Grand+Mesa 3A

The Grand Mesa

The Grand Mesa is the largest mesa in the world, with it being 50 square miles and, rising 10,000 feet above sea level. It is surrounded by both the Colorado and Gunnison Rivers. The Grand Mesa is a popular site for skiing and camping. This amazing mesa is located in Western Colorado. The beautiful landscape was formed by lots of destructive and constructive forces.

The Grand Mesa is the result of an ancient sea side such as a swamp depositing sand salt and dinosaurs lots of fossils were found.1,000’s of trees were buried about 100,000,000 years ago creating coal. Later other sand stone and rock covered this stone creating some of what you see today. 10,000 years ago volcanic activity combined with glaciers created a basalt layer

Now the Grand Mesa is the highest form of rock in western colorado. That is because the top layer of the mesa is volcanic rock. It is the highest rock form because the volcanic rock is very hard, so that is one reason it is the highest land form in the area. That means it won’t erode or weather as fast as the surrounding sandstone rock which were eroded and weathered by the Colorado and the Gunnison rivers. The Grand Mesa has weathered very little over millions of years. It could’ve eroded and weathered during the time that it was a shore of an ocean. A glacier once passed through it and made some of the physical features. For example, caves, small valleys, and some rivers. The mesa might not seem like it's eroding or weathering, but it is, and very slowly. The bottom layers are weaker. That means that it’s weathering and eroding faster from the sides than from the top. That means that in some millions years of later it may make a ledge. Though the Grand Mesa has a top layer of volcanic basalt, the lower layers affect it.