Manuel Berrios
Geosystems, Block 3
Mr. O’Shea
October 20, 2009
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
The Black Canyon of the Gunnison River, a United States National Park located in Montrose County, Colorado, has a unique and amazing landscape which was formed hundreds of centuries ago. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is a deep gorge which the Gunnison River flows through. It is so deep and narrow that little sunlight reaches into it, making the walls look black. The action of water and rock scouring down through hard Proterozoic crystalline rock formed the canyon. Most of the rocks that lay along the length of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison are ancient; older than 500 million years, and are either metamorphic, or igneous, with some sedimentary layers along the edges. The rocks in the Black Canyon have a wide variety of minerals. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is the only canyon in North America that combines the narrow opening, sheer walls, and startling depths. It is not known when the formation began but the area became a U.S. national monument on March 2, 1933. Just recently on October 21, 1999, the monument was made a U.S. National Park. The Black Canyon was proclaimed a national monument in 1933 by President Herbert Hoover. Congress made it a national park in 1999.
Congress has also designated the park lands below the canyon rims for additional protection within the National Wilderness Preservation System.
The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is amazingly deep and sheer, with plunging cliffs, soaring buttresses and the thundering Gunnison River. The greatest depth at Black Canyon is 2,722 feet, Warner Point. The narrowest width at the river is 40 feet wide. The Park itself encompasses an area of 47 square miles and contains the deepest and most dramatic 14 miles of the canyon, which continues upstream into the Curecanti National Recreation Area and downstream into the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area, for a total of 53 miles. And it is still one of the lesser known parks in Untied States.
The rock layers of Black Canyon of the Gunnison tell a story of past environments, ancient animals and vibrant processes of change. This geologic canyon is unlike any other, in the sense that it is hard to explain the evolution of this structure which has taken about two million years to develop. Time is completely thrown out of balance. It is like a raw cut in the Earth’s crust exposing millions of years of geologic history, while sunlight enters only briefly each day due to its narrow opening. The Gunnison River runs along the canyon floor. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison has been carved and has gotten its shape by the Gunnison River in its rush to join with the Colorado River. Written history began by the Ute Indians living in the area back in approximately 1500 A.D. The canyon has been a mighty barrier to humans. Only its rims, never the gorge, show evidence of human occupation – not even by Ute Indians living in the area since written history began.
While the people of the Ute bands knew of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, it was an obscure geographic feature to explorers for hundreds of years. The Spanish were the first Europeans to canvas western Colorado with two expeditions, one led by Juan Rivera in 1765, and the other by Fathers Dominguez and Escalante in 1776. Both were looking for passage to the California coast, and both passed by the canyon.
Fur trappers of the early 1800s undoubtedly knew of the canyon in their search for beaver pelts. They left no written record of the canyon, though, probably because they couldn’t, in fact, read or write.
By the middle of the century, exploration of the American west had captured the nation’s attention. In turn expeditions came to the Black Canyon searching for railroad passageways, mineral wealth, or in a quest for water. Eventually explorers came to see the canyon, not for commercial wealth, but for the renewal and recreation that it offered.
Today, you can walk in the footsteps of some of these hardy and inquisitive forebearers. The canyon still offers a rugged and demanding experience, even as it did more than a hundred of years ago.
The Black Canyon of the Gunnison River is also the result of volcanic activity and the geologic activities of the Gunnison Uplift. The Gunnison Uplift was a block of crust that had been forced upwards during the Laramide Orogeny, a period of mountain building in western North America. The Gunnison Uplift allowed the Gunnison River to cut its way down through the thick layers of the sedimentary rocks of the Gunnison. The river then began to expose the much harder Precambrian basement rocks of the Gunnison Uplift. The Gunnison then began to battle the rocks beneath it. At the rate of about one inch per every hundred years, the Gunnison slowly worked its way through the crystalline rock, forming the narrow, steep-sided Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Seasonal floods,
or does anyone know of a rephrasing website to do it for me?
There’s no such thing as a rephrasing website.
Good luck!
There’s no such thing as a rephrasing website.
Good luck!
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