Cedar Breaks National Monument

Cedar Breaks Natonal Monument encloses a spectacular natural amphitheater more than 3 miles wide and 2,000' high on the western edge of the Markagunt Plateau. The Markagunt Plateau is on the western edge of the greater Colorado Plateau, and is made up of the same materials as Zion National Park: shale, limestone and sandstone that were deposited at the bottom of ancient Lake Claron about 60 million years ago. Those materials were compressed over time by overlying layers of depositional and volcanic materials, then they were uplifted by geologic processes and exposed by erosion. Erosion continues today at the rate of about 2" every 5 years. The top of the plateau is still in place as it is composed of a hard rhyolitic tuff that was laid down in large volcanic eruptions some 28 million years ago. The rock is red and purple because the living creatures in that ancient lake concentrated iron and manganese in their bodies and then deposited that in the sediments of the lake when they died and fell to the bottom.

Cedar Breaks National Monument was established in 1933. Back in those days, a visitor's lodge was built near the south end of the canyon, but that was razed in 1972. There is a newer visitor center located on the canyon rim but at an elevation around 10,350', it is only open from June through October. The upper elevations of the property are usually snowed in from October through May. There is also a campsite near the canyon rim and several hiking trails in the monument. In 2006, a legislative proposal to expand the monument to include the Ashdown Gorge Wilderness (at the foot of the natural amphitheater), the nearby Flanigan Arch and some private land, and then to rename the whole Cedar Breaks National Park was under consideration. To date, there's doesn't seem to be anything happening with it.