Chapter 1The Colorado PlateauIf you visited Bears Ears National Monument, the first thing you’d notice might be two square towers rising out of the rock. Many people say these look like the ears of a bear hiding in plain sight, and that’s how the monument earned its name. These “ears” are actually buttes (say: byoots) and they are flat towers of rock that were originally part of a plateau (say: PLAH-toe), which is a piece of land that is higher than the rest of its surroundings.
A plateau is often called a mesa (say: MAY-sah), which means “table” in Spanish.
Buttes are formed during a slow processcalled erosion, where the rocky surface of the plateau is slowly worn away by things like water, wind, and ice. It can take millions of years to erode stone and rock. The top of the butte is protected by a hard rock layer called caprock. The caprock resists erosion and also weathering, which is what happens when the rock and minerals of the earth break down and dissolve.
The top of the caprock remains while the lower, softer parts of the rock formation slowly erode until a butte is formed.
There is a simple way to tell the difference between a mesa and a butte: A mesa is wider than it is tall, and a butte is taller than it is wide.
The Bears Ears formation is on the Colorado Plateau, a region that connects the corners of southeastern Utah, southwestern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, and the northern half of Arizona. This intersection where the states all meet is known as the Four Corners, and that’s where part of Bears Ears is.
Bears Ears formed more than six hundred million years ago, deep under the earth’s crust. The Colorado Plateau was slowly lifted up because of tectonic plates. These plates are large slabs of rock that exist beneath the surface of the earth. They move very slowly against one another. That movement creates the mountains and valleys on our planet, and it also causes earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
When tectonic plates collided, they formed the Colorado Plateau by uplifting the land from the earth’s crust. This uplifting takes millions of years.
Over those millions of years, the plateau continued to rise, creating mountains and vast landscapes. Since the Colorado, Green, and San Juan Rivers cut through these landscapes, canyons, deserts, and mesas were created. This is how the Bears Ears buttes came to be.
Copyright © 2026 by G. M. Taboas Zayas; illustrated by Gregory Copeland. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
