Dr. Bob Visits the Colorado National Monument
- Dr Bob
- May 19, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Application
The landscape of Colorado National Monument stands as clear evidence that catastrophic processes, not slow gradual change, carved the Grand Valley and its side canyons, just as Scripture describes.
In this Lesson, Dr. Bob visits Colorado National Monument near Grand Junction, Colorado. Standing amid the red-rock canyons and looking out across the Grand Valley, he explains why the modest Colorado River flowing through the area today could never have produced the dramatic carving we see, even given vast stretches of time. The buttes on the far side of the valley match the layered deposits on this side, showing that the entire Grand Valley and its tributary canyons resulted from one much larger event. These features align with the global Flood recorded in Genesis and stand as another field demonstration that the majority of the geological features around us formed by catastrophe rather than by the slow processes of uniformitarianism.
Supplemental Information
Colorado National Monument takes its name from the Colorado River that traverses the broader Grand Valley. For many years the standard story claimed this river carved the canyons. Yet the small river we observe today lacks the destructive force required, even if granted millions of years. Most geologists now acknowledge this limitation.
Looking across the Grand Valley reveals a series of buttes on the opposite side whose layered deposits precisely match those on the monument side. The canyons visible here are therefore only a small piece of a greater event that excavated the entire Grand Valley together with its side tributaries. The Flood that produced this landscape was even more dramatic than the features themselves.
This is another clear example, like Mount St. Helens and Vasquez Rocks, of the problems inherent in uniformitarianism. The apostle Peter warned that scoffers in the last days would claim “all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Peter 3:4). The rocks declare the opposite. At Mount St. Helens, canyons of comparable scale formed in a matter of hours, not millions of years. The same rapid, high-energy water action accounts for the features at Colorado National Monument.
The colorful cliffs consist of sand deposits. Sand has three primary origins.
First, during the creation week God formed the soil necessary to sustain the plants He made. Some of that original material remains.
Second, ordinary erosion produces limited quantities of sand. If erosion alone explained the vast quartz-rich sandstones of the world, we should still see the enormous quartz-source mountains required to supply those crystals. Those mountains are missing.
The dominant source is the global Flood described in Genesis. When “all the fountains of the great deep [were] broken up” (Genesis 7:11), high-pressure, high-temperature, mineral-laden waters surged upward. Modern deep-ocean hydrothermal vents still discharge hot, silica-rich fluids containing high concentrations of quartz. During the Flood those same processes operated on a continental scale. With thousands of feet of water already above the newly opened fissures, the mineral-rich fluid experienced a sudden drop in both pressure and temperature as it rose. The rapid change aerosolized the fluid in a manner analogous to liquid forced through the valve of a pressurized can. Microscopic droplets formed.
Nucleation then occurred. Impurities in the aerosolized mineral water served as attachment points, just as smoke particles from a wildfire provide nucleation sites for raindrops in a cloud. Quartz crystals precipitated almost instantly, creating what an observer far below would have seen as a “sand blow.” The result was vast sheets of newly formed sand.
Diagnostic evidence appears in the sand grains themselves. Under close examination the quartz crystals retain sharp, angular edges. Wind-blown dune sand quickly loses those edges and becomes rounded. Beach and river sand that has tumbled in water also shows progressive smoothing. The angular morphology of the grains in these deposits indicates they are new crystals that formed rapidly in a water environment and were buried before significant weathering or transport could round them. This matches the expected signature of Flood-generated sand rather than reworked, long-recycled sediment.
After the Flood waters began to recede, residual high-energy drainage rapidly cut the Grand Valley and the monument’s canyons. The steep walls, freestanding monoliths, matching stratigraphy across the valley, and angular sand grains together form a coherent, scientific testimony to the biblical record. The same sequence of rapid Flood deposition followed by catastrophic drainage appears consistently across the Colorado Plateau and at many other sites discussed at A Flood of Hope.
These red-rock canyons therefore do more than display beautiful scenery. They testify that God’s Word is accurate history. The same Creator who judged a violent world and preserved Noah still offers salvation through the greater Ark, Jesus Christ. The evidence is all around us. It is okay to believe.
Scripture References
“And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.” Genesis 6:17
“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” Genesis 7:11
“And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged; The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.” Genesis 8:1-3
“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” 2 Peter 3:3-4
“Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.” Psalm 104:6-9
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