The Cheltenham Badlands is an area in Caledon, Canada, consisting of bare, windswept red hills and gullies displaying spectacular colors that alternates from bright clays to red scoria, streaked with narrow greenish bands. Unlike natural causes such as erosion by wind and water, Cheltenham Badlands was caused by human intervention.

The impressive landscape was originally formed at the base of an ancient sea over 400 million years ago. All these years, the reddish Queenston Shale was covered by a layer of limestone, sandstone, sand and gravel, until the early 1900s, when poor farming practice and overgrazing caused the shale to get exposed.

Photo credit: Gary J. Wood/Flickr