This is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
(7th Edition) by Dr. Walt Brown. The online version of the book is designed to be read online.
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The Origin of the Grand Canyon
SUMMARY: Geologists admit that they do not know how the Grand Canyon formed, but for the last 140 years, they have insisted that the Colorado River carved it over millions of years and somehow removed the evidence.1 (Several obvious problems with this idea are mentioned in the description for Figure 41 on page 103.) Geologists admit that the canyon’s birth is a “hazy mystery, cloaked in intrigue, and filled with enigmatic puzzles.”2 After studying those puzzles, we will examine the eight main proposals for the Grand Canyon’s origin and why they are rejected by almost all experts. Finally, we will consider two ancient, postflood lakes—Grand Lake and Hopi (HO pee) Lake—that successively breached their boundaries and carved the Grand Canyon in a few weeks. This explanation not only unravels the confusion, but solves other puzzles not previously associated with the Grand Canyon.
The Grand Canyon is the best and most famous earth science laboratory in the world. Although a few canyons are deeper or longer or steeper or wider, none can compare with the Grand Canyon’s scenic variety, massiveness, beauty, and three-dimensional exposure. It is 216 miles long,3 4–18 miles wide, and averages 1 mile in depth. Writers describe the canyon in such lofty terms as magnificent, majestic, stupendous, inspirational, sublime, breath-taking, awesome, spellbinding, and earth’s greatest celebration of geology. The first reaction of most visitors to the canyon (5,000,000 each year) is stunned silence.
Probably the foremost question of most visitors is, “How did this happen?” Bruce Babbitt, former Governor of Arizona (1978–1987) and U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1993–2001), relates the answer given by John Hance. In 1883, Hance became the first person of European descent to live at the canyon. He was one of the canyon’s most colorful personalities, tour guides, and explorers.
Children loved John Hance, and to them he always explained how the canyon came into being. “I dug it,” he would say simply. This story worked well for years until one little four-year-old girl asked seriously, “And where did you put the dirt?” Hance had no ready answer; he never used that story again. But it bothered him the rest of his life, and when he was dying he whispered to his waiting friends, “Where do you suppose I could have put that dirt?” 4
That question still bothers geologists, because if the Colorado River carved the canyon, as commonly assumed, there should be a gigantic river delta where the Colorado River enters the Gulf of California. Instead, the delta is relatively tiny.
Colorado River. In fact, the puzzle is much more difficult. Geologists now agree that the Colorado River began flowing out of the western Grand Canyon only recently. Here’s why. Before the Glen Canyon Dam was built upstream from the Grand Canyon in 1963, the gritty Colorado River carried an average of 550,000 tons of sediment (sand, silt, and clay) out of the canyon each day—or 6 tons each second!5 Immediately to the west of the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River cuts through a 650-foot-thick layer of Hualapai (WALL uh pie) Limestone whose topmost layers have been dated, using radiometric techniques, as less than 5,900,000 years old.6 If the river flowed through a lake that supposedly deposited this relatively pure limestone, why are common river sediments not found in that limestone?7 Obviously, the river must have begun flowing there after that limestone was deposited—in geologic terms, recently. How recently? According to most geologists, within the last one-thousandth of the earth’s history!8
Groups of relatively young, water-transported rocks are on opposite edges of the western Grand Canyon—rocks that could not have been transported from one location to the other if the canyon blocked the way.9 Therefore, those rocks were first transported, then the Grand Canyon was cut and the Colorado River began flowing there. Since 1934, geologists have been trying unsuccessfully to find a previous location for the river or to learn why the river began so recently.10
Kaibab Plateau. A quick look at a relief map raises another question. Why and how did the powerful Colorado River, flowing southward into northern Arizona along the east side of the Kaibab Plateau, suddenly make a right turn and flow west, up and over (or through) the high Kaibab Plateau? Rivers don’t flow uphill. Desert View, an overlook on the Kaibab Plateau just south of the Colorado River, rises 5,800 feet above the river. At the corresponding point north of the river, the land rises even higher.
All explanations for the Grand Canyon’s origin try to answer this question.11 Some say that the river was once a mile or more higher, and the land it flowed over eroded away. As it did, the river settled down on top of the Kaibab Plateau and cut through it—a process called superposition. Others say the river cut through the Kaibab Plateau along a fault (or crack). However, faults are generally perpendicular to the Colorado River, not parallel. Some state that the land under the river rose, forming the Kaibab Plateau. As it did, the river cut down through the rising plateau. Two theories say that a stream flowing down a western slope of the Colorado Plateau continuously eroded eastward 130 miles and eventually cut through the Kaibab Plateau—a process called headward erosion. (Notice how dependent these explanations are on millions of years of time, and how many untestable explanations can be proposed if millions of years are imagined.)
Missing Mesozoic Rock. Actually, cutting through the Kaibab Plateau is a relatively minor problem, and carving the entire Grand Canyon is not even half the problem. The Grand Canyon’s rim consists of hard Kaibab Limestone, typically 350 feet thick. When you walk to the canyon’s edge and look in, you are standing on Kaibab Limestone. It extends away from the canyon in all directions, covering about 10,000 square miles. However, sitting at a few dozen isolated spots on this Kaibab Limestone are mounds, 1,000 feet high, of softer (crumbly or weakly cemented) Mesozoic rock; they are always capped on top by a very hard rock, such as lava. Obviously, lava did not flow up to the top; lava, which flows downhill, collected in a depression and hardened. Later, a fast-moving sheet of water flowed over northern Arizona and swept all the soft Mesozoic rock off the hard Kaibab Limestone—except for the few dozen spots that were capped and protected by hard rock.
Why must it have been a sheet of water? Falling rain would cut only channels. Flowing rivers or streams, even if they meandered for millions of years, would not sweep 1,000 feet or more of material off almost all of these 10,000 square miles of the fairly flat Kaibab Limestone. Besides, meandering rivers would produce meandering patterns. Therefore, before you can excavate 800 cubic miles of rock below the rim to form the Grand Canyon, something must sweep off almost all the Mesozoic rock above—a much bigger excavation project.
Marble Canyon. To form the Grand Canyon requires first forming Marble Canyon, which is immediately upstream (northeast) of the Grand Canyon. The two canyons join where the Little Colorado River enters the Colorado River. John Wesley Powell, who led the first expedition through these canyons in 1869, gave them different names, because they are so dissimilar.13 Marble Canyon, 61 miles long and fairly straight, is much narrower and its vertical walls are steeper. The two canyons are like two adjoining pipes; any explanation for one pipe should also explain the other pipe, even if they have differing shapes.
All the thin strata in and around Marble Canyon tip in directions that form a curious, but consistent, pattern. People floating southward inside Marble Canyon sense that they are falling. That sensation is caused by an optical illusion. The strata inside the walls of Marble Canyon tip up to the south, so one rapidly moves lower and lower relative to the layers in the narrow walls to the immediate left and right. Relative to a fixed point on the ground, one is actually dropping only about 8 feet each mile, a hardly perceptible rate.
Easily seen from above Marble Canyon are layers in Echo Cliffs (to the east) and Vermilion Cliffs (to the west) that tip up toward Marble Canyon. At the southern end of these cliffs, the layers tip up to the south, toward the Grand Canyon 30 miles away.
Another unusual feature of these cliffs and others in the region is the lack of rubble, called talus, at the base of the cliffs. One would expect that freezing and thawing cycles alone, acting on the cliff faces for millions of years, would have reduced each vertical cliff to a sloping pile of loose rocks. Even if the cliffs were young, the process of lifting up or carving cliffs should have left considerable talus.
Side Canyons. Dozens of large side canyons intersect the main trunk of Grand and Marble Canyons and cut down to the level of the Colorado River. These side canyons also have their own side canyons, all connected like branches on a big, bushy tree. Surprisingly, most side canyons, at least today, have no source of water that could have carved them—or basins above that could have held much water.
Had these side canyons formed before the main trunk of Grand and Marble Canyons, most would extend through to the opposite side of the main trunk. They don’t. Had these side canyons formed after Grand Canyon and Marble Canyon formed, many would not cut down to the Colorado River, especially with no visible source of water to carve them. Therefore, these side canyons probably formed at the same time as Grand and Marble Canyons.
Some side canyons, called slot canyons, are much narrower than they are high. [See Figure 122 on page 198.] Obviously, the narrower they are, the less water was needed to carve them. How then, with so little water, were some slot canyons carved all the way down to the level of the Colorado River?
A few side canyons are “barbed.” That is, they connect to the main canyon “backwards,” similar to the barbs in barbed wire or fishhooks. Tributaries almost always enter rivers at acute angles, but the barbed canyons are oriented at obtuse angles. Very strange.15 What happened?
Figure 105: Region of Unusual Erosion. This view is looking southeast from 4,400 feet above the ground. The Little Colorado River enters the southern end of Marble Canyon at the top center. The yellow line marks a region of unusual erosion. Notice that on the top of the high Kaibab Plateau, streams do not flow into the many canyons that are cut into this southeastern portion of the Kaibab Plateau. So, what cut these canyons, and why are they in such a localized area? Why would the terrain east of Marble Canyon (at least 2,000 feet below the top of the Kaibab Plateau and most of this erosion) be so smooth? On top of Nankoweap Mesa are slumps, landslides, and rockfalls. How can rocks fall and mud flow onto the top of a mesa?
One large side canyon, Nankoweap (NAN ko weep) Canyon, enters the Colorado River from the west, near the southern end of Marble Canyon. Nankoweap Canyon has more than 40 archaeological sites, including granaries, but today is usually dry and barren. (At times, Nankoweap Creek flows in Nankoweap Canyon.)
Nankoweap Canyon begins high on the southeastern slope of the Kaibab Plateau. [See Figure 105.] The flow that cut this side canyon came from many directions and had to be voluminous, recent, and violent. The water was voluminous and recent, because it produced the Grand Canyon’s largest tributary delta—which, to this day, has not been swept away by the powerful Colorado River. The flow was violent, because large, partially rounded boulders are stacked 100–200 feet high on both sides of the last 1,000 feet of Nankoweap Creek.16 To transport such large boulders requires an “avalanche” of water and/or mud flowing off or out of the Kaibab Plateau.
The Great Unconformity. Fossils are found only in the layers above an almost perfectly horizontal plane named the Great Unconformity. It lies about 4,000 feet below the canyon’s rim and is exposed above the Colorado River for 66 miles. Above the Great Unconformity the layers are all sedimentary and almost always horizontal; below the Great Unconformity lie either basement rock or thick, steep (10°–20° slope) sedimentary layers with no fossils.
Arching. Researchers have long noted that vertical cross sections across the Grand Canyon and Marble Canyon (perpendicular to the Colorado River) show that the sedimentary layers, and basement rock immediately below, arch upward.18 [See Figure 106.] Grand and Marble Canyons cut into the top of those arches for 277 miles.
Figure 106: Grand Canyon Profile. This profile, showing the thickness, shape, and elevation of each of the major sedimentary layers, extends from 36°00'N, 112°17'W to 36°24'N, 111°56'W.17 Basement rock is in black. Note the differing scales (vertical in feet and horizontal in miles). At these scales, the Colorado River, at the bottom of the inner gorge (the black crack) would be smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. In general, Grand and Marble Canyons cut into a broad arch that extends for the length of those canyons. This particular profile cuts across faults; one of the most dramatic aligns with the East Kaibab Monocline, which will be discussed later. Why do the layers under the monocline thin to the left?
Each cross section differs slightly, depending upon where it is drawn. The canyons are usually located on one side or the other of the arch’s high point. Along 46 miles where the arch is quite high, the canyon descends into the dark basement rock itself. That steep slot inside the basement rock is called the inner gorge. [See Figure 107.] North of Grand Canyon Village, the inner gorge is about 1,200 feet deep. Above the gorge lies the Great Unconformity, and above that boundary lie horizontal sedimentary layers stacked almost a mile high.
Figure 107: Inner Gorge. How could a river cut a slot, up to 1,200 feet deep, into such hard rock? As a river, eroding downward through relatively soft sedimentary layers, encountered the hard basement rock, further erosion should be primarily horizontal, into the softer, flanking sedimentary layers. When the widening river finally did begin to erode down into the harder rock, the river should erode a shallow, bowl-shaped channel, not a deep, nearly vertical cut. Either way, the eroded walls should be smooth, not jagged as are the walls of the inner gorge. If the river did begin to cut a deep slot, boulders (not easily moved by even a fast-flowing river) should fill up at least the bottom of that slot, thereby preventing further scouring and deepening of the slot. Instead, the inner gorge looks as if it cracked vertically as the rock below arched upward.
Our Focus. While the key question concerning the Grand Canyon is how it formed, other matters can easily distract us: the canyon’s beauty, modern history, early habitation, and exploration; the mind-numbing list of geologic terms and geographic descriptions; and the excitement and stress of navigating its many trails and the Colorado River itself. Hundreds of books have told and retold these stories, so we will avoid those fascinating diversions and focus on the key question of the Grand Canyon’s origin. A reward may await us. As usually happens in science, when a persistent enigma is finally solved, answers to seemingly unrelated problems are also discovered.