The area was reserved as Bryce Canyon National Monument by Presidential proclamation, June 8, 1923. The act of June 7, 1924, authorized its establishment as Utah National Park when certain conditions regarding land acquisition had been met. The act of February 25, 1928, changed the name from Utah National Park to Bryce Canyon National Park and materially increased the size of the area. On September 15, 1928, when all alienated lands within the proposed park area were transferred to the United States, in accordance with the act of June 7, 1924, Bryce Canyon National Park was established. The park now embraces more than 36,000 acres under Federal ownership. Bryce Canyon National Park is one of the areas of the National Park System owned by the people of the United States and administered for them by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior. In these areas the scenery and the objects of historic, prehistoric, and scientific interest are carefully preserved and displayed for public enjoyment. Geology of Bryce Canyon National Park[1] _Regional Features._—In Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks the type of scenery peculiar to the plateaus of southern Utah and northern Arizona attains its most complete expression. Layer upon layer of shales and sandstones have been carved into architectural forms, astonishingly alike for size and color. The long stretches of even skyline seen on approaching the parks from Cedar City (west), Panguitch (north), and Grand Canyon (south) give an impression of extensive flat surfaces that terminate in lines of cliffs, but viewpoints within the parks reveal a ruggedness possessed by few other regions. The canyons are so narrow, so deep, and so thickly interlaced, and the edges of the strata so continuously exposed that the region seems made up of gorges, cliffs, and mesas intimately associated with a marvelous variety of minor erosion forms. The parks might be considered as mountainous regions in which departures of many thousand feet from a general surface are downward rather than upward.