Colorado Plateau

The Four Corners Monument is where the states of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico meet. (The states are listed in clockwise order.)

The Colorado Plateau, also called the Colorado Plateau Province, is a physiographic region of the Intermontane Plateaus, roughly centered on the Four Corners region of the southwestern United States. The province covers an area of 337,000 km2 (130,000 mi2) within western Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, southern and eastern Utah, and northern Arizona. About 90% of the area is drained by the Colorado River and its main tributaries: the Green, San Juan, and Little Colorado.[1][2]

In the southwest corner of the Colorado Plateau lies the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Much of the Plateau’s landscape is related, in both appearance and geologic history, to the Grand Canyon. The nickname “Red Rock Country” suggests the brightly colored rock left bare to the view by dryness and erosion. Domes, hoodoos, fins, reefs, goblins, river narrows, natural bridges, and slot canyons are only some of the additional features typical of the Plateau.

The Colorado Plateau has the greatest concentration of national parks in the United States. Among its parks are Grand Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Arches National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, and Petrified Forest National Park. Among the national monuments are Dinosaur National Monument, Hovenweep National Monument, Wupatki National Monument, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, and Colorado National Monument

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