Horseshoe Bend

Five miles downstream from Glen Canyon Dam, the Colorado River performs one of its most dramatic tricks. After flowing south from Lake Powell through the last miles of Glen Canyon, the river bends in a nearly perfect horseshoe around a peninsula of Navajo sandstone, then resumes its course toward the Grand Canyon. From the overlook on the rim, the river is one thousand feet below.

The geology here is the same as in Antelope Canyon and throughout this region: Navajo sandstone, a vast deposit of ancient desert dunes compressed into rock over roughly one hundred ninety million years. What makes Horseshoe Bend geologically exceptional is the concept of an entrenched meander. Geologists believe the Colorado developed its lazy, looping curves long before it began cutting downward into the plateau.

When the Colorado Plateau began uplifting millions of years ago, the river's erosive power dramatically increased, and it carved straight down into the meandering path it had already established. The result is a canyon that bends like a lazy river valley but plunges a thousand feet instead of rolling gently across a floodplain. The overlook sits within Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, reached by a mile-and-a-half round-trip trail from a parking area just off United States Route Eighty-Nine.

There are no guardrails along most of the rim. More than two million visitors make this walk each year, making Horseshoe Bend one of the most visited natural overlooks in the American Southwest.