Geologic Guide to Cloudland Canyon State Park

Scenic Cloudland Canyon State Park, located on Lookout Mountain in Dade County, Georgia offers visitors one of the most spectacular panoramas in the area. Rugged and precipitous canyons, marked by dazzling waterfalls, plunge over 800 feet to the floor of Lookout Valley. The park is located in the Cumberland Plateau that forms the extreme northwestern corner of the state. The rocks of this plateau represent the late Paleozoic Era and range from 340 to 280 million years old. These rocks, originally deposited in open sea and coastal environments, have been subsequently altered by deformation and erosion into the dramatic configurations that exist today. The purpose of this guide is to interpret the exposed rocks of Cloudland Canyon as "readable" records of past events in the earth's history. Because this area represents deposits originally laid down adjacent to an ancient shoreline, examination of geologic processes at the modern coastline will serve as the key to identification of the rocks of the canyon.