[4] The park is divided into four districts: the Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze, and the combined rivers—the Green and Colorado—which carved two large canyons into the Colorado Plateau.

"[6] In the early 1950s, Bates Wilson, then superintendent of Arches National Monument, began exploring the area to the south and west of Moab, Utah.

Additional explorations by Wilson and others expanded the areas proposed for inclusion into the new national park to include the confluence of Green and Colorado rivers, the Maze District, and Horseshoe Canyon.

Utah Senator Frank Moss first introduced legislation in Congress to create Canyonlands National Park.

Over the next four years, his proposal was struck down, debated, revised, and reintroduced to Congress many times before being passed and signed into law.

Since 2015, day-use permits must be obtained before travelling on the White Rim Road due to the increasing popularity of driving and bicycling along it.

As of 2016[update], the Island in the Sky district, with its proximity to the Moab, Utah area, attracts 76.7 percent of total park visitors.

As a result, and in combination with Cataract Canyon's unique graben geology, this stretch of river offers the largest whitewater in North America in heavy snow years.

Political compromise at the time of the park's creation limited the protected area to an arbitrary portion of the Canyonlands basin.

Conservationists hope to complete the park by bringing the boundaries up to the high sandstone rims that form the natural border of the Canyonlands landscape.

The Island in the Sky district is a broad and level mesa in the northern section of the park, between the Colorado and Green rivers.

The Ancestral Puebloans inhabited this area and some of their stone and mud dwellings are well-preserved, although the items and tools they used were mostly removed by looters.

[16][17] A geographically detached section of the park located north of the Maze district, Horseshoe Canyon contains panels of rock art made by hunter-gatherers from the Late Archaic Period (2000–1000 BC) pre-dating the Ancestral Puebloans.

[21] Mammals that roam this park include black bears, coyotes, skunks, bats, elk, foxes, bobcats, badgers, ring-tailed cats, pronghorns, desert bighorn sheep, and cougars.

[25] Grebes, woodpeckers, ravens, herons, flycatchers, crows, bluebirds, wrens, warblers, blackbirds, orioles, goldfinches, swallows, sparrows, ducks, quail, grouse, pheasants, hummingbirds, falcons, gulls, and ospreys are some of the other birds that can be found.

[37] Varieties of trees include netleaf hackberry, Russian olive, Utah juniper, pinyon pine, tamarisk, and Fremont's cottonwood.

[38] Shrubs include Mormon tea, blackbrush, four-wing saltbush, cliffrose,[38] littleleaf mountain mahogany, and snakeweed[39] Cryptobiotic soil is the foundation of life in Canyonlands, providing nitrogen fixation and moisture for plant seeds.

[41] The plant hardiness zones at the Island in the Sky and Needles District Visitor Centers are 7a with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of 4.0 °F (-15.6 °C) and 2.9 °F (-16.2 °C), respectively.

Official data documents the desert climate with less than 10 inches (250 millimetres) of annual rainfall, as well as hot, mostly dry summers and cold, occasionally wet winters.

[55] In addition to warming, the region has begun to see more severe and frequent droughts[52][53] which causes native grass cover to decrease[56] and a lower flow of the Colorado River.

[60] The NPS is collaborating with other organizations including the US Geological Survey, local indigenous tribes, and nearby universities in order to create a management plan for the national park.

[59][53] Right now, there is a focus on research into which native plants will be most resistant to climate change so that the park can decide on what to prioritize in conservation efforts.

[59] The Canyonlands Natural History Association has been giving money to the US Geological Survey to fund this and other climate related research.

Large alluvial fans filled the basin where it met the Uncompahgre Mountains, creating the Cutler red beds of iron-rich arkose sandstone.

Flood plains on an expansive lowland covered the eroded surface and mud built up in tidal flats, creating the Moenkopi Formation.

For a time climatic conditions became wetter and streams cut channels through the sand dunes, forming the Kayenta Formation.

Arid conditions returned to the region with a vengeance; a large desert spread over much of western North America and later became the Navajo Sandstone.