**NOTE** NO OVERNIGHT CAMPING PERMITTED!! NOTE: Do not park on the Highway, at entrances to the Park, on private property, Alameda Parkway, or in the town of Morrison. Patrons are asked to follow directions of parking personnel and park as close as possible to other cars. Selected shows will have parking open earlier than the standard. Come early to avoid traffic hassles and to get the best parking and best access to seating. Parking lots usually open 1/2 hour prior to door time. Price is included in the price of your ticket. Red Rocks Amphitheatre was once listed as among the Seven Wonders of the World.Parking is available on site. The southern monolith, that bears resemblance to a ship, is named “Ship Rock.” On the opposite side of the amphitheater stands “Creation Rock.” Both monoliths are taller than Niagara Falls. Some of the rock formations in Red Rocks slope as much as 90 degrees, while others tilt backwards. The same stone was used in many places in the amphitheatre and park, including the retaining walls, planters and the Red Rocks Visitor Center. It is prominent in buildings of the University of Colorado’s Boulder Campus. This handsome Lyons sandstone became a favorite Colorado building stone showcased in many nineteenth-century houses, churches, businesses, and sidewalks. During burial and compaction of the Fountain Formation, iron-rich groundwater percolated through the rock leaving behind great rust-colored swirls.Īlso generally reddish in color is the Lyons sandstone, which was deposited later, in the Permian Period, on top of the Fountain Formation. Weathering decomposes the rock, releasing minerals such as iron, which oxidizes to give rock a reddish-pink color. This “differential erosion” creates crevices, pits and caves.įountain Formation stones vary in color from light gray to pale red to dark rust. Because of the different grain sizes and varying hardness in the Fountain Formation, it erodes unevenly. This interbedding of the Fountain sandstones and conglomerates creates scenic landscapes at Red Rocks. Poking around Red Rocks, rock hounds will find that the stone varies from one place to the next in color and texture. The uplifting of the current Rockies turned the Fountain formation bed on its edge so water and wind could sculpt the modern Red Rocks. Rivers carried their sediment eastward, creating first the Fountain Formation and later the Lyons, Morrison, Dakota and other, newer formations deposited atop the Fountain. These enormous rock gardens were built by water, wind and ice that wore down the ancestral range.Ĥ0 million years after they surfaced, the first Rockies were gone. The most notable remnants of the ancestral Rockies, a part of the Fountain Formation, are showcased in the Flatirons west of Boulder, Red Rocks, Roxborough State Park south of Littleton and the Garden of the Gods west of Colorado Springs. They formed a base for the second, present Rocky Mountains. This first set of Rockies eroded away before the current Rockies arose approximately 65 million years ago. The first range, however, stood about thirty or forty miles further west. This ancestral range, a predecessor of today’s mountains, paralleled today’s Front Range, the chain of mountains just west of Denver centered on Mt. The Fountain Formation is sedimentary rock eroded from the ancestral Rockies and deposited in large alluvial fans. The geologic story of Red Rocks is highlighted near the entrance to the top of the amphitheatre where a bronze plaque marks a contact between the 1.7 billion-year-old Pre-Cambrian basement rock and the newer Fountain Formation born 300 million years ago. The eroding rock and other material built up the foothills and high plains on the eastern base of the current Rocky Mountains. Rivers and glaciers immediately began washing the range away, a process that lasted millions of years. This range rose out of the inland sea about 300 million years ago. Other rock, characterized by a conglomerate of various sized stones, is sedimentary material washed out of the ancestral Rocky Mountains. Those seas, rising and falling over millions of years, left sandy beaches that became sandstone formations. At that time Colorado was not landlocked as it is today, but rather a landmass surrounded by ancient seas. For scientists every layer of rock is a page of geologic history, starting with the Pennsylvanian Period about 300 million years ago. The geology of Red Rocks Park continues to fascinate both casual fans and geologists.
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