Ride~About: Valley of Fire State Park–Truly Amazing!

Hello! It has been quite a while my friend. Hope your holidays were wonderful, full of fun and blessings. All is well here in Colorado Springs except for the recent polar vortex. Our temperatures the last few days were below zero, getting to -11 last night. Not a usual event on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Happily today it is a “warm” 28 degrees. I’m still staying inside!

Last week I left the cold and journeyed to southern Nevada’s first State Park, Valley of Fire. What a treasure and geology wonder! You are going to love this.

How did the park get its name? At sunrise and sunset the red rocks in this valley glow as if on fire. Above is at sunrise. This is the largest (45,938 acres) and oldest (established 1935) of Nevada’s 23 State Parks. Only an hour northeast of Las Vegas, it is light years away in scenery and pace of life.

There is one east/west road with park entrances at each end. From this east entrance let’s take the seven-mile drive first. This sunset shows us the variety of formations and rock found here. The sandstone red rocks on fire, the long white sandstone mesa, and the limestone Muddy Mountains in the background.

The rocks in the park are primarily all colors of Aztec sandstone. Huge faults (fractures in rocks of the Earth’s crust) happening here over millions of years complicates the area’s history. We will not get into that since even the geologist have issues understanding all that happened.

Generally though, dating back to the Jurassic era, about 150 million years ago, this entire area was a desert with massive sand dunes near the inland sea. Many of the formations we see today are eroding petrified sand dunes. The rock’s shade of red reveals the level of iron oxide in the sandstone. Dark read has the most iron in its composition. If you enjoy geology but simplified, as I do, check out Geologist Wayne Ranney’s explanations of this area’s geology. What I found amazing here are the number of holes, arches, sculpted openings in the rocks. Keep a look out for more as we go.

There’s the Visitor Center (right) at the start of White Domes Road. Calling it a scenic drive is an understatement as you’ll see later.

This is an unnamed formation, but it looks like another balanced rock to me. All over the Southwest we have Balanced or Balancing Rocks. There is one in Garden of the Gods and one here near the Visitor Center. It always looks like you are taking your life in your hands standing near them. They’ve been eroding for millions of years and have yet to fall but one day will. Hopefully not today 😉 .

The gray-colored limestone Muddy Mountains are in the background. They run all along the southern edge of the park and beyond. The Northern Muddy Mountains run along the northwestern edge of park.

“The main story here is that during the Early Cretaceous (145 to 100 million years ago), western North America was subjected to compression from the west and gray Paleozoic limestones were shoved horizontally to the east over Jurassic sandstones.” Quote from Wayne Ranney, Earthly Musings. They believe these mountains were pushed over 50 miles to this location. Paleozoic era is 550-250 million years ago and Jurassic era is 200-145 million years ago so these limestone mountains overrode the younger sandstone. Erosion by water and wind has given us this amazing scenery.

Near the west entrance to the park our sandstone formations are fading. If we continue west we will be in much flatter desert.

Returning to the Visitor Center we head up White Domes Road, the truly amazing area of the park. Most of the hikes we will take are in this area. WOW!

The Northern Muddy Mountains in the background.

Time to head back to Overton, our rest stop for the next few days. Next up a hike along White Domes Trail at the very end of the road we’ve been driving. See you soon my friend.