Art or Accident: The Grand Canyon Dragon Map?

It’s not an artwork. Not intentionally. But its line, color, and composition combine for a striking visual.

The hand of man produced it, although forces vastly greater and older are responsible for its existence.

The Grand Canyon Dragon Map.

Can you see it?

'The Geologic Map of the Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona,' 1976. Courtesy of the Museum of Northern Arizona.

From either end, the geologic features of the Grand Canyon as seen from above appear eerily reminiscent of a Chinese dragon’s head, tail, and spikey, serpentine body. Totally unintentionally.

An exhibition at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff on display through January 19, 2025, explores the origins, heritage, and ongoing use of the bestselling geology map alongside rock samples from the geology that makes the map remarkable.

Geologist Wayne Ranney curated the show. He was a 21-year-old back country ranger at Grand Canyon National Park when the map was published by the Museum of Northern Arizona in 1976. He’s been guiding trips through the canyon on the Colorado River since the late 1980s; more than 100 to date.

On a 9-day trip in 2022, he guided the Museum of Northern Arizona’s director. The idea for an exhibition was sparked.

“I lay it out in the sand in the morning and show people where we're at,” Ranney said. “I show them what we're going to float through that day and then I use the map to talk to people about the Grand Canyon. The map has been a constant companion to me for nearly 50 years.”

Something amazing happened upon the map’s publication. More than a useful tool for guides and scientists, its vibrant colors and happenstance resemblance to a dragon captivated the public.

“People who had no interest in geology or science would hang this map on the wall just because of the way it looked,” Ranney remembers. “This was the eddy of the 1960s and in a way it was kind of a psychedelic looking thing, and people, when they hung the map on the wall, they were essentially saying ‘I'm a part of this landscape.’”

The first printing quickly sold out. Three more editions followed in 1980, 1986 and 1996. By the time the Dragon Map went out of print, it had sold between 90,000 to 100,000 copies – a geologic bestseller.

Making the Map

The Geologic Map of the Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona – its official name – took a team of geologists six years to complete. From a scientific perspective, it is extraordinary as the first to reveal the Grand Canyon’s geology in color on a single sheet of paper.

The map was born after Grand Canyon National Park managers broached the idea with geologist Peter Huntoon, who then took it to Bill Breed, curator of geology at the Museum of Northern Arizona. The museum sits at the base of the San Francisco Peaks on the road to the Grand Canyon.

George Billingsley, a river guide who had just completed his master’s degree in geology at Northern Arizona University, was brought on board. Having run 70 trips through the Grand Canyon, he became one of the principal mapmakers along with Huntoon and Breed.

“They used aerial photographs to determine the lateral extent of each rock unit, but when you put two identical photographs together and then look through a device called a stereoscope, those two images will give you a three-dimensional view of the landscape, even though you're looking at two flat photographs,” Ranney explained of the map’s production. “They were looking at these stereoscopes and then they would draw a line on a topographic map where one rock unit turned into the next one and then assign a color to each rock unit.”

Despite the Grand Canyon’s enormous scale, there’s only about 35 rock units and the vast majority contains only nine or 10. Vibrant, intricate, captivating, the Grand Canyon Dragon Map, or Blue Dragon Map for the Kaibab Formation colored in light blue outlining the canyon, is not busy or cluttered.

The map depicts geology, which is also a reflection of time. Each color of the map represents a different rock unit.

When looking in the walls of the Grand Canyon, visitors may see red sandstone and then white limestone sitting right on top of it. Those changes represent changes in the ancient environment.

“If you can picture the postcard view of the Grand Canyon, you see the big hole in the ground, but if you look a little closer, you'll see that everything is horizontally stratified. Those horizontal strata are differentiated into different rock units,” Ranney explained. Oldest rocks at the bottom. “Some of them are white, some of them are red, some of them are brown, orange, but a named rock unit or a formation – as we call them in geology – represents deposition in a specific environment.”

The map recreates a bird’s eye view of the canyon looking straight down onto the landscape. Its makers went in on foot to add finer details.

Southrim overlook at Grand Canyon National Park. Courtesy Museum of Northern Arizona.

The Dragon’s Colors

In addition to managing the massive project, Breed chose the map’s colors. Partially.

“There's a convention for (geologic map) colors,” Ranney said. Common “rock units” are customarily depicted in the same color across the profession to provide scientists a degree of uniformity, a common code for reading the maps. “They used the convention for a major part of the map, but they deviated from the convention which really set the map apart. In addition to just showing the exposure of rock units, it highlighted some of the landforms that a two-dimensional map wouldn't be able to do.”

Breed picked the colors that would draw special attention to Grand Canyon’s unique landforms.

“There's a light green color inside the canyon that's extensive, and that's a landform in the canyon called the Tonto Platform. It's actually a flat surface inside the Grand Canyon which is really unusual,” Ranney explained. “The Grand Canyon is mostly up and down, but because they gave it that light green color, that light green color kind of pops, and it actually shows where the Tonto Platform is located. Then they used the blue color to the west of that showing one of these other platforms that’s present in the Grand Canyon, but much higher than the Tonto.”

Visitors at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff admire the Grand Canyon Dragon Map. Courtesy Museum of Northern Arizona.

Art or Accident

While producing a visually attractive map was important to its makers, artistry was no consideration.

“I can assure you, and I know both of the geologists that did most of the work, they are definitely 100% scientists and probably 0% with an artistic bent of mind, but once the map was created, and people could look at it, everybody went, ‘Oh my god, this is beautiful,’” Ranney said.

Still, Ranney knew Breed well. Breed was his mentor. The dragon may have been accidental, but the colors were not.

“He definitely had an artistic eye,” Ranney said. “I don't know for sure if he was able to discern in advance how it would look, but I think he had in the back of his mind that this could be a very beautiful thing.”

Following the Grand Canyon geology map, the Museum of Northern Arizona created similar full-color geology maps for Canyonlands National Park (1982) and Capitol Reef National Park (1987). Ranney accompanied Billingsley on week-long trips to both places, helping with the final ground-truthing of the maps at those parks.

They get the job done, as do all geologic maps, but none with the panache and mystique of the Blue Dragon.

The Museum of Northern Arizona has re-released the Grand Canyon Dragon Map in conjunction with the exhibit. Prints in two sizes are available (as of the publication date of this article) for purchase at the museum gift shop and online.