Fajada Butte dominates the landscape, and its exposed rock layers reveal the region’s geologic and human history. Cliff House Sandstone forms the upper layer, with deposits of fossil shells, clams, shark teeth, and marine sand. The lower layers are the Menefee Formation, which combines siltstones and mudstones interbedded with sandstone, shale, and thin coal beds. Because this easily eroded formation undercuts the harder sandstone above, unsupported boulders break off and continue the erosion of Fajada Butte. The Chacoan people used these rock layers in daily life, quarrying sandstone for building materials, tools, and food processing stones such as manos and metates, using cliff faces to record symbols and images, and making jewelry from fossils, shale, jet, and argillite. Today the butte is a sacred place for Pueblo, Hopi, and Navajo peoples, figures prominently in their oral histories, migration stories, and ongoing traditions, and reveals their connections to the land.