Painted Desert
Colorful Arizona badlands
The Painted Desert is a region of colorful badlands in northern Arizona, stretching southeast from the Grand Canyon.
The name refers to the bands of red, orange, and purple sedimentary rock visible across the landscape: We stopped at an overlook to photograph the Painted Desert.
The area is part of the Petrified Forest National Park.
- buttesIsolated flat-topped hills
- Navajo NationSovereign tribal territory, Southwest US
- petrifiedSolidified or fear-paralyzed
- mesasFlat-topped isolated hills
- erosionGradual wearing away
wind erosion · Holbrook · badlands · petroglyphs · ancient trails · oxidation · stratification · crimson · strata · Colorado Plateau · plateaus · trading posts · ochre · sandstone · iron oxide · Navajo · oral traditions · mineral deposits
- Western LandformsColorado Plateau, Columbia Plateau, Great Plains, High Plains, Great Basin
- American desertsDeath Valley, Mojave, Sonoran, Great Basin, White Sands
- American LandformsGrand Canyon, Rocky Mountains, Rockies, Appalachian Mountains, Appalachians
- desertsSahara, Gobi, Mojave, Namib, Kalahari
- Route 66Chicago, Santa Monica, Flagstaff, Amarillo, Gallup
- Southwestmesa, Monument Valley, Arizona, New Mexico, Grand Canyon
aridity and vegetation
Painted DesertAmazon Rainforest
South American tropical wilderness
Pacific Northwest · Everglades · Black Forest · Irish countryside · tropical jungle