Navajo - view looking down Long Canyon

This view is looking down Long Canyon from the trail to Betatakin Ruin. The modern canyon floor has changed significantly in the past 100 years due to a period of rapid downcutting by the stream. Much of the area that would have been agricultural fields used by the Ancestral Puebloans have been eroded away. Today, remnants of the ancient floodplain are elevated terraces about 50 feet above stream level (NPS, 2007). Stream incision and backfilling of valleys with sediments are natural cycles in the Desert Southwest. Modifications to stream obstructions, both natural and caused by human activity, and climate changes can cause these stream channel changes. Downcutting by streams like this are happening in many regions throughout the American West (Elliot and others, 1999).