10,000 feet of vertical uplift of the crust, which is today expressed as the San Gabriel Mountains
            • Associated the San Fernando fault that produced the 1971 Sylmar earthquake
          • Contains metamorphic rock as old as 1.7 billion years, as well as Proterozoic plutonic rocks; these were intruded by magma of diorite to granite composition that was generated by subduction of the Farallon Plate during the Mesozoic time
        • After passing the I-10 and shortly before arriving at the I-210 interchange watch for deep pits on either side of the freeway
          • Gravel pits mining alluvium being shed off of the San Gabriel Mountains
          • Gravel used for concrete and roadways
          • Water in a pit means it is deeper than the water table (depth to groundwater)
• I -210 west
  • The foothills are a series of coalesced alluvial fans that formed as the San Gabriel Mountains were uplifted, weathered, and eroded by streams; when the streams flow out of narrow mountain canyons, they slow and lose their ability to transport their sediment load, resulting in deposition and the formation of alluvial fans
  • Many of these stream channels are dammed where canyons open up, creating “catch flow basins” that trap or at least slow the dangerous boulder-sized clasts contained in inevitable debris flows
  • Continuing on the I-210 west at the CA-134 interchange, look for “benched” road cuts, a common practice used to increase slope stability
  • Driving through Sylmar takes one past the epicenter of the 1971 magnitude 6.5 Sylmar earthquake that caused over a billion dollars in damage and 65 deaths, mostly from the collapse of the Olive View Hospital
  • Los Angeles Aqueduct
    • As the 210 mergers with I-5 look ahead and you should notice a long pipe-like feature coming down the hillside just to the right of the freeway

Los Angeles Aqueduct. 

• • • • This is a chute for carrying water, baffled for aerating
    • One of three aqueduct systems brings water to the greater Los Angeles area, the other two being the California Aqueduct that delivers water from the western Sierra Nevadas, and the Colorado River Aqueduct brings water from the Colorado River
    • Designed by self-taught engineer William Mulholland to divert water from the Owens River and its tributaries to the burgeoning city of Los Angeles

William Mulholand. 

• • • • Water would be used to boost land values and profits for developers
    • Remarkable engineering feat considering it was designed and built over 100 years ago, so water flows downhill over its entire length, requiring no pumps and only gravity to transport water from its source 235 miles to L.A.
    • Building the aqueduct necessitated some shady business dealings, violence, and even deaths
      • Residents of Owens Valley had plans to use the water from the Owens River to develop agriculture and livestock
      • Fred Eaton, a former mayor of Los Angeles and politically well-connected, used a contact in Owens Valley to, through deception, buy up land in Owens Valley and with it water rights to the Owens River
      • Mullholland and Eaton were also working behind the scenes with a collection of friends and business partners to buy up cheap land in the San Fernando Valley, which would be made drastically more valuable once it was provided with a reliable water source
        • This story serves as part of the plot for the critically acclaimed 1974 movie Chinatown, starring Jack Nickolson: movie clip from Chinatown Links to an external site.
      • While completed ahead of schedule and under budget, the completion of the aqueduct consumed machines, mules, and men, with several construction-related deaths
      • Owens Valley residents rebelled upon learning that all the water of “their river” was being diverted to Los Angeles
        • In 1924 seventy armed Owens Valley men took control of an aqueduct gate and shut off the flow of water
        • In 1927 a 45-foot section was blown up
        • The uprisings were permanently squelched when Mulholland sent out machine gun-armed horseback patrols with orders to shoot to kill anyone disturbing the aqueduct
• I-5/I-14 interchange
  • Some of the overpasses here collapsed during both the 1994 and 1971 earthquakes

• CA-14 (Aerospace Highway)
  • Placerita Canyon Road
    • Placerita Canyon earned its name and fame for the placer (gold deposited as sediment in a stream channel) deposits that were discovered here in 1842, six years before the Gold Rush began in the western Sierra Nevada Mountains.
  • Santa Clara River
    • Longest undammed river in southern California (Prothero, 2011) and significant in that its channel hasn’t been modified by human construction
    • Braided stream, common in the foothills of mountains
    • Multiple intertwining channels, weaving around channel bars
    • Ephemeral stream channel in that it is dry unless it has just rained
    • The dry channel is deceiving because water is flowing in the subsurface as groundwater, which will eventually be utilized by communities downstream (Sylvester and Gans, 2016)
  • Vasquez Rocks
    • After passing Agua Dulce Road, look to the left (north) for spectacular stacks of tilted, red-brown sediment, jutting out of the ground
    • See chapter 4 for a more thorough description
  • Lamont Odet Vista Point
    • We are at the very edge of the Pacific Plate. Looking northward, our line of sight crosses the California Aqueduct, the San Andreas fault, and the plate boundary with the North Ameican Plate, and Antelope Valley beyond.
    • Disappointingly, the San Andreas fault is not an obvious gash, since it has been over 160 years since its last major break in southern California and erosion has “smoothed-out” disturbances, like scarps and ground cracks. Instead, the trace of the fault is the low hills, running northwest-southeast, through which highway 14 cuts through and lie on the opposite side of Lake Palmdale, continuing east into the mountains.
    • Lake Palmdale was originally a sag pond, a depression that collects water where there has been subsidence of the crust due to faulting. Here, the San Andreas fault is segmented, “stepping over” to create a pull-apart basin and sag pond – note how the arrows on either side of the pull-apart basin are pointing away from each other, creating tensional stress and subsidence. Recently, the sag pond was damned in order to store more drinking water for the cities of Palmdale and Lancaster that spread out from the edge of the North American Plate before us.

• • • The California Aqueduct provides the greater Los Angeles area with a significant portion of its water. Constructed in the 1960s, it brings water from the western Sierra Nevada Mountains and transports it 700 miles, making it one of the longest aqueducts in the world. It was built above ground so repairs can be made more quickly after damaging San Andreas fault earthquakes; a matter of days vs. weeks or even months if the water were contained in underground pipes (Sylvester and Gans, 2016)
  • Palmdale Roadcut
    • The ridge through which CA-14 transects formed through intense compression of the relatively young, Pliocene Anaverde Formation. This sliver of crust is caught between two branches of the San Andreas fault: the San Andreas proper along the southern side and a secondary branch, the Littlerock fault, trending along the northern margin of the ridge, making the ridge an example of a squeeze block (see pages 18-19) or a pressure ridge (Sylveter and Gans, 2016). Excavations for geologic study show that there are about 50 feet of right-lateral offset along the southside of the ridge.
  • Antelope Valley
    • Once through the Palmdale roadcut, you have crossed onto the North American Plate. “Antelope Valley”, containing the bustling communities of Palmdale and Lancaster, is a more appealing name invented by developers to describe what is actually the southwestern corner of the Mojave Desert.
    • As recently as a few tens of thousands of years ago, lakes covered large parts of Palmdale and Lancaster. As our climate has warmed and dried, the lakes evaporated.
      • Many archaeological sites occupy what would have been ancient lakeside beaches (Sylvester and Gans, 2016)
    • Rosamond Hills and Soledad Mountain (just north of the community of Rosamond, west of the highway)
      • The colorful rocks that make up these hills are Miocene age rhyolitic volcanics, which have been hydrothermally altered, adding to the coloring
      • Mined extensively for gold, silver, and radioactive minerals
      • Rock collectors have frequented this area for geodes, chalcedony, and opal
    • Garlock Fault
      • Trace is marked by the straight eastern mountain front of the Tehachapi Mountains
      • One of the longest faults in California at 160 miles
      • An exception to the norm, in that it is a left-lateral strike-slip fault – most horizontal faults in southern California are right-slip faults
      • Offset drainages abruptly jump to the right when crossing the fault
    • El Paso Fault and El Paso Mountains
      • El Paso Fault
        • Runs along the foot of the El Paso Mountains
        • Branch of the Garlock Fault
        • Facilitating uplift El Paso Mountains

Google Earth image with approximated location of the Garlock fault. - Google Earth. 

• • • El Paso Mountains
      • Contain Red Rock Canyon State Park
      • Many cuestas of colorful sedimentary rock separated by ephemeral stream channels
    • El Paso Mountains “Gorge”
      • Pass used by CA-14 through the El Paso Mountains
      • Formed by stream erosion, making it a water gap – note stream channel and stream terraces immediately to the right of highway

Prepare for stop 1, a little less than 1.5 miles from the southern front of the El Paso Mountains.

Field Trip Stops

Map showing approximated locations of field trip stops and points of interest.  

Stop 1 – Red Cliffs at Red Rock Canyon State Park

Addresses learning objectives:
2. Identify sedimentary rocks
3. Identify volcanic (extrusive) rocks
4. Describe the texture of sedimentary rocks
5. Describe the texture of volcanic (extrusive) igneous rocks
6. Recognize rockfall in the field
7. Recognize badland topography
8. Differential between the dip slope and the scarp slope
9. Identify a fault based on the disruption of strata
10. Using the relative position of the hanging wall and footwall, identify a fault as normal or reverse

Turn right from CA-14 onto the Red Cliffs access road, just after the “side road right” sign (|–).

Depart vehicles and assemble at the northwest end of the parking area. The bathroom is structure along the south side of the parking area.

Introduction to Red Rock Canyon

• Red Cliffs
  • Ask, What type of rock are the cliffs made of? – Sedimentary. How can we tell? – Strata. Strata are stacks of individual sedimentary layers or stratum. Each stratum represents a more or less continuous period of deposition. The boundary between one stratum and another is a bedding contact.
  • Instructors can use the Geography and Geology sections at the start of this chapter as a means to introduce RRC
  • Cliff face represents the scarp slope of a cuesta (more discussion at stop 2)
  • Cliff face also provides a good example of badland topography

Activity 1: Pair-up students and have them examine the texture of some of the cobbles and boulders near the base of the cliffs. Help them differentiate between a fine-grained sedimentary rock and volcanic rock.

Activity 2: Have students come back to the edge of the parking area and ask them to point out any evidence of mass wasting. – Rockfall should be evident.

Walk back towards the highway and just around the western edge of the Red Cliffs so you’re standing in the wash. Direct students to look to the northwest, to where the buff-colored strata intersect the highway then look about 200 feet to the right, where a fault offsets strata.  

Activity 3: Ask students to identify the fault, then make a simple sketch that shows the strata offset and identifies the hanging wall and footwall. Ask: Considering the position of the hanging wall relative to the footwall, what type of fault is this? – Normal

Fault exposed at Red Cliffs. 

Cross-section perspective drawing of a normal fault.  

Walk back and across the parking area to the far eastern side and up the trail to the saddle of the north-south trending ridge. From the saddle, one can see immediately to the east the confluence of 2 ephemeral streams, with a braided stream channel pattern. Looking southward, we see the stream channel at the bottom of the gorge, alongside the highway.

Activity 4: Q & A with students:

• What type of stream channel pattern do the stream channels have?
• Does/did the stream have any role in forming the gorge through which the highway runs?

Discuss with students that most valleys and narrow, steep-sided valleys called “gorges” are formed by river erosion.

Return to vehicles and proceed to the visitor center. Turn off is about 1/3 mile north on CA-14; use left turn lane to turn left on Abbott Drive, and continue for a little less than a mile.

Stop 2 – Visitor Center and Desert View Nature Trail Hike

Addresses learning objectives:
1. Identify landforms and locate position on a topographic map
2. Identify sedimentary rocks
3. Identify volcanic (extrusive) rocks
7. Recognize badland topography
8. Differential between the dip slope and the scarp slope

You might wish to start this second stop with a lunch or bathroom break. The picnic area will be evident as you enter the visitor center parking lot from Abbot Road. There are bathrooms in the parking lot area and inside the visitor’s center.   The visitor center is open during the spring and fall and has some informative exhibits that are worth a look if you have the time.

From the visitor center, walk to where the campground access road enters the southeast corner of the parking lot (far left corner if your back is to the visitor center) and proceed about 1/3 mile south to the Desert View Nature Trail trailhead. Take this trail up to the saddle, where you’ll find a sign for “Whistler Ridge”.

Activity 5: Before starting the ascent up the ridge, ask students how this slope is different than the scarp slope (cliff face) that they saw at Red Cliffs (stop 1). Possible answers may include: “not as steep”; “different color”; “can’t see layers”. Point out that the slope they are about to climb is an example of a dip slope – the slope of a hill that is more or less parallel to the dip/tilt of the layers beneath. This is the slope on the opposite side of the scarp slope, where the slope surface is close to perpendicular to the orientation of the rock layers.

A cross-section cartoon of a cuesta, showing the dip slope and scarp slope.

Also, point out the difference in rock types between the rock upon which you are standing, sedimentary rock of the Dove Springs formation, and the dark brown-black basalt that makes up most of the steep slope of Whistler Ridge. This represents a geologic contact between these two distinct rock types.  

Proceed to top of the basalt-mantled slope. Remind students to exercise caution at the top of the slope to prevent falling. The top of the slope offers panoramic views. Point out the badland topography of the cliffs to the west and the dip slope/scarp slope of a cuesta to the north. This cuesta is also viewable from Abbot Road.

Activity 6: Using the map below (or other topographic maps) ask students to locate themselves on the map. In order to do this, the following steps are first recommended:

1. Orient the map and themselves so they are facing north
2. Identify CA-14
3. Locate Ricardo Campground Road and the visitor center

Now ask them to locate themselves on the hilltop between Ricardo Campground Road and CA-14. Once everyone has been able to accurately indicate their place on the hilltop, you may want to ask them to locate other landmarks, like some of the hilltops (cuestas) to the north and west. Perhaps have them label each location: A (hilltop on which the group is standing), B, C, etc.

Modified topographic map of the Red Rock Canyon area - https://apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

Activity 7: Have students make a simple cross-section drawing of a cuesta, showing the tilted strata structure and labeling the dip slope and scarp slope.

Activity 8: Point out the ephemeral stream channel and how it correlates to the valleys in between the hills. Ask: Is this just a coincidence or does the stream channel play some role in making the valley?

Follow-up Questions

1. What sedimentary feature makes sedimentary rocks most recognizable?
2. Make a cross-sectional drawing of a cuesta. The drawing should be labeled to include the tilted strata structure, dip slope, and scarp slope. Label drawing. Why are there cuestas at RRC?
3. Write a short essay summarizing the geologic history of the Dove Spring Formation that provides examples of the evidence used by geologists to construct its history.

4. What role do streams play in forming valleys or gorges?