Comanche Point is a summit located in the

Grand Canyon The Grand Canyon (, yuf-x-yav, Wi:kaʼi:la, , Southern Paiute language: Paxa’uipi, ) is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is long, up to wide and attains a depth of over a m ...

, in

Coconino County Coconino County is a county in the north-central part of the U.S. state of Arizona. Its population was 145,101 at the 2020 census. The county seat is Flagstaff. The county takes its name from ''Cohonino'', a name applied to the Havasupai p ...

of northern Arizona, US. Part of the ''Palisades of the Desert'', Comanche Point is the high point on the canyon's less-visited East Rim, and is four miles north-northeast of Desert View Point, its nearest higher neighbor. Topographic relief is significant as it towers above the Colorado River in 1.5 mile. Comanche Point was named in 1900 by George Wharton James for the

Comanche The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ ( com, Nʉmʉnʉʉ, "the people") are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in La ...

, a

Native-American Native Americans, also known as American Indians, First Americans, Indigenous Americans, and other terms, are the Indigenous peoples of the mainland United States (Indigenous peoples of Hawaii, Alaska and territories of the United States are ...

nation from the

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...

, in keeping with a practice of naming the points on the canyon's South Rim for Native American nations. This geographical feature's name was officially adopted in 1906 by the

U.S. Board on Geographic Names The United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) is a federal body operating under the United States Secretary of the Interior. The purpose of the board is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the federal governm ...

. According to the Köppen climate classification system, Comanche Point is located in a Cold semi-arid climate zone. On September 27, 1994, the tabloid Weekly World News ran an outlandish cover story that wreckage of a 4000-year-old

UFO An unidentified flying object (UFO), more recently renamed by US officials as a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon), is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are id ...

had been found in limestone rubble near the base of Comanche Point.

Geology

The summit of Comanche Point is composed of

Kaibab Limestone The Kaibab Limestone is a resistant cliff-former, cliff-forming, Permian geologic formation that crops out across the U.S. states of northern Arizona, southern Utah, east central Nevada and southeast California. It is also known as the Kaibab Fo ...

overlaying cream-colored, cliff-forming, Permian Coconino Sandstone. The sandstone, which is the third-youngest of the strata in the Grand Canyon, was deposited 265 million years ago as sand dunes. Below the Coconino Sandstone is slope-forming, Permian

Hermit Formation The Permian Hermit Formation, also known as the Hermit Shale, is a nonresistant unit that is composed of slope-forming reddish brown siltstone, mudstone, and very fine-grained sandstone. Within the Grand Canyon region, the upper part of the ...

, which in turn overlays the

Pennsylvanian Pennsylvanian may refer to: * A person or thing from Pennsylvania * Pennsylvanian (geology) The Pennsylvanian ( , also known as Upper Carboniferous or Late Carboniferous) is, in the International Commission on Stratigraphy, ICS geologic timesca ...

-Permian

Supai Group The Supai Group is a slope-forming section of red bed deposits found in the Colorado Plateau. The group was laid down during the Pennsylvanian to Lower Permian. Cliff-forming interbeds of sandstone are noticeable throughout the group. The Su ...

. Further down are strata of

Mississippian Mississippian may refer to: * Mississippian (geology), a subperiod of the Carboniferous period in the geologic timescale, roughly 360 to 325 million years ago *Mississippian culture, a culture of Native American mound-builders from 900 to 1500 AD ...

Redwall Limestone, and

Cambrian The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized C with bar, Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million ...

Tonto Group The Tonto Group is a name for an assemblage of related sedimentary strata, collectively known by geologists as a ''Group'', that comprises the basal sequence Paleozoic strata exposed in the sides of the Grand Canyon. As currently defined, the T ...

.William Kenneth Hamblin, ''Anatomy of the Grand Canyon: Panoramas of the Canyon's Geology'', 2008, Grand Canyon Association Publisher, . Precipitation

runoff Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock market ...

from Comanche Point drains into the nearby Colorado River.

Gallery

File:Grand Canyon National Park 08.jpg, From Desert View File:Comanche Point.jpg, West aspect File:Comanche Point from Desert View.jpg, From Desert View File:Grand Canyon sunrise over Comanche Point from Tanner Camp.png, West aspect at sunrise File:Grand Canyon, Comanche Point.jpg, From Desert View File:Grand Canyon NP Navajo Point 0187 (5449492415).jpg, Comanche Point centered, as seen from Navajo Point. Desert View Watchtower upper right. File:Grand Canyon National Park Cloud Inversion from Desert View, November 29, 2013 photo 0812 - Flickr - Grand Canyon NPS.jpg, Comanche Point centered, as seen from Desert View during a rare total inversion File:Grand Canyon flight over Comanche Point.jpg, Aerial view of north aspect

References

External links

* Weather forecast
National Weather Service
* Comanche Point rock climbing
Mountainproject.com
* 4000-year-old UFO found near Comanche Point
Weekly World News
{{Geology of the Grand Canyon area, , state=collapsed Grand Canyon Landforms of Coconino County, Arizona Mountains of Arizona Mountains of Coconino County, Arizona Colorado Plateau Grand Canyon National Park North American 2000 m summits

Geology

Gallery

See also

References

External links