About the Image(s)

Red Rock Canyon is a striking desert landscape about 17 miles west of the Las Vegas Strip. Its vivid red-and-cream colors come partly from iron in the sandstone that oxidized, essentially rusting over time. The great sandstone cliffs at Red Rock, thousands of feet high, are made up of the Aztec Sandstone. This formation, about 180-190 million years old, is comprised of lithified sand dunes that formed in a vast desert that covered a large part of the southwestern United States