Bryce Canyon packs thousands of pink-and-white hoodoo spires into a horseshoe amphitheater carved from the rim of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Orbit the bowl, toggle the color banding, and find Thor's Hammer.
Published figures: rim about 2,400-2,778 m; hoodoos typically 1.5-45 m tall; carved from the Claron Formation, deposited about 30-40 million years ago; established as a national park in 1928.
Drag to orbit and scroll or pinch to zoom. Everything renders on your device with WebGL.
Bryce Canyon 3D Explorer
This browser explorer shows Bryce Canyon as a horseshoe amphitheater carved into the rim of the Paunsaugunt Plateau, packed with thousands of hoodoo spires banded from rose-pink at the bowl floor up through orange and pale pink to cream near the rim.
Despite the name, Bryce Canyon is not a true canyon: frost-wedging and rain carved it into a series of amphitheaters along the plateau edge, not a river. The rim sits about 2,400-2,778 m above sea level, and the hoodoos below it typically run 1.5-45 m tall, cut from the pink, orange, and white Claron Formation limestone laid down roughly 30-40 million years ago. Bryce Canyon National Park was established in 1928 to protect the amphitheaters.
- Toggle color banding between natural and a vivid layer-boundary accent
- Toggle the Thor's Hammer marker at the tallest hoodoo near the bowl center
- Read elevation, hoodoo height, and rock-age figures in the panel
- See a horseshoe amphitheater densely packed with spires, not a river-carved gorge
- Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom
- Runs fully in the browser with the vendored three.js engine - no account, no upload
| Figure | Published value |
|---|---|
| Established | 1928, as Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, USA |
| Rim elevation | about 2,400-2,778 m (7,900-9,115 ft) |
| Hoodoo height | typically 1.5-45 m tall |
| Rock | Claron Formation - pink, orange, and white limestone, about 30-40 million years old |
| Carved by | frost-wedging and rain, not a river |
| Famous hoodoo | Thor's Hammer - a capstone boulder balanced on a narrower spire |
For other rock formations in this cluster, open the Grand Canyon 3D Explorer (a river-carved gorge with stacked layers) or the Stone Forest (Shilin) 3D Explorer (a dense karst pinnacle field).
The amphitheater, its packed hoodoo spires, and the color banding are all drawn on your own device with WebGL, so orbiting and zooming across the bowl stay smooth with nothing sent to a server. The three.js engine that renders the scene downloads once (about 0.7 MB) and is then cached, so a second visit to Bryce Canyon reuses it and starts faster.
This is an educational approximation - hoodoo placement, spacing, and color bands are procedural teaching cues, not survey geology.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Bryce Canyon a real canyon?
Not in the river-carved sense. It is a series of horseshoe-shaped amphitheaters cut into the plateau rim by frost-wedging and rain, not by a river.
How tall are the hoodoos?
Typically 1.5-45 m tall - irregular spires left standing as softer rock erodes away around harder caps.
What is Thor's Hammer?
The park's most famous single hoodoo - a boulder-shaped capstone balanced on a narrower spire, marked in this explorer at the tallest hoodoo near the bowl center.
What rock forms the hoodoos?
The Claron Formation - pink, orange, and white limestone and siltstone deposited about 30-40 million years ago.
How high is the rim?
About 2,400-2,778 m (7,900-9,115 ft) above sea level.
Where is Bryce Canyon?
Southwestern Utah, USA - protected as Bryce Canyon National Park, established in 1928.
Is this a geological simulation?
No. It is an educational explorer using published NPS figures - hoodoo placement and color bands are procedural teaching cues.