How was the Grand Canyon really formed?
Wikipedia: Creation of the Grand Canyon Uplift of the Colorado Plateaus forced rivers to cut down faster.The Laramide orogeny affected all of western North America by helping to build the Cordilleran Mountain Range (of which the Rocky Mountains are a major part). This major mountain-building event started near the end of the Mesozoic (around 75 million years ago) and lasted well into the early Cenozoic. A second period of uplift started 17 million years ago, creating the Colorado Plateaus (the Kaibab, Kanab, and Shivwits plateaus bound the northern part of the canyon and the Cococino bounds the southern part). However, for reasons poorly understood, the beds of the Colorado Plateaus remained mostly horizontal through both events even as they were uplifted an estimated 9000 feet (2700 m). One hypothesis suggests that the entire plateau shifted in a clockwise rotation during the uplift and this helped to maintain its stability. Before the uplift the plateau region was about 1000 feet (30
