Pkwy. End at Red Rocks Park. Distance is 2 miles.
Red Rocks Parks is an area that consists of layers of coarse, brick red sandstone and conglomerate separated by thinner layers of dark red siltstone and are eroded into spectacular red monoliths. Part of the apron of debris washed off the eastern flank of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains nearly 300 million years ago, these Pennsylvanian and Permian rocks are part of the Fountain formation. [Roadside Geology of Colorado, P24]
At the western edge of the park, you can span with one hand between Pennsylvanian sedimentary rock and the steeply rising Precambrian metamorphic rocks, a 1.4 billion year time span. This area represents an unconformity, which is where rocks from that interval of time is erased away by erosion (missing time). This unconformity is one of the largest known on earth.
After these rocks were tilted by the Laramide mountain uplift, erosion shaped these great monoliths. These rocks stand so tall because they were cemented a little better here than anywhere else.
The rocks are red due to the presence of the mineral hematite.
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