A view along Highway 14 in Red Rock Canyon State Park, California. The colorful banded sedimentary rocks belong to the late Miocene Dove Spring Formation of the Ricardo Group, roughly 10 million years old; the prominent red bands are channel sandstones, deposited in ancient stream and river channels; whitish layers are tuffaceous sandstones that were subjected to volcanic ash airfalls; grayish bands are beds of sandstone that were deposited along great floodplains. Capping the exposure is a black volcanic basalt flow. |