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.[1]
The Navajo Section is located in northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico. It is named for the Navajo Nation, with about half of the area of the section on the Navajo Reservation.
The section is characterized by broad rolling plains on easily eroded and carved rocks, with cuestas (ridges) and tablelands capped by gently dipping resistant sandstone beds. One of the most prominent landform features of the Navajo Section is Shiprock, a 7177feet monadnock formation near the town of Shiprock, New Mexico.
The lowest point in the Navajo Section is about 4700feet, near the Four Corners area. The boundary between this section and the Canyon Lands Section is nearby, in the San Juan River basin. The highest point of the Navajo Section is 9916feet at Chromo Mountain on the Continental Divide near Chama, New Mexico.[2]
Adjacent to the Navajo Section are the:
The area is predominantly generally horizontal sandstone beds with some shale sequences of late Cretaceous and early Cenozoic age. A few areas of the section also have abundant volcanic necks and buttes, but due to the arid weather and soft sandstone, many of the rock formations of the area have eroded to form distinctive features of long cuestas, shallow canyons and valleys, narrow fan terraces, undulating plateaus, isolated mesas, steep hills, and some shale badlands.