Easily noticeable at places within the are sets of brownish or blackish looking rocks and cliffs like these above
Dreamy Draw, just to the west as the Piestewa Freeway (aka Squaw Peak Parkway, SR51) cuts
through the range.
Fascinating among things about geology are those moments when you really see
what you are looking at. In this case, these dark stained
are the evidence of very ancient () submarine iron-rich hot
springs!
Formations like these occur in the vicinity of submerged (in an ocean)
volcanoes, and so this shows that some of the rocks in the Squaw
Peak area were once part of a landscape not unlike that of today's Aleutian Islands or
Japanese Islands.
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You can read more about the rocks in this picture in
my GeoStory called "Time Travel and other
Everyday Things". It is in PDF version, so you can print it easily, and there
are more GeoStories available, too.
The scene above is number 3, in a series of 4 views in the Squaw Peak area of
Phoenix, Arizona.