The American West is full of colorful geographic names evocative of The Place of Eternal Punishment and its Evil Overlord — all of them named by white men from the east coast — with references to Hell, Satan Perdition and more. It’s almost as if those damn Easterners didn’t like it out here or something.
So, the Devil’s Kitchen is in a corner of the Colorado National Monument, down at the level of the Grand Valley. It’s a bunch of sandstone pillars that have a hollowed-out area in between them. Here’s a shot of the place taken from a nearby ridge:
So, it isn’t Satanic, nor does it resemble a kitchen, except for a shelf inside that might be the kitchen table. There’s a story about that below. The “kitchen” area, on the left end of this fin, is a gap between the pillars that you can walk around inside of.
The trailhead is a cluster of three trails that begins at the bottom of No Thoroughfare Canyon.
At this part of the Monument, the uplift is an anticline instead of a normal fault: we’re at the bottom of a bulge that rises from left to right. On top is the multi-colored Morrison Formation1 (where the dinosaurs are buried), next is the greenish Wanakah Formation2, and on the bottom are two members of Entrada Formation; one almost white, the other red.
A tenth of a mile later, the trail forks and our fork takes a right turn, looking up No Thoroughfare canyon:
The Devil’s Kitchen is in this photo but it’s hard to point out. It’s the second fin on the left side of the photo. Near the next fork in the trails, it is right in front of you:
As far as I have been able to determine, this is all Wingate sandstone, which was deposited about 200 million years ago. It was windblown sand, with the wind still visible:
“Eolian” is the geologist’s word for “windblown sand dunes that hardened into rock.” It makes a handy set of steps to climb up into the “kitchen” itself:
Next: Inside the “kitchen” itself, where someone almost became a meal!
Deposited 156 - 146 million years ago.
Deposited 169-163 million years ago.