What is the Painted Desert?
The Painted Desert is an expanse of badland hills, flat-topped mesas and buttes. It is an arid land, sparsely vegetated and heavily eroded. The name Painted Desert refers to the rainbow of colorful sedimentary layers exposed in the austere landscape. It is represented by outcroppings of the Late Triassic Period Chinle Formation. Where is the Painted Desert? The Painted Desert is a narrow, crescent shaped arc, about 160 miles long which begins about 30 miles north of Cameron near Grand Canyon, and swings southeast just beyond Petrified Forest National Park. This arc varies in width from 10 miles wide in the Cameron area to about 35 miles wide at Petrified Forest. The Little Colorado River cradles the southern edge and the tableland of Hopi Mesas and buttes make up the northern boundary. What Caused the Colors? The landforms of the Painted Desert have been described as a multicolored layer cake. The variety of hues in the sandstone and mudstone layers of the Chinle Formation is the resul
