Tapeats Sandstone beds are bent in the Monument fold exposed along the Colorado River in central Grand Canyon. Conventional geologists accept that this folding occurred during the Laramide orogeny at ~35–70 Ma when the Colorado Plateau was uplifted. However, the Tapeats Sandstone had been deposited at 507–508 Ma, so after ~450 million years it should have been fully cemented and lithified. Yet the sandstone 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 Tapeats Sandstone and its deformation in the Monument fold. To investigate this further, Tapeats Sandstone samples were collected from the hinge and limb zones of the Monument fold, as well as samples many miles away from the fold. The macroscopic features that should be present if the Tapeats Sandstone 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 were inconsistent with ductile deformation under low pressure-low temperature metamorphic conditions. While bedding plane slip may have occurred, slickensides were not found on any bedding plane surfaces, and there is no thickening of beds in the hinge zones. Also, fracturing is minimal throughout the fold, but there are faults with trivial displacements in the hinge zones. However, these beds bend smoothly into the faults. 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 displayed 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 subtle fractures in some quartz grains are consistent with fracturing due to compaction of the sand grains under the confining overburden pressures. Instead, the poorly-sorted to moderately well-sorted, sub-angular to sub-rounded quartz and K-feldspar grains, and muscovite flakes comprising the sandstone are still in their detrital condition with no indications of the silica cement having been disturbed since lithification of the sandstone 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. Both the macroscopic and microscopic evidence are conclusively consistent only with soft-sediment deformation before cementation and lithification. Therefore, it is concluded that the Tapeats Sandstone had to be folded while still relatively 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 Tapeats Sandstone rule out the vast claimed ages. This can all be easily reconciled with rapid deposition of the Tapeats Sandstone early in the biblical global Flood cataclysm only ~4,350 years ago, and rapid deposition of ~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 resulted in the Late Cretaceous-Early Cenozoic Laramide uplift of the Colorado Plateau and the monocline folding in the Grand Canyon region. Because the Tapeats Sandstone 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 Monument fold before the beds hardened, and were cemented and lithified to sandstone. Thus, nearly 500 million years of claimed geologic history are eliminated.