Bryce Canyon National Park

Despite the name, Bryce Canyon is not a canyon but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau in southwestern Utah. What fills them are hoodoos – formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of river and lake bed sedimentary rock – and the red, orange and white of that rock is what visitors come to look at. The park is much smaller than nearby Zion National Park and sits at a much higher elevation, its rim varying between 8,000 and 9,000 feet. Mormon pioneers settled the area in the 1850s; it is named after Ebenezer Bryce, who homesteaded here in 1874.