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Details Relating to McKee’s Proposal
51. 
Layering, Limestone, Why Here? 
Why So “Recently”? Marble Canyon, Distant Cavern Connection, Perpendicular Faults, Arching, Inner Gorge, Missing Talus, Unusual Erosion, Nankoweap Canyon. Same as item 17.
52. Side Canyons, Barbed Canyons, Slot Canyons. Same as item 18.
53. Forces, Energy, and Mechanisms. Since 1960, geologists have claimed that plate tectonics provides the forces, energy, and mechanisms that made the Grand Canyon.74 Supposedly, a subducting plate, which has since vanished, dove from the Pacific Ocean down about 1,000 miles into the mantle and 1,000 miles eastward. These geologists admit that the plate acted differently from any other plate in their theory when it was under North America; it crushed and buckled the Rocky Mountains75 but only lifted the Colorado Plateau. Why the plateau’s layers remained horizontal while the mountains’ layers crushed and buckled is never explained.
But more to the point, subduction is a myth. Table 5 on page 158 summarizes 15 reasons “Why Plates Have Not Subducted.” The details are given elsewhere in that chapter.
54. Missing River. For the early Colorado River to flow southeast along the path now occupied by the Little Colorado River, as McKee proposed, would require the river to flow uphill. Even if elevations changed so the river once flowed downhill to the southeast, it would have to flow up over the continental divide to reach the Rio Grande. Finally, “studies along this postulated course have failed to yield any evidence of southeastward drainage.”76
Many geologists are not embarrassed to claim, with no supporting evidence, that rivers once flowed in directions that today would be uphill, over mile-high mountains. These geologists simply claim that, with millions of years, things could have been different.
To be sure, today that would be impossible, for the Colorado River would have had to run uphill. But what is now uphill, in a geologic yesterday, may well have been downhill. Even geologists must remind themselves that the present is merely one insignificant moment out of hundreds of millions of years.77
Outside of geology, certainly in the applied sciences, such wild, unscientific speculation would result in canceled contracts, rejected proposals, disbelief, or laughter.
55. Kaibab Plateau. This proposal requires a river west of the Grand Canyon to carve eastward (upstream) 130 miles. Supposedly, the river climbed over high cliffs and plateaus by headward erosion and captured the water of the early Colorado River in north central Arizona. “No one has lived long enough to see one stream work its way upslope and capture another.”78
The Grand Wash Cliffs mark the western boundary of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado Plateau. Those 4,000-foot cliffs would have been the first major obstacle if headward erosion occurred. Other canyons cut only slightly into the Grand Wash Cliffs. If headward erosion was so efficient in cutting a path for the Colorado River, it should have been equally efficient for other canyons directly north, because they had similar weather and rocks.79
Had 130 miles of headward erosion occurred, the basin that contains the Hualapai Limestone would have been quickly filled with sediments from that excavation. Little room would have remained for depositing limestone.80
56. Missing Mesozoic Rock. Same as item 21.
57. Fossils. Same as item 22.
58. Tipped Layers below Unconformity. Same as item 23.
59. Time or Intensity? Same as item 24.