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[ The Fountains of the Great Deep > The Origin of the Grand Canyon > References and Notes ]

References and Notes

1. “Though scientists have studied the canyon for more than 150 years, a definitive answer as to how or when the canyon formed eludes them. The one thing scientists do agree on is that the canyon was carved by the erosive power of the Colorado River, but the river itself has carried away the evidence of its earlier history.”  Wayne Ranney, Carving the Grand Canyon: Evidence, Theories, and Mystery (Grand Canyon, Arizona: Grand Canyon Association, 2005), back cover.

u “Grand Canyon is somewhat unique among our national parks because of the lack of a single, scientific theory regarding its origin.” Ranney, p. 20.

2. Ranney, p. 11.

3. The length of the Grand Canyon (216 miles) should not be confused, as it often is, with the combined length (277 miles) of the Grand Canyon plus Marble Canyon. Both lie within Grand Canyon National Park.

4. Bruce Babbitt, Grand Canyon: An Anthology (Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Press, 1978), p. 50.

5. “... the suspended load carried by the river is prodigious. For the water year ending September 30, 1957, this load averaged more than 425,000 tons a day, or almost five tons each second. ... Average figures for a 50-year span are even higher—about 550,000 tons per day ....” John S. Shelton, Geology Illustrated (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1966), p. 30.

u Some have joked that the Colorado River is too thick to drink, but too thin to plow.

6. Layers of volcanic ash were found and dated in the limestone. [See Jon E. Spencer et al., “⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar Geochronology of the Hualapai Limestone and Bouse Formation and Implications for the Age of the Lower Colorado River,” Colorado River: Origin and Evolution, editors Richard A. Young and Earle E. Spamer, proceedings of a symposium held at Grand Canyon National Park in June 2000 (Grand Canyon, Arizona: Grand Canyon Association, 2001), pp. 89–91.]

u Stephen B. Castor and James E. Faulds, “Post-6 Ma Limestone along the Southeastern Part of the Las Vegas Valley Shear Zone, Southern Nevada,” in Young and Spamer, pp. 77–79.

7. R. J. Rice, “The Canyon Conundrum,” The Geographic Magazine, Vol. 55, June 1983, pp. 288–292.

u “... the Hualapai [Limestone] contains no evidence for a major river emptying into the lake in which the limestone precipitated.”  Ivo Lucchitta, “History of the Grand Canyon and of the Colorado River in Arizona,” Grand Canyon Geology, editors Stanley S. Beus and Michael Morales (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 270.

8. “Probably the most interesting discovery is that a canyon as deep and impressive as the Grand Canyon can be carved in just a few [1.7–4.5] million years—even in rocks that do not yield easily to erosion.” Ivo Lucchitta, Canyon Maker: A Geological History of the Colorado River (Flagstaff, Arizona: Museum of Northern Arizona, 1988), p. 30.

9. These rocks are of three types: (1) rim gravels, (2) a type of lava that caps gravel and colluvium, and (3) a debris fan that spilled out of Pierce Canyon and is deposited across the mouth of the Grand Canyon. [For details, see Lucchitta, “History of the Grand Canyon and of the Colorado River in Arizona,” pp. 269–270.]

10. According to one famous geologist, no Colorado River sediments existed even 1,800,000 years ago.

Did the Colorado River exist anywhere in Pliocene time? If not, how and when may it have come on the scene? ... There are, so far as known, no true river deposits older than Pleistocene along the entire course of the Colorado River—that is, deposits of the specific type that such a river normally lays down. Eliot Blackwelder, “Origin of the Colorado River,” Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Vol. 45, 30 June 1934, pp. 554, 557.

11. “Under ordinary circumstances an uplifted plateau acts as a barrier to a river’s course, causing it to flow around that barrier through lower ground. Rivers do not normally flow into elevated plateaus but the Colorado River is not a normal river. It appears to cut right through this uplifted wall of rock, which lies three thousand feet above the adjacent Marble Platform to the east. This odd scenario was the foremost problem recognized by the very first geologists who saw the Grand Canyon. Why does the Colorado River seem to flow into the heart of an uplifted plateau?” Ranney, p. 22.

12. The 1989 Information Please Almanac (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1989), p. 544.

13. John Wesley Powell, who named Marble Canyon, mistakenly thought some of its limestone, polished by water, was marble.

14. The entrance to Grand Canyon Caverns is located at 35°31'42.25"N, 113°13'59.81"W. The red smoke exited at 36°20'44.86"N, 112°43'17.78"W and undoubtedly traveled along Havasu Fault, which also exits at that point. [See Gary A. David, “A Dilemma of Horns,” Four Corners Magazine, February-March 2006, p. 4. Also see Pam Powers, Recollections of the Grand Canyon Caverns (Peach Springs, Arizona: Grand Canyon Caverns & Inn, 2006), pp. 4, 43.]

15. “Additionally, in Marble Canyon, many tributary streams come into the Colorado River flowing generally to the north, against the southerly flow of the modern river. This creates a pattern of drainage known to geologists as ‘barbed’ tributaries. The Marble Platform, into which the tributaries have been carved, also slopes down to the northeast exactly opposite the flow direction of the modern river.” Ranney, p. 23.

16. Troy L. Péwé, Colorado River Guidebook (Phoenix: Sims Printing Co., Inc., 1969), p. 44. (Péwé showed me these dense boulder fields, but unfortunately I took no pictures.)

u For excellent pictures and locations of these boulders and a detailed description of the Nankoweap Delta area, see Richard Hereford et al., “Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology of the Nankoweap Rapids Area, Marble Canyon, Arizona,” U.S. Geological Survey, Report 502, 1996, pp. 1–18 and the accompanying map: 1-2608.

17. All dimensions for this profile were taken from Profile B–B’ on the outstanding “Geologic Map of the Eastern Part of the Grand Canyon,” 1986 edition, produced by the Grand Canyon Association.

18. For an interesting description of this arching, see, Stanley S. Beus and Michael Morales, Grand Canyon Geology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 5.

19. Along the Bright Angel Trail, from top to bottom, those thick limestone layers are Kaibab Limestone (350 feet), Toroweap Formation (250 feet), Redwall Limestone (450 feet), Temple Butte Limestone (35 feet), and Muav Limestone (375 feet). Limestone forms only in the presence of water, but earth’s sedimentary rocks contain so much limestone that earth’s waters would need to be toxic a thousand times over before limestone first formed. [See pages 244–249.]

20. “The forces that drove rock uplift of the low-relief, high-elevation, tectonically stable Colorado Plateau are the subject of long-standing debate.” Mousumi Roy et al., “Colorado Plateau Magmatism and Uplift by Warming of Heterogeneous Lithosphere,” Nature, Vol. 459, 18 June 2009, p. 978.

21. “Another curiosity with the Colorado River’s course is that it disregards the fault lines that cross its path. ... The Colorado River within the Grand Canyon crosses dozens of faults, many of them at right angles, and continues on downstream through blocks of strata that are solid and unbroken by faults.”Ranney, p. 22.

u Several of these more prominent, nearly vertical faults that are perpendicular to the Colorado River are 19-Mile Fault, Bright Angel Fault, Grand Wash Fault, Havasu Fault, Hurricane Fault, Muav Fault, Sevier Fault, Paunsaugunt (PAWN-suh-gant) Fault, and Toroweap Fault. Most of these named faults are more than 50 miles long. Probably most side canyons that are perpendicular to the Colorado River were initiated by faults that are no longer visible.

22. So-called explanations in geology frequently use words, such as:

uplift, collision, subduction, upheaval, drift, tectonics, subsidence, convulsions, orogeny, crustal movements, stresses within the earth, and mountain building

without conveying an understanding of the physics involved and the forces, energy, and mechanisms that would produce these movements. When hearing or reading such terms, one should ask whether a scientific, cause-to-effect understanding exists for the claimed motion. A mere assumption that the motion was imperceptibly slow and occurred over millions of years is not an explanation, even if accompanied by impressive sounding, but irrelevant, technical terms.

The hydroplate theory does not have this problem. In most cases, the force for the hydroplate theory is gravity, and the mechanisms and energy involved are consistent with physics and have been seen by most of us on a small scale.

23. “Oddly enough, the Grand Canyon is located in a place where it seemingly shouldn’t be.” Ranney, p. 20.

24. Alexandra Witze, “Grand Canyon’s High Surroundings May be Product of Continental Lift,” Science News, Vol. 179, 21 May 2011, p. 12.

25. “It doesn’t take millions of years to create an impressive channel. Flowing liquid can do a lot of work in a short period of time.” Alan D. Howard, as quoted by Sid Perkins, “Texas Flood Carves Canyon in Days,” Science News, Vol. 178, 17 July 2010, p. 15.

26. John S. Newberry, “Part 3: Geological Report,” in Report upon the Colorado River of the West, Explored in 1857 and 1858 by Joseph C. Ives (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1861; reprint, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan, 2006), pp. 19–20.

27. Ibid., p. 45.

28. John Eliot Allen et al., Cataclysms on the Columbia (Portland, Oregon: Timber Press, 1986).

29. John Wesley Powell, The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (1875; reprint, New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), pp. 89–90.

30. Carol S. Breed, “A Century of Conjecture on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon,” Four Corners Geological Society Guidebook (Flagstaff, Arizona: Museum of Northern Arizona, 1969), p. 63.

31. S. F. Emmons, “The Origin of Green River,” Science, Vol. 6, 2 July 1897, pp. 19–21.

32. Blackwelder, pp. 551–566.

33. This proposal was the consensus of experts on the Grand Canyon who attended a symposium led by Edwin D. McKee. [See Edwin D. McKee et al., Evolution of the Colorado River in Arizona: A Hypothesis Developed at the Symposium on Cenozoic Geology of the Colorado Plateau in Arizona (Flagstaff, Arizona: Northern Arizona Society of Science and Art, 1964).]

34. Charles B. Hunt, “Grand Canyon and the Colorado River, Their Geologic History,” Geology of the Grand Canyon (Flagstaff, Arizona: Grand Canyon Natural History Association, 1976), pp. 129–141.

35. Ivo Lucchitta, Canyon Maker, pp. 1–32.

u Lucchitta, “History of the Grand Canyon and of the Colorado River in Arizona,” pp. 260–274.

  

36. In 1987, I asked the State Geologist for Arizona, Larry D. Fellows, if a fault was in that region. After checking his files, he told me that he found no record of a fault. However, months later, I found an old river-runner map that showed a fault, called 19-Mile Fault, where the Colorado River crosses the solid white line.  During a raft trip down the Colorado River, I verified that the fault existed, but the north side of the fault was lifted only about 100 feet above the south side. [See Figure 137.]

If the fault extended along the dashed white line in Figure119 on page 209, it would be exposed inside Rider Canyon, the barbed canyon to the northwest. Later, during a trip into Rider Canyon, the fault—and much more—were found!

Between Rider Canyon and Marble Canyon is what I will call a peninsula. If you look closely in Figure 119, you will see that it narrows, or “necks down,” along the solid white line. [See also Figure 118 on page 209.] Along that line are many sinkholes and a long depression. They show that subsurface water drained below that line and removed considerable material, as if the line marked a nearly vertical fault (a plane of weakness, slippage, and drainage). Drainage would have spilled out where the solid-white line segment intersected Marble and Rider Canyons, undercutting and removing material, thereby narrowing (necking) the peninsula.

Also, vertical cracks, several hundred feet deep, have dramatically opened along the edge of Rider Canyon. [See Figure 138.] Some large blocks have fallen, or are about to fall, into Rider Canyon. The tension that split open and formed Marble Canyon no doubt produced these parallel cracks. 

If block faulting produced the 2,000-foot Echo-Vermilion Cliff system as the Colorado Plateau was hydraulically uplifted, why was the fault’s offset, as seen at the Colorado River, only about 100 vertical feet and not 2,000 feet? Answer: As Grand Lake’s breaching removed mass south of the funnel, the south side of the fault steadily rose and arched upward, reducing the original offset. More mass was eroded as the ground rose, so even more ground rose. Movement stopped when the south side of the slightly reversed fault slammed into the north side. (Note: For upward movement to occur, block faulting will produce a slightly reversed fault, not a normal fault. Consult a physical geology textbook to understand the difference between normal and reverse faults.)

These discoveries along the solid-white line segment in June 1988, convinced me that block faulting had occurred and that Echo and Vermilion Cliffs had been joined along the dashed white line. (Block faulting obviously occurred at several places directly north in Utah: Book Cliffs, Roan Cliffs, and the Grand Staircase.) The funnel also supports the presence of Grand Lake whose shoreline was 15–20 miles to the northeast. The funnel was carved as Grand Lake breached the 2,000-foot-high Echo-Vermilion Cliff. This led to the formation of Marble Canyon and the Grand Canyon.

37. The coordinates of this location (named Jack Point) are 36°41'56.76"N, 111°37'57.84"W.

38. H. S. Alexander, “Pothole Erosion,” Journal of Geology, Vol. 40, January–December 1932, pp. 305–337.

39. Norman Meek and John Douglass, “Lake Overflow: An Alternative Hypothesis for Grand Canyon Incision and Development of the Colorado River,” in Young and Spamer, pp. 199–204.

40. I first proposed the hydroplate theory in 1972. In 1986–1987, after a year of study and field work in Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, I located, using geological and topological features, the boundaries of a large, now-extinct lake. I named it Grand Lake. In the fall of 1988, I described, in lectures and recorded radio broadcasts on more than a hundred different stations, its location and how its breaching formed the Grand Canyon. This explanation for the Grand Canyon was first published in July 1989. [See Walt Brown, In the Beginning, 5th edition (Phoenix: The Center for Scientific Creation, 1989), pp. 75–76, 83.] Another extinct lake, Hopi Lake, had been described earlier. [See R. B. Scarborough, “Cenozoic Erosion and Sedimentation in Arizona,” Arizona Bureau of Geology and Mineral Technology, 16 November 1984.]

Dr. Steven A. Austin of The Institute for Creation Research (ICR), as he eventually admitted in writing, purchased the 5th edition of In the Beginning “in August 1989, a few weeks after it was published.” [Steven Austin, personal correspondence, 29 August 1994.] In early 1990, Austin published, as if they were his, some key ideas of mine concerning Grand Lake and the formation of the Grand Canyon. I learned this on 7 May 1990, but said nothing to anyone about it for three years. On 4 November 1990, two people told me that Austin, on the previous day, had publicly said I had taken those key ideas from him. Again, I kept silent.

By mid-June 1993, I realized that Austin’s false allegations against me were spreading and starting to hurt others. (Austin was also the unnamed geologist mentioned in Endnote 138 on page 281.) For example, in September 1992, Dr. Robert V. Gentry filmed me at the Grand Canyon presenting the Grand Lake explanation, as part of a professional and very expensive video production. Then, on 10 June 1993, Gentry told me that Dr. D. Russell Humphreys (who had worked closely with Austin and was then at ICR) was reporting that I had plagiarized ideas of Austin’s. (Humphreys later wrote that he did not use the word “plagiarize,” but Gentry insists that was the intended meaning.) Gentry told Humphreys that he did not believe that was true, but Gentry was naturally concerned about the consequences of those allegations for his production, so he appealed to me for help. I then realized that the issue had to be addressed.

By way of background, geologists have known since at least 1861 that canyons can be carved by the breaching of a lake. [See Newberry, Endnote 26.] The discoveries of J Harlen Bretz in 1923 have shown generations of undergraduate geology students how a breaching lake can produce canyons in weeks. [See Endnote 28.]

In the early 1980s, Austin and many others saw that a small lake on Mount St. Helens had breached and that the escaping water had quickly carved a small canyon. In 1985, John H. Whitmore, a student of Austin’s, wondered in a term paper if Hopi Lake, the extinct but previously discovered lake directly east of the Grand Canyon, could have breached the Kaibab Plateau and carved the Grand Canyon. That would have been highly unlikely, because (1) the Kaibab Plateau is about 2,000 feet higher than the lake could have been, (2) the water would have had to penetrate through 30 miles of hard rock that was denser than concrete, and (3) any spillage down such a gradual slope to the west would erode little.

In 1986, Dr. Edmond W. Holroyd told Austin that if a dam were built across the Colorado River near Grand Canyon Village, a very large lake would form. (Its area would have included and been larger than the combination of both Hopi Lake and what I later identified as Grand Lake.) Holroyd drew his big lake on a map and noted that some believed that if a very long east-west fault had then developed between what are now the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon, the lake’s escaping waters might have carved the Grand Canyon. However, such an east-west fault has never been found, and faults in the Grand Canyon region typically run perpendicular to the canyon, not parallel. Furthermore, a canyon that eroded along a fault would not bend or meander, as the Grand Canyon does.

The work of Newberry and Bretz and the ideas of Whitmore and Holroyd led Austin to wonder in a very tentative way (as his writings show) if the breaching of Hopi Lake, directly east of the Grand Canyon, had carved the Grand Canyon. Austin knew the serious problems (mentioned above) that faced any proposal suggesting that the Grand Canyon was carved by the breaching of Hopi Lake. What he did not realize, as his writings revealed, was that a much larger and separate lake was once north of Hopi Lake. (Austin could not produce any spoken or written record showing that he knew, before 1989, anything about Grand Lake, yet in 1990, he published a map—shockingly similar to the one I had published in 1989—showing, as he labeled it, “Grand Lake.”) In 1988, I had discovered not only the boundaries of Grand Lake, but also its breach point.

When Grand Lake breached, the escaping torrent of water quickly caused the breaching of the western end of Hopi Lake as well. Both breach points are easily seen at the extreme north and south ends of Marble Canyon. I call the northern breach point (where Grand Lake spilled) the funnel. It is shown on pages 209–210. The southern breach point (where Hopi Lake spilled) is marked by the unique terrain where the Little Colorado River enters the Colorado River. After both lakes breached, the escaping waters carved the Grand Canyon in weeks and lifted (upwarped) the Kaibab Plateau. This chapter presents two-dozen other evidences, which I gathered over a year’s time (1988–1989), that support the Grand Lake explanation.

The chapter "The Hydroplate Theory: An Overview" on pages 110–145 and the chapters on liquefaction (pages 186–198) and limestone (pages 244–249) fit together other necessary pieces of the puzzle: What produced all the sediments? What layered the strata and sorted the fossils? What cemented the rocks so uniformly? Why does the Grand Canyon expose so much limestone? And what were the forces, energies, and mechanisms that lifted the Rocky Mountains and raised the Colorado Plateau so high? Today’s Grand Canyon would not exist if the Colorado Plateau had not first risen more than a mile above sea level. If the Grand Canyon is a consequence of a global flood, where did all the flood water come from, and where did it go afterwards? Any attempt to explain the Grand Canyon without answering these broader questions is shallow at best. And, of course, any explanation that is not accompanied by definite predictions is hollow.

After pondering Bob Gentry’s appeal for me to respond to Humphreys’ allegation, I realized I needed to go to the source and address these spreading accusations. (If I had simply been seeking priority over a lake’s name, as some have implied, I would have done so years earlier.) So, on 18 June 1993, I wrote Austin explaining the seriousness of the matter and asked if these stories I had heard were true. That same day, I also wrote ICR’s Director, Dr. Henry M. Morris (now deceased) to inform him of this issue.

In all, Morris, Austin, and I exchanged six letters during the summer of 1993. Austin always denied that he had accused me of plagiarism, although I explained how he could contact the witnesses who heard him and were shocked by what he had said. He never contacted those witnesses. He also denied taking any ideas of mine, although some of the new details he had published were so specific that they obviously had come from my work. (Mapmakers usually place on their maps tiny, unique details—even intentional errors—so that anyone who copies the map will be clearly shown to be guilty of copyright infringement.) Austin tried in several deceptive ways to show that he had come up with the Grand Lake explanation first. All were easily shown to be false—as a reading of our correspondence clearly shows.

By 19 August 1993, it was clear that we would not be able to resolve the issue ourselves, so I proposed in a letter to Morris and Austin that we put the messy matter into the hands of an independent Christian arbitrator to thoroughly study and resolve. Morris and Austin flatly refused. Denials and “bobbing and weaving” continued. Finally, after we had exchanged thirteen more letters, I told Morris and Austin that if they did not allow this matter to be arbitrated so it would not create further dissension and confusion, and so that behind-the-scenes accusations against me and my associates would cease, I would make the issue public. They reluctantly agreed, but, in various ways, Morris and Austin thwarted all efforts to seek arbitration. For example, after consulting with their lawyer, and only four days before the arbitration was to take place, they backed out of their written agreement to arbitrate and announced that they would participate only in nonbinding mediation. (Arbitration is binding.) After months of effort, and having finally reached agreement on the time, place, and arbitrator, I felt betrayed. With plane reservations made and all preparations in place, I decided to proceed anyway, hoping mediation would produce an agreement. This mediation occurred on 21 June 1994.

However, by 28 September 1994, Austin had clearly broken even the agreement we signed at the mediation, as a reading of our correspondence will show. I also wrote everyone involved that Austin had broken the agreement. As of this writing (2008), misinformation is still coming out of ICR. Therefore, to answer questions from those hearing this misinformation, the entire matter will be placed on the table for anyone to examine. People can reach their own conclusions.

(Notice that I followed the procedure laid out in Matthew 18:15-17. First, privately speak to the party you believe acted wrongly. Second, if he denies the allegations, present one or two witnesses to verify those allegations. Third, if that does not produce change, tell the church. I am now telling the church—the body of believers. Anyone wishing to receive a free CD-ROM containing all pertinent correspondence and writings can simply mail a stamped, self-addressed CD mailer containing a blank CD-ROM and case to: CSC, 5612 N. 20th Place, Phoenix, AZ 85016.)

Some may wonder why Austin and I have never worked together.

v My first attempt toward that end was in the summer of 1976. I flew to ICR in San Diego, in part to meet a “Stuart E. Nevins.” At the time, I did not know that Austin had been writing under that fictitious name to conceal his identity as a creationist. At lunch with Henry Morris, I said that I would like to meet “Stuart Nevins.” Morris, hiding the true situation, simply said that “Nevins” was out of town.

v In 1980, I flew to ICR for a series of meetings with its leadership. In an informal gathering, a person asked me to explain the hydroplate theory to those standing around. I declined, saying that I could not explain it in the brief time available. The group urged me to do so anyway; I again declined. Austin then walked in and also urged me to explain it, saying that he knew all the ideas about the flood and would quickly recognize what I had in mind. I began, but had completed only a few sentences when Austin interrupted to tell the group a related story. A minute or two later, he stopped talking and excused himself to catch his ride home. Our gathering dispersed.

v In March 1981, an acquaintance of Austin’s had just attended a full-day seminar I had conducted in Chicago. Afterward, he called Austin and urged him to learn about the hydroplate theory. Austin’s response was simply, “I wish these nongeologists would stay out of our business.” Later, on two occasions, I related this to Austin, but heard no denial or retraction—only silence.

v Since 1984, false comments, derogatory letters, and negative innuendos about me have periodically come from ICR. Most recently, ICR has written that the hydroplate theory is “laughable.” The specifics of these comments show that the writers have not read the theory.

On several occasions, I have offered to debate the scientific merits of our respective understandings of the flood, but ICR always declines. One simple, quick format is explained in "What Is the Direct (Oral and Written) Refereed Exchange?" on page 520.

41. The most authoritative source for geological definitions is the Glossary of Geology.  It defines a plateau as:

Any comparatively flat area of great extent and elevation; specifically, an extensive land region considerably elevated (more than 150–300 meters in altitude) above the adjacent country or above sea level. [See Robert L. Bates and Julia A. Jackson, editors, Glossary of Geology, 2nd edition (Falls Church, Virginia: American Geological Institute, 1980), p. 482.]

42. The Colorado Plateau has been lifted an average of 6,200 feet above sea level, but the portion of the Moho directly below has been correspondingly depressed. [See Professor George C. Kennedy’s statement on page 115.] This means that the plateau was lifted by material injected between the plateau and the Moho.

Several miles above the Moho was the subterranean water chamber. [See Figure 54 on page 123.] The chamber largely collapsed near the end of the flood and became a thin, ready-made conduit, corresponding to the thin, horizontal channel in Figure 123 on page 211. Undoubtedly, some water remained at the floor-roof interface, but even with no water, the interface would have been the easiest path for magma to escape from beneath the sinking Rockies.

43. Angular rock fragments, called xenoliths (ZEN-oh-liths), are often found in magma flows. These fragments, which are millimeters to meters in diameter, sometimes contain diamonds. Geologists have always had difficulty visualizing how flowing magma could fragment and pluck out pieces of its conduit’s thick wall. It is almost as strange as turning on your faucet and seeing pipe fragments—some of which contain diamonds—spilling into your sink.

Maybe flowing magma did not produce xenoliths. Perhaps some xenoliths were the result of very young, sinking mountains that crushed and slid rocks under great pressure and heat, generating magma—and diamonds.

44. George H. Billingsley, “Volcanic Rocks of the Grand Canyon Area,” in Young and Spamer, pp. 223–229.

45. As magma was produced by the sinking of the Rocky Mountains, water would still have been trapped within the irregularities of the almost-collapsed subterranean water chamber. Water readily dissolves in magma. This lowers magma’s freezing temperature (delays solidification) and makes magma less viscous (easier to flow). Approximately 70% (by volume) of all gases emitted from volcanoes is steam (water vapor). [See Gordon A. Macdonald, Volcanoes (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1972), p. 50.]

46. Channels of magma may still connect large areas under the Rocky Mountains with large areas under the Colorado Plateau. If so, magma pressure is still tending to lift blocks in those portions of the Plateau, because the higher (heavier) Rocky Mountains would be exerting greater pressure on the magma than the lower (lighter) Colorado Plateau. Those blocks in the Plateau would be precariously locked by friction. The situation would be similar to a log jam on a large river, except the potential movement would be upward, not horizontal.

This also applies to other plateaus in the world. Removing enough mass from such a plateau could destabilize that plateau, the adjacent mountain range, and nearby regions. Seismic shocks, including those passing through the earth, could affect distant plateaus. The drastic case of a nuclear explosion on a large plateau could produce worldwide earthquakes.

47. While I follow convention in using the name “Kaibab Plateau,” as geologists and mapmakers have for a century, technically it is not a plateau, but an upwarp. A plateau’s layers are generally horizontal. The upwarp aspect of the “Kaibab Plateau” can be seen easily in the layers in the East Kaibab Monocline that slope downward like a ski slope.

What is a monocline? Lay a book on a table; then drape a handkerchief over the book and onto the table. The handkerchief’s shape is that of a monocline.  [See Figure 114 on page 204 and Figure 139 on page 232.]

What caused the bending or warping? The book on the table represents a block that rose by the hydraulic mechanism described in "Plateau Uplift" on page 211. As the block rose, the wet, pliable layers above deformed into the shape of the handkerchief—and became a monocline.

Massive mudslides off the southeast end of the rapidly rising Kaibab Plateau exposed the East Kaibab Monocline. These mudslides are explained in item 12 on page 220.

Several brief conclusions can be drawn concerning the East Kaibab Monocline. A slab of hardened rock cannot be bent into the shape of this monocline without breaking. (I will bypass my page of mathematics showing this. Bending stresses would have fractured a solid slab of this size a hundred times over.) Obviously, the layers comprising the East Kaibab Monocline were wet and unconsolidated when they were bent (warped). After the bending, chemical agents in the water that saturated those sediments cemented them into a solid, but warped, layer.In Figure 114 on page 204, the thinning of the monocline’s layers to the left Figure 114shows that they were originally wet and unconsolidated. This shows where the compression was greatest from the increasing upward hydraulic pressure that fractured the layers, producing the fault and monocline. Downward slumping also contributed to this thinning.

Figure 49 on page 113 shows other flood-deposited layers that were wet and quickly deformed before they were cemented. They and the earth’s major mountains were produced by crashing hydroplates. Immediately afterwards, these mountains began the sinking that pushed up plateaus.

48. See, for example, Tunnel Overlook at 36°09'00.77"N, 109°31'27.41"W.

49. A plateau is a generally flat region of large extent that has been uplifted at least 300 meters. Its exposed layers correspond to those below the land surrounding the plateau. Plateaus are usually higher and wider than a mesa. A mesa is an erosional feature, not an uplifted region.

50. Millions of years or several weeks? Anyone giving the first answer would not be expected to provide specific details and evidence, because these features allegedly formed so long ago. Mentioning a few obscure technical words is usually sufficient. Besides, we have such difficulty imagining millions of years that we might be impressed that “science” has supposedly figured it out. Writers often capitalize on this by beginning their stories with dramatic, technical-sounding phrases, such as “Millions of years ago, ... .”

Conversely, a person giving the second answer, which opposes conventional opinion and is shocking to some, is frequently expected to quickly provide convincing details and evidence. Despite this double standard, careful readers of this chapter will see the details and evidence, and why the Grand Canyon and surrounding features were carved in weeks—only a few thousand years ago.

51. The sedimentary layers under Hopi Lake contained less-porous sediments, such as shale. However, once a few escape routes opened, high-pressure water quickly followed. Thus, only parts of the lake bottom were eroded, as shown in Figure 132 on page 217.

52. “... silicification is an impermeation (void-filling), not an organic replacement, process.” Anne C. Sigleo, “Organic Geochemistry of Silicified Wood, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 42, September 1978, p. 1404.

53. A saturated solution, at a given temperature and pressure, contains the maximum amount of a dissolved solid, liquid, or gas under equilibrium conditions.

54. Not all sand is weathered rock. Some sand grains precipitated directly out of the silica-rich flood waters.

55. “Preservation of such detail usually requires rapid infiltration of the petrifying material. If any of the tissues had already decomposed, mineral matter would have simply filled the hollow spaces left behind, preserving the wood’s form but not its cellular structure.” George Sheng, “Turning to Stone,” Science 82, Vol. 3, March 1982, p. 69.

u “... silica nucleation and deposition can occur directly and rapidly on exposed cellulose surfaces.” Sigleo, p. 1404.

56. Robert O. Fournier and Jack J. Rowe, “The Solubility of Amorphous Silica in Water at High Temperatures and High Pressures,” American Mineralogist, Vol. 62, October 1977, pp. 1052–1056.

57. As the subterranean water, saturated with silica and other minerals, escaped, its pressure suddenly dropped. As it expanded, it cooled. The liquid water remaining was then supersaturated with silica. Dissolved silica particles would have been “frantically looking for” the tiniest cracks where they could come out of solution.

58. “The majority of these trees [in Petrified Forest National Park] were very tall. On the average the logs are about 80 to 100 feet long and three to four feet in diameter, but some range up to 200 feet in length and ten feet in diameter at the base.”  Sidney Ash, Petrified Forest: The Story Behind the Scenery (Holbrook, Arizona: Petrified Forest Museum Association, 1985), p. 20.

59. Petrified Forest National Park plans to more than double its area. The park’s southern half will expand to the east and west. As one would expect, the expansion is all within the boundary of the former Hopi Lake.

60. The hard rock is Shinarump Conglomerate. Shinumo Altar is located at 36°26'16.59"N, 111°43'11.19"W.

61. Eric Donovan, Personal communication, 5 September 2006.

62. Richard Foster Flint, Glacial and Quaternary Geology (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1955), pp. 249-250.

63. To be complete, both parts of this question (how and when) must be answered. Geologists feel that the “when” has already been answered; namely, “the Colorado Plateau was lifted during the last 80 million years.” By locking in the timing before understanding the mechanism, they have become blinded to the physics involved. As Ranney states:

The exact reason why uplift has occurred in the Grand Canyon region remains speculative but certainly the area has been significantly elevated since the sea last left the area about 80 million years ago. Ranney, p. 44.

64. About 29% of the earth’s surface is above sea level. The average elevation of land above sea level is 840 meters, or 2,756 feet. Therefore, pushing all land beneath the sea would raise sea level only 0.29 × 2,756 feet (or 800 feet).

65. Two varieties of squirrels, which today live in only a few distinct locations worldwide, occupy the Grand Canyon region: the white-tailed Kaibab squirrel north of the canyon and the dark-tailed Abert squirrel south of the canyon. They are obviously related and, except for coloring, are indistinguishable. Each lives on an isolated plateau separated by several hostile environments and the 277-mile-long and several-miles-wide Grand and Marble Canyons. How could even one squirrel (let alone a male and female) traverse that formidable barrier? Probably the Grand Canyon was cut a few thousand years ago through an area occupied by the common ancestors of the Kaibab and Abert squirrels. Since then, the two isolated populations, unable to interbreed and with slightly different gene pools, developed different coloring—a classic case of microevolution (not macroevolution). [See John R. Meyer, “Origin of the Kaibab Squirrel,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 22, September 1985, pp. 68–78.]

66. The Navajo legend about the Grand Canyon may give another reason for dating it at least a few centuries after the global flood.

A great [local] flood threatened to drown the Navajo’s ancestors. Suddenly an outlet was formed by rushing waters. The Navajo survived the flood by being transformed temporarily into fish. The outlet the flood waters formed is the Grand Canyon. Dan Goldblatt, Grand Canyon, Great National Parks Series (Pleasantville, New York: The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., 1988), video.

This legend implies that a local flood inundated northern Arizona. (Was it from the breaching of Grand and Hopi Lakes?) Survivors discovered the newly formed Grand Canyon, still carrying runoff from that local flood. If the legend is even partially true, the Grand Canyon formed recently, while people occupied that area, not millions of years ago.

Descendants of other early Americans who live near the Grand Canyon have similar legends that tell of a large flood. The Hualapai legend says that the Creator sent word to dig a huge hole to drain the land. As the waters receded, the Grand Canyon was left behind. The Havasupai tribe also tells of the Grand Canyon forming after a single, catastrophic flood. [See Ranney, pp. 84–85.]

67. This pit is located at 36°44'50.70"N, 109°35'10.36"W.

68. This also applies if only the portion of the Colorado Plateau that held Grand or Hopi Lake tipped by 0.1°. If a block inside the lake tipped by this amount, shorelines would change to a lesser extent. Within Grand Lake’s basin are large blocks that are faulted and tipped by many degrees. One example is Book Cliffs, so named because they resemble a row of books that partially toppled onto their sides after a bookend was removed. The 250-mile-long Book Cliffs are the longest continuous escarpment in the world.

69. Edmond W. Holroyd, III, “A Remote Sensing Search for Extinct Lake Shore Lines on the Colorado Plateau,” Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., 1994), pp. 243–254.

70. Ibid., p. 245.

71. These narrow slot canyons [on the Colorado Plateau] are among the strangest, most-interesting and fotogenic features on earth. ... There is simply no other place on earth quite like the Colorado Plateau.” Michael R. Kelsey, Technical Slot Canyon Guide to the Colorado Plateau (Provo, Utah: Kelsey Publishing, 2008), p. 7.

72. “Our preferred interpretation of the Chemehuevi Formation is that it contains the remnants of deposits formed during a single major episode of fluvial aggradation [sediment deposition by river flooding], during which the Colorado River filled its valley with a great volume of dominantly sand-size sediment.” Daniel V. Malmon et al., Stratigraphy and Depositional Environments of the Upper Pleistocene Chemehuevi Formation along the Lower Colorado River, Geological Survey Professional Paper 1786 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2011), p. 2.

u Wood found buried in the deposited sediments was dated at 35,100 radiocarbon years. [See Malmon et al., p. 16.] As explained in "How Accurate Is Radiocarbon Dating?" on pages 459–462, an age of 40,000 radiocarbon years corresponds to about 5,000 actual years—the time of the flood. Apparently, the carving of the Grand Canyon was at least several centuries after the flood.

73. M. S. Steckler et al., “Multi-Channel Seismic Reflection Database for the Northern Gulf of California, a Highly-Sedimented Oblique Rift,” Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 5, 2003, pp. 1–2.

74. “... the submarine canyons in the Gulf of California exist only at the southern end.” Charles A. Anderson et al., “1940 E. W. Scripps Cruise to the Gulf of California,” Geological Society of America Memoir 43 (New York: Geological Society of America, 1950), p. 361.

75. “[William Morris Davis] and his followers found peneplains often in the geologic past, but, tellingly, nowhere in the present. The paradigm of a geologic cycle ending in a peneplain was to dominate the theory of physical geology for half a century.” James Lawrence Powell, Grand Canyon: Solving Earth’s Grandest Puzzle (New York: Pi Press, 2005), p. 155.

u “... modern geologists do not find peneplains.” Ibid., p. 156.

76. Ranney, p. 23.

77. “New 3Hec [cosmogenic] and 39Ar/40Ar [argon-argon] ages show that volcanism and lava damming in this region occurred between 1 and 630 ka [1,000–630,000 years ago], rather than between 10 ka and 1.8 Ma [10,000–1,800,000 years ago based on potassium-argon dating] as previously reported.” Cassandra R. Fenton et al., “Geochemical Discrimination of Five Pleistocene Lava-Dam Outburst-Flood Deposits, Western Grand Canyon, Arizona,” Journal of Geology, Vol. 112, 2004, p. 91.

u “K-Ar dating of basalts in the Uinkaret volcanic field is known to be problematic owing to excess ⁴⁰Ar incorporated into large phenocrysts from the magmatic environment and abundant glassy groundmass. Anomalously old ages for young basalts in other volcanic fields have been attributed to excess argon and low potassium concentrations.” Cassandra R. Fenton et al., “Cosmogenic ³He Dating of Western Grand Canyon Basalts,” in Young and Spamer, p. 147.

78. “Let us turn from speculation to what we can say with confidence. It is that the ultimate cause of the Grand Canyon is plate tectonics.” James Lawrence Powell, p. 252.

79. [Once upon a time] “some 30 million years ago the Farallon Plate lay between the American and Pacific Plates. The two converged along a subduction zone that gradually consumed the Farallon Plate. By about 20 million years ago, it had vanished, leaving behind two smaller remnants: the Juan de Fuca and Cocos Plates. The Farallon Plate eventually traveled east for 1,500 kilometers, so far underneath North America that it caused the uplift of the Rocky Mountains.”  Ibid., p. 213.

80. Ivo Lucchitta, “Development of Landscape in Northwest Arizona: The Country of Plateaus and Canyons,” Landscapes of Arizona: The Geological Story, editors T. L. Smiley et al. (London: University Press of America, 1984), pp. 269-301.

u See Endnote 86.

81. James Lawrence Powell, p. 191.

82. Ibid., p. 256.

83. “There is no obvious reason to expect more rapid headward erosion from the drainage that became the Colorado River because this drainage incised the same rock units at Pigeon, Hidden, and Hobble Canyons farther north, descended from cliffs of similar or lower height, reached the same structural trough, and was subjected to the same climatic conditions.” Jon E. Spencer and Philip A. Pearthree, “Headward Erosion Versus Closed-Basin Spillover as Alternative Causes of Neogene Capture of the Ancestral Colorado River by the Gulf of California,” in Young and Spamer, p. 218.

84. “The idea of McKee and others that this basin received flow from the upper ancestral Colorado River cannot be justified based on ... the lack of basin accumulation space for the assumed sediment carrying capacity of an ancestral upper Colorado River.” Todd A. Dallegge et al., “Age and Depositional Basin Morphology of the Bidahochi Formation and Implications for the Ancestral Upper Colorado River,” in Young and Spamer, p. 51.

85. Hunt, p. 137.

86. “But both authors [McKee and Hunt] had arrived at their theories partly by elimination and partly by inference: no direct evidence ever turned up to support either.” James Lawrence Powell, p. 206.

87. “However, the Hualapai is not restricted to the mouth of the Grand Canyon, but occurs over a wide area. It also contains evidence suggesting deposition in a number of separate lakes. It is difficult to attribute all these lakes to springs near the mouth of the Grand Canyon resulting from piping of the Colorado. Furthermore, the Hualapai does not occur only at the top of the interior-basin sequence, as stated by Hunt, but throughout the exposed section [in some layers below the top].” Lucchitta, “Development of Landscape,” p. 294.

88. James Lawrence Powell, p. 200.

89. Ibid., p. 205.

90. “Geologist George Billingsley mapped these same plateaus without finding outcrops of confirmed river gravel. As with the McKee and Hunt theories, the key evidence that would support Lucchitta’s idea has yet to appear, though it still could.” James Lawrence Powell, p. 210.

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