The Painted Wall

Painted Wall, at 2300 feet, is the highest cliff in Colorado. If the Empire State Building stood on the canyon floor, it would reach slightly more than halfway to the top of the cliff. The patterns that inspired the name Painted Wall were created more than a billion years ago when molten rock was squeezed into fractures and joints in the existing rock, then cooled and hardened. Unlike a painting, these patterns are 3-dimensional, and slicing off a section of cliff would reveal an entirely different pattern.

Colorado · United States