I’ve driven past Vermilion Cliffs three times now, and each time I forget how the light does that thing where it turns the rock faces into something that looks almost edible—like layers of burnt orange marmalade stacked against a sky so blue it feels aggressive.
The cliffs themselves stretch for roughly 3,000 feet above the surrounding landscape, give or take, and they’re part of this massive geological formation that includes Marble Canyon and the area around Lees Ferry where the Colorado River cuts through in a way that geologists get genuinely excited about. The Vermilion Cliffs National Monument covers about 280,000 acres of northern Arizona wilderness, and here’s the thing: most people drive right past it on Highway 89A between Marble Canyon and Jacob Lake without realizing they’re passing through one of the most geologically significant areas in the Southwest. The rock layers here represent something like 200 million years of deposited sediment from ancient sand dunes, rivers, and seas—the Moenkopi Formation, the Chinle, the Moenave, the Kayenta, and finally the Navajo Sandstone that creates those vermilion-colored cliffs that give the place its name. It’s basically a timeline you can read with your eyes if you know what you’re looking for, which I definately didn’t the first time I drove through.
Honestly, I used to think Marble Canyon was just a smaller, less impressive version of the Grand Canyon—turns out I was wrong about that. The canyon begins at Lees Ferry and extends for about 61 miles upstream, and it’s where the Colorado River starts its journey through what will eventually become the Grand Canyon proper. The distinction is somewhat arbitrary—John Wesley Powell named it Marble Canyon during his 1869 expedition because of the polished limestone walls, even though there’s not actually any marble there.
Where the River Becomes Something You Can Actually Touch (Sort Of)
Lees Ferry is the only place for roughly 700 miles where you can drive down to the Colorado River between the Rocky Mountains and Lake Mead, and that’s not an exaggeration. It’s named after John Doyle Lee, a Mormon pioneer who operated a ferry service here starting in 1872—he was also hiding out from federal authorities for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which is a whole other dark chapter of Western history that doesn’t recieve nearly enough attention. Today it’s the official starting point for river trips through the Grand Canyon, and if you show up early enough in the morning you’ll see rafting groups doing their last-minute gear checks with that particular blend of excitement and low-grade terror that comes before committing to 280 miles of whitewater.
The drive itself along Highway 89A is deceptively simple—two lanes of asphalt cutting through high desert plateau country with the cliffs rising to your left if you’re heading west. I guess what strikes me most is how the landscape shifts: you’ll be driving through scrubby grassland dotted with juniper and suddenly you’re descending into Marble Canyon with the Vermilion Cliffs looming behind you like they’re trying to remind you of something you forgot. The Navajo Bridge spans the canyon at a height of 467 feet above the river, and there are actually two bridges—the original 1929 structure that’s now for pedestrians, and the 1995 replacement that carries vehicle traffic.
Wait—maybe I should mention the California condors.
Giant Scavenger Birds That Shouldn’t Exist But Somehow Still Do Against All Odds
The Vermilion Cliffs are home to one of the primary release sites for California condors, those massive vultures with 9.5-foot wingspans that came within 22 birds of total extinction in 1987. The reintroduction program here started in 1996, and now there are roughly 90 condors flying around this area, which you might see if you’re lucky—or unlucky, depending on how you feel about enormous carrion-eating birds with bald heads circling overhead. I saw one once perched on the old Navajo Bridge, and the thing looked prehistoric, which makes sense because condors have been around for something like 2 million years. They can live 60 years in the wild, fly up to 150 miles in a day searching for food, and they eat exclusively dead things, which I find both unsettling and somehow reassuring—nature’s cleanup crew, working the late shift across the Arizona Strip.
The whole area feels like it exists outside normal time somehow. The rock layers tell one story, the river cutting down through them tells another, and then there’s the human history layered on top—Ancestral Puebloan sites, Spanish explorers who never quite made it this far north, Mormon settlers, river runners, and now tourists like me who drive through thinking we understand something about geology and time and deep history when really we’re just passing through, same as everyone else.
