Bryce Canyon National Park visit-planning guide for its southern Utah setting

A wonderland of crimson hoodoos and amphitheaters on Utah's Paunsaugunt Plateau

Bryce Canyon National Park

Bryce Canyon National Park occupies a remarkable position on the southeastern edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau in southwestern Utah, part of the vast Colorado Plateau geographic province. The landscape that visitors encounter today represents the product of roughly 60 million years of geological processes, including two major periods of uplift that raised the Colorado Plateaus and created the vertical joints that would eventually erode into the hoodoos visible today. The distinctive pink and white cliffs of the Claron Formation, laid down during the Cenozoic era in lake and river environments, proved susceptible to the frost weathering and erosive forces that preferentially attacked weaker rock layers while leaving harder layers as the caps of the hoodoos. The result is a surreal landscape of fantastically shaped pinnacles, natural bridges, and amphitheater walls that unlike a canyon was not formed by a single central stream but by headward erosion working from the plateau edge backward into the tableland. The park's position at elevation creates a montane desert environment that supports surprisingly diverse plant and animal life across its elevational range.