Land Lines

Here’s some of that grey rock, it’s coming down the channel – your first clue. It’s all about discovery …..

Twenty-five years ago, I parked near Black Mesa, up in northeast Arizona.  On no particular schedule and with no real destination, I just started walking--because I knew I would discover something.  I wandered up an unnamed canyon with walls of sheer Navajo Sandstone.

Don't try the Kelly Grade in a rainstorm. When this steep stretch of the Smoky Mountain Road is wet, its mud surface is impossibly slick. Stay in granny gear, keep a tight grip on the wheel, and hope that nobody else is coming the other way. There's no guardrail and that cliff next to your tires drops hundreds of feet straight down.  The shale gives way to sandstone when the road straightens out on top of the Kaiparowits Plateau.

Every month this fall, KNAU has been taking you to places on the Colorado Plateau. They may be places you know, they may be places you've only heard of. It's a series we call Land Lines and today we're visiting Monument Valley. People come from all over the world to see this valley, one of the most evocative landscapes in the southwest. But at least one rock feature doesn't quite fit the mold of the mesas and buttes. In today's Land Lines, Rose Houk and Michael Collier explore the origins of El Capitan.

S.P. Crater--Today on Land Lines, Michael Collier and Rose Houk take us to S.P. Crater near Flagstaff. Early cowboys gave this perfectly shaped cinder cone its initials--whose shape reminded them of a ……chamber pot.   

Climbing the steep slopes of S.P. Crater, you take one step forward and two steps back in the loose black cinders.  This beautifully symmetric cone, about thirty miles north of Flagstaff, reminded local cowboys a century ago of the shape of a chamber pot, thus the initials S.P.  As the old wranglers used to say, Volcanoes happen.

Meteor Crater , AZ – Meteor Crater--Today on Land Lines, we pay a visit to a notable northern Arizona landmark--Meteor Crater. The origin of this very large hole in the ground sparked a controversy between the crater's owner and the geologic establishment of the day. Michael Collier and Rose Houk bring us the story.