Kaiparowits Plateau

Its extension to the southeast, Fiftymile Mountain, runs nearly to the Colorado River and Lake Powell, and is a prominent part of the northern skyline from the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

The southern end of the plateau is deeply dissected by tributaries of the Colorado River, including Rock, Last Chance, Warm, Wahweap, and Coyote Creeks.

Erosion from the Highlands deposited approximately 1,500 ft (460 m) of what is now known as the Straight Cliffs Formation, a layer of sandstone that makes up the base of the plateau.

The sandstone layers of the Kaiparowits Plateau have become a unique source of fossilized remains of the Late Cretaceous Period, vital to understanding the evolution of dinosaur and early mammalian species.

[2] These layers represent not only an unbroken sequence of the period between 70 and 82 million years ago, but have also preserved fine details of the bones, teeth, egg shells, and even the tracks of the animals that lived then.

[6]: 67–71 In 1965, the Southern California Edison Company proposed the construction of a 3000 megawatt coal-fired generation plant within the Kaiparowits Plateau.

[7][8] This plant was intended to be fed by large coal deposits in the plateau, which may have yielded up to 4,000,000,000 short tons (3,600×10^9 kg) of fuel.