Bright Angel Formation beds are bent in the Whitmore Helipad fold exposed along the Colorado River in western Grand Canyon. Conventional geologists accept that this folding occurred during the Laramide orogeny at ~40–70 Ma when the Colorado Plateau was uplifted. However, the Bright Angel Formation had been deposited at 502–507 Ma, so after ~450 million years it should have been fully cemented and lithified. Yet the sandstone, siltstone, and shale beds look as though they were bent smoothly while they were still unlithified and soft. Such a conclusion would be preposterous if there were ~450 million years between deposition of the Bright Angel Formation and its deformation in the Whitmore Helipad fold. To investigate this further, Bright Angel Formation samples were collected from the hinge and limb zones of the Whitmore Helipad fold, as well as samples many miles away from the fold. Macroscopic features that should be present if the Bright Angel Formation beds in the fold had been bent via ductile deformation over millions of years are indications of bedding plane slip, slickensides on bedding plane surfaces, thickening of hinge zones and thinning of limb zones, as well as more fracturing in the hinge zones compared to the limbs. At the microscopic scale there should be evidence of grain-boundary sliding, rotation and fracturing of grains, and within many quartz grains there should be sub-grains, undulose extinction, deformation lamellae and deformation kink bands. Field observations are inconsistent with ductile deformation under low pressure-low temperature metamorphic conditions. While bedding plane slip may have occurred, instead of slickensides being found on any bedding plane surfaces, trace fossils are preserved. There is little thickening of beds in the hinge zones, except for lateral bulging of beds above the lower hinge zone. Also, fracturing is minimal throughout the fold and confined to within each bed, but there are faults with trivial displacements in the hinge zones and one limb zone. All these observed features have been replicated using water-saturated soft sediment layers in experiments simulating compressional folding, which equates to soft-sediment deformation. None of the microscopic features expected from ductile deformation are present in any of the samples. There are no deformation lamellae or deformation kink bands in the quartz grains which rarely display even trivial undulose extinction, and there is no obvious evidence of any rotation of grains or grain boundary sliding. The few quartz grains containing sub-grains are likely derived from metamorphic source rocks rather than being a product of ductile deformation, and the few occasional fractures in some quartz grains and broken quartz grains are consistent with fracturing due to compaction of the sand and silt grains under the confining overburden pressures. Instead, the well-sorted, angular to sub-rounded quartz and K-feldspar grains, oval glauconite pellets, muscovite flakes, and brachiopod shell fragments comprising the sandstones and shales, and the finer-grained shales, are still in their detrital condition, except for illite alteration of tiny K-feldspar grains in the shales. There are no indications of the silica cement having been disturbed since lithification of these sediment beds or of any metamorphic changes to these constituent minerals or the rock fabric. Furthermore, SEM images clearly demonstrate that the quartz cement has not been disrupted since lithification, with many cement crystals still being pristine with terminal faces intact. And muscovite flakes are bent but not internally sheared between sheets. Both the macroscopic and microscopic evidence are conclusively consistent only with soft-sediment deformation before cementation and lithification. Therefore, it is concluded that the Bright Angel Formation had to be folded while still relatively water-saturated, unlithified and soft soon after deposition and before cementation and lithification. Problems with the radioisotope dating methods and the U-Pb dates obtained for the underlying Tapeats Sandstone rule out the vast claimed ages. This can all be easily reconciled with rapid deposition of the Bright Angel Formation early in the biblical global Flood cataclysm only ~4,350 years ago, and rapid deposition of maybe up to ~3,300–4,500 m (~10,800–14,750 ft) of overlying sedimentary layers caused by the catastrophic plate activity during the Flood year. Late in the Flood year, as the Farallon plate underplated the western North American plate, it caused isostatic reequilibration which likely resulted in the Late Cretaceous-Early Cenozoic Laramide uplift of the Colorado Plateau and the monocline folding in the Grand Canyon region. Because the Bright Angel Formation beds were still relatively unlithified and soft less than a year after rapid burial, they easily responded to soft-sediment deformation to form the smooth bending in the Whitmore Helipad fold before the beds hardened, and were cemented and lithified. Thus, nearly 500 million years of claimed geologic history are eliminated. And since the Flood, isolated earthquake-induced movements on the Hurricane Fault have caused minor faulting in the Whitmore Helipad fold.