A section of the Paleozoic formations of the Grand Canyon at the Bass trail

The thick series of horizontal strata of Paleozoic age which makes the greater part of the wall of the Grand Canyon is probably broadly familiar to more people than the strata exposed in any other area in the western United States. Each detail of form or color in the wall is so definitely associated with a bed or set of beds in the series that these strata are the very elements of the canyon landscape. Consequently they have been described not only by geologists but by many writers who have been interested in the Grand Canyon chiefly as a scenic spectacle.