The Lukachukai Mountains are a mountain range in northeast Arizona, entirely located on the Navajo Nation. The highest point of the range is an unnamed point at 9,466 feet (2,885 meters) above sea level. [1] While open during the winter, no road maintenance is performed and chains or four wheel drive with good snow tires are essential due to grades of up to 14% in many places.
The Lukachukai Mountain trail gives access to some of the scenic red-rock high country here. The trailhead is located just south of Buffalo Pass on Indian Route 13, a paved highway. [2] The trail is passable to OHVs in dry weather. A permit is required from the Navajo Nation government.[ citation needed ]
There is a belt of uranium deposits that crosses the Lukachukai Mountains. The ore belt is within a bed of lenticular sandstone and mudstone that apparently provided sufficient permeable sandstone for the passage of ore solutions, and sufficient impermeable mudstone to restrict movement of solutions to particular sandstone beds. An unusual concentration of organic material (carbonized wood?) served as a precipitation agent. [3]
The mountains are the opening setting for Tony Hillerman's The Blessing Way. [4]
The Entrada Sandstone is a formation in the San Rafael Group found in the U.S. states of Wyoming, Colorado, northwest New Mexico, northeast Arizona, and southeast Utah. Part of the Colorado Plateau, this formation was deposited during the Jurassic Period sometime between 180 and 140 million years ago in various environments, including tidal mudflats, beaches, and sand dunes. The Middle Jurassic San Rafael Group was dominantly deposited as ergs in a desert environment around the shallow Sundance Sea.
The geology of the Zion and Kolob canyons area includes nine known exposed formations, all visible in Zion National Park in the U.S. state of Utah. Together, these formations represent about 150 million years of mostly Mesozoic-aged sedimentation in that part of North America. Part of a super-sequence of rock units called the Grand Staircase, the formations exposed in the Zion and Kolob area were deposited in several different environments that range from the warm shallow seas of the Kaibab and Moenkopi formations, streams and lakes of the Chinle, Moenave, and Kayenta formations to the large deserts of the Navajo and Temple Cap formations and dry near shore environments of the Carmel Formation.
The Morrison Formation is a distinctive sequence of Upper Jurassic sedimentary rock found in the western United States which has been the most fertile source of dinosaur fossils in North America. It is composed of mudstone, sandstone, siltstone, and limestone and is light gray, greenish gray, or red. Most of the fossils occur in the green siltstone beds and lower sandstones, relics of the rivers and floodplains of the Jurassic period.
The Blessing Way is the first crime fiction novel in the Joe Leaphorn / Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series by Tony Hillerman. First published in 1970, it introduces the character of officer Joe Leaphorn.
Ute Mountain, also known as Ute Peak or Sleeping Ute Mountain, is a peak within the Ute Mountains, a small mountain range in the southwestern corner of Colorado. It is on the northern edge of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Reservation. The Reservation forms the southwestern corner of the state and of Montezuma County.
The Navajo Sandstone is a geological formation in the Glen Canyon Group that is spread across the U.S. states of southern Nevada, northern Arizona, northwest Colorado, and Utah as part of the Colorado Plateau province of the United States.
The Carmel Formation is a geologic formation in the San Rafael Group that is spread across the U.S. states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, north east Arizona and New Mexico. Part of the Colorado Plateau, this formation was laid down in the Middle Jurassic during the late Bajocian, through the Bathonian and into the early Callovian stages.
The Carrizo Mountains is a small, mostly circular mountain range 15 to 20 km in diameter located on the Colorado Plateau in northeastern Arizona. The range is about 20 km (12 mi) southwest of the Four Corners. The highest summit, Pastora Peak, is 2,869 m (9,413 ft) in elevation, whereas elevations on the surrounding plateau are near 1,800 m (5,900 ft).
The Chuska Mountains are an elongate range on the southwest Colorado Plateau and within the Navajo Nation whose highest elevations approach 10,000 feet. The range is about 80 by 15 km. It trends north-northwest and is crossed by the state line between Arizona and New Mexico. The highlands are a dissected plateau, with an average elevation of about 2,740 m (8,990 ft), and subdued topography. The highest point is Roof Butte at 2,994 m (9,823 ft), near the northern end of the range in Arizona. Other high points include the satellite Beautiful Mountain at 2,861 m (9,386 ft) and Lukachukai Mountains at 2,885 m (9,465 ft), both also near the northern end, and Matthews Peak at 2,911 m (9,551 ft). The San Juan Basin borders the Chuskas on the east, and typical elevations in nearby parts of that basin are near 1,800 m (5,900 ft). The eastern escarpment of the mountains is marked by slumps and landslides that extend out onto the western margin of the San Juan Basin. To the north, the Chuskas are separated from the Carrizo Mountains by Red Rock Valley, which is today commonly referred to as Red Valley.
Skinwalkers is the seventh crime-fiction novel in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series by author Tony Hillerman published in 1986. The film version, Skinwalkers, was adapted for television for the PBS Mystery! series in 2002.
The San Juan Basin is a geologic structural basin located near the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States. The basin covers 7,500 square miles and resides in northwestern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, and parts of Utah and Arizona. Specifically, the basin occupies space in the San Juan, Rio Arriba, Sandoval, and McKinley counties in New Mexico, and La Plata and Archuleta counties in Colorado. The basin extends roughly 100 miles (160 km) N-S and 90 miles (140 km) E-W.
Uranium mining in the United States produced 173,875 pounds (78.9 tonnes) of U3O8 in 2019, 88% lower than the 2018 production of 1,447,945 pounds (656.8 tonnes) of U3O8 and the lowest US annual production since 1948. The 2019 production represents 0.3% of the anticipated uranium fuel requirements of the US's nuclear power reactors for the year.
Uranium mining in Colorado, United States, goes back to 1872, when pitchblende ore was taken from gold mines near Central City, Colorado. The Colorado uranium industry has seen booms and busts, but continues to this day. Not counting byproduct uranium from phosphate, Colorado is considered to have the third largest uranium reserves of any US state, behind Wyoming and New Mexico.
Uranium mining in Utah, a state of the United States, has a history going back more than 100 years. Uranium mining started as a byproduct of vanadium mining about 1900, became a byproduct of radium mining about 1910, then back to a byproduct of vanadium when the radium price fell in the 1920s. Utah saw a uranium boom in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but uranium mining declined in the 1980s. Since 2001 there has been a revival of interest in uranium mining, as a result of higher uranium prices.
Uranium mining in Arizona has taken place since 1918. Prior to the uranium boom of the late 1940s, uranium in Arizona was a byproduct of vanadium mining of the mineral carnotite.
The Navajo Section is a physiographic section of the larger Colorado Plateaus Province, which in turn is part of the larger Intermontane Plateaus physiographic Division.
Uranium mining in New Mexico was a significant industry from the early 1950s until the early 1980s. Although New Mexico has the second largest identified uranium ore reserves of any state in the United States, no uranium ore has been mined in New Mexico since 1998.
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 Supai Group is especially exposed throughout the Grand Canyon in northwest Arizona, as well as local regions of southwest Utah, such as the Virgin River valley region. It occurs in Arizona at Chino Point, Sycamore Canyon, and famously at Sedona as parts of Oak Creek Canyon. In the Sedona region, it is overlain by the Hermit Formation, and the colorful Schnebly Hill Formation.
The Shinarump Conglomerate is a geologic formation found in the Four Corners region of the United States. It was deposited in the early part of the Late Triassic period.
The geology of Montana includes thick sequences of Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary rocks overlying ancient Archean and Proterozoic crystalline basement rock. Eastern Montana has considerable oil and gas resources, while the uplifted Rocky Mountains in the west, which resulted from the Laramide orogeny and other tectonic events have locations with metal ore.
Coordinates: 36°29′04″N109°12′13″W / 36.4844455°N 109.2037118°W