I‘m trying to find out whether all of arizona used to have red rock canyons and whether at some point people started taking the iron out of the rocks. Thank you to whomever can help.
The Iron King Mine in Dewey-Humboldt, AZ, was an active iron ore strip mine that was never very profitable, but in an effort to improve production, smelting, breaking, and acid washing was introduced, and so poorly managed (environmentally) that the area is now a federal superfund site, though it has been closed for decades. There are numerous other iron mines around the state of Arizona, in various stages of failure, success, and environmental awareness. As far as red rock canyons, most of these were formed in the Basin and Range province of Central Arizona during the Cenozoic Era, Tertiary Period (so relatively recently in geologic time) where the crust was stretched, forming the large block faults that we see today as Basin and Range. Prior to this extension period, Arizona's surface (and quite further deep) was dominated by sediments deposited both through wind and ocean transgressions - regressions. Any particular red rock canyons within the state would have formed later through primarily water erosion of sedimentary rock. These rocks would only have turned red when exposed to our oxygen atmosphere (oxidizing). The well known Red Rock Canyon itself is in Nevada, about an hour's drive outside of Las Vegas. This particular area was formed about 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous, when the Keystone Thrust Fault (roughly from the Cottonwood Fault to La Madre Mountain) pushed one tectonic plate up and over the adjacent plate, creating the area that we now call Red Rock Canyon.
