Question: When did the source of almost all of the Imperial Valley's water, start to form the Grand Canyon?

full_context: Document 1: Mexico City: Mexico City is located in the Valley of Mexico, sometimes called the Basin of Mexico. This valley is located in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt in the high plateaus of south-central Mexico. It has a minimum altitude of 2,200 meters (7,200 feet) above sea level and is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes that reach elevations of over 5,000 metres (16,000 feet). This valley has no natural drainage outlet for the waters that flow from the mountainsides, making the city vulnerable to flooding. Drainage was engineered through the use of canals and tunnels starting in the 17th century.
Document 2: Grand Canyon: The Grand Canyon is a river valley in the Colorado Plateau that exposes uplifted Proterozoic and Paleozoic strata, and is also one of the six distinct physiographic sections of the Colorado Plateau province. It is not the deepest canyon in the world (Kali Gandaki Gorge in Nepal is much deeper). However, the Grand Canyon is known for its visually overwhelming size and its intricate and colorful landscape. Geologically, it is significant because of the thick sequence of ancient rocks that are well preserved and exposed in the walls of the canyon. These rock layers record much of the early geologic history of the North American continent.
Document 3: Outflow channels: Outflow channels are extremely long, wide swathes of scoured ground on Mars, commonly containing the streamlined remnants of pre-existing topography and other linear erosive features indicating sculpting by fluids moving downslope. Channels extend many hundreds of kilometers in length and are typically greater than one kilometer in width; the largest valley (Kasei Vallis) is around long, greater than wide and exceeds in depth cut into the surrounding plains. These features tend to appear fully sized at fractures in the Martian surface, either from chaos terrains or from canyon systems or other tectonically controlled, deep graben, though there are exceptions. Besides their exceptional size, the channels are also characterized by low sinuosities and high width:depth ratios compared both to other Martian valley features and to terrestrial river channels. Crater counts indicate that most of the channels were cut since the early Hesperian, though the age of the features is variable between different regions of Mars. Some outflow channels in the Amazonis and Elysium Planitiae regions have yielded ages of only tens of million years, extremely young by the standards of Martian topographic features.
Document 4: Geography of the United States: West of the Rocky Mountains lies the Intermontane Plateaus (also known as the Intermountain West), a large, arid desert lying between the Rockies and the Cascades and Sierra Nevada ranges. The large southern portion, known as the Great Basin, consists of salt flats, drainage basins, and many small north-south mountain ranges. The Southwest is predominantly a low-lying desert region. A portion known as the Colorado Plateau, centered around the Four Corners region, is considered to have some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. It is accentuated in such national parks as Grand Canyon, Arches, Mesa Verde National Park and Bryce Canyon, among others. Other smaller Intermontane areas include the Columbia Plateau covering eastern Washington, western Idaho and northeast Oregon and the Snake River Plain in Southern Idaho.
Document 5: Colorado River: Colorado River The Colorado River at Horseshoe Bend, Arizona, a few miles below Glen Canyon Dam Countries United States, Mexico States Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Baja California, Sonora Tributaries - left Fraser River, Blue River, Eagle River, Roaring Fork River, Gunnison River, Dolores River, San Juan River, Little Colorado River, Bill Williams River, Gila River - right Green River, Dirty Devil River, Escalante River, Kanab River, Virgin River, Hardy River Cities Glenwood Springs, CO, Grand Junction, CO, Moab, UT, Page, AZ, Bullhead City, AZ, Lake Havasu City, AZ, Yuma, AZ, San Luis Rio Colorado, SON Source La Poudre Pass - location Rocky Mountains, Colorado, United States - elevation 10,184 ft (3,104 m) - coordinates 40 ° 28 ′ 20 ''N 105 ° 49 ′ 34'' W ﻿ / ﻿ 40.47222 ° N 105.82611 ° W ﻿ / 40.47222; - 105.82611 Mouth Gulf of California - location Colorado River Delta, Baja California -- Sonora, Mexico - elevation 0 ft (0 m) - coordinates 31 ° 54 ′ 00 ''N 114 ° 57 ′ 03'' W ﻿ / ﻿ 31.90000 ° N 114.95083 ° W ﻿ / 31.90000; - 114.95083 Coordinates: 31 ° 54 ′ 00 ''N 114 ° 57 ′ 03'' W ﻿ / ﻿ 31.90000 ° N 114.95083 ° W ﻿ / 31.90000; - 114.95083 Length 1,450 mi (2,334 km) Basin 246,000 sq mi (637,137 km) Discharge for mouth (average virgin flow), max and min at Topock, AZ, 300 mi (480 km) from the mouth - average 22,500 cu ft / s (637 m / s) - max 384,000 cu ft / s (10,900 m / s) - min 422 cu ft / s (12 m / s) Map of the Colorado River basin Wikimedia Commons: Colorado River
Document 6: Red Desert (Wyoming): The Red Desert is a high altitude desert and sagebrush steppe located in south central Wyoming, comprising approximately 9,320 square miles (24,000 km). Among the natural features in the Red Desert region are the Great Divide Basin, a unique endorheic drainage basin formed by a division in the Continental Divide, and the Killpecker Sand Dunes, the largest living dune system in the United States. In the 19th century, the Oregon, California and Mormon Trails crossed the Continental Divide at South Pass, just north of the Red Desert. Today, busy Interstate 80 bisects the desert's southern region while gas field roads cross the desert.
Document 7: Israel: The Jordan River runs along the Jordan Rift Valley, from Mount Hermon through the Hulah Valley and the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the surface of the Earth. Further south is the Arabah, ending with the Gulf of Eilat, part of the Red Sea. Unique to Israel and the Sinai Peninsula are makhteshim, or erosion cirques. The largest makhtesh in the world is Ramon Crater in the Negev, which measures 40 by 8 kilometers (25 by 5 mi). A report on the environmental status of the Mediterranean basin states that Israel has the largest number of plant species per square meter of all the countries in the basin.
Document 8: Candor Chasma: Candor Chasma is one of the largest canyons in the Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars. The feature is geographically divided into two halves: East and West Candor Chasmas, respectively. It is unclear how the canyon originally formed; one theory is that it was expanded and deepened by tectonic processes similar to a graben, while another suggests that it was formed by subsurface water erosion similar to a karst. MRO discovered sulfates, hydrated sulfates, and iron oxides in Candor Chasma.
Document 9: Mars: The large canyon, Valles Marineris (Latin for ``Mariner Valleys '', also known as Agathadaemon in the old canal maps), has a length of 4,000 km (2,500 mi) and a depth of up to 7 km (4.3 mi). The length of Valles Marineris is equivalent to the length of Europe and extends across one - fifth the circumference of Mars. By comparison, the Grand Canyon on Earth is only 446 km (277 mi) long and nearly 2 km (1.2 mi) deep. Valles Marineris was formed due to the swelling of the Tharsis area, which caused the crust in the area of Valles Marineris to collapse. In 2012, it was proposed that Valles Marineris is not just a graben, but a plate boundary where 150 km (93 mi) of transverse motion has occurred, making Mars a planet with possibly a two - tectonic plate arrangement.
Document 10: Southern California: To the east is the Colorado Desert and the Colorado River at the border with Arizona, and the Mojave Desert at the border with the state of Nevada. To the south is the Mexico–United States border.
Document 11: Grand Canyon: Nearly two billion years of Earth's geological history have been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channels through layer after layer of rock while the Colorado Plateau was uplifted. While some aspects about the history of incision of the canyon are debated by geologists, several recent studies support the hypothesis that the Colorado River established its course through the area about 5 to 6 million years ago. Since that time, the Colorado River has driven the down - cutting of the tributaries and retreat of the cliffs, simultaneously deepening and widening the canyon.
Document 12: Grand Canyon: The Grand Canyon (Hopi: Ongtupqa; Yavapai: Wi: kaʼi: la, Navajo: Tsékooh Hatsoh, Spanish: Gran Cañón) is a steep - sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is 277 miles (446 km) long, up to 18 miles (29 km) wide and attains a depth of over a mile (6,093 feet or 1,857 meters).
Document 13: Geology: All of these processes do not necessarily occur in a single environment, and do not necessarily occur in a single order. The Hawaiian Islands, for example, consist almost entirely of layered basaltic lava flows. The sedimentary sequences of the mid-continental United States and the Grand Canyon in the southwestern United States contain almost-undeformed stacks of sedimentary rocks that have remained in place since Cambrian time. Other areas are much more geologically complex. In the southwestern United States, sedimentary, volcanic, and intrusive rocks have been metamorphosed, faulted, foliated, and folded. Even older rocks, such as the Acasta gneiss of the Slave craton in northwestern Canada, the oldest known rock in the world have been metamorphosed to the point where their origin is undiscernable without laboratory analysis. In addition, these processes can occur in stages. In many places, the Grand Canyon in the southwestern United States being a very visible example, the lower rock units were metamorphosed and deformed, and then deformation ended and the upper, undeformed units were deposited. Although any amount of rock emplacement and rock deformation can occur, and they can occur any number of times, these concepts provide a guide to understanding the geological history of an area.
Document 14: Geological history of Earth: The geological history of Earth follows the major events in Earth's past based on the geologic time scale, a system of chronological measurement based on the study of the planet's rock layers (stratigraphy). Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, a disk - shaped mass of dust and gas left over from the formation of the Sun, which also created the rest of the Solar System.
Document 15: Imperial Valley: The Imperial Valley extends southward for 50 miles (80 km) from the southern end of the Salton Sea into Mexico. Part of a trough stretching from the Coachella Valley to the Gulf of California, it is almost entirely below sea level -- 235 feet (72 m) below at the edge of the Salton Sea. Its hot desert climate is characterized by daily temperature extremes. It was once part of the Gulf of California, from which it was cut off by the dam - like deposits of the Colorado River Delta Fan as it carved out the Grand Canyon. Bordered by sand dunes and barren mountains, it was uninhabited until 1901, when the Imperial Canal was opened and diverted Colorado River water into the valley through Mexico. Flood - waters in 1905 -- 07 destroyed the irrigation channels and created the Salton Sea now filled by the New River and irrigation run - off. The rivers in the southern part of the Salton Sea river basin flow south to north.
ground_truth: about 5 to 6 million years ago
sub_queries: where does the imperial valley get almost all of its water Answer: Colorado River
when did Colorado River start to form the grand canyon Answer: about 5 to 6 million years ago