Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Five miles northwest of the Y we come to Upheaval Dome, one of the most unusual geographic and geologic features of the park. Viewed from the air (fig. 25), it resembles somewhat a volcanic or meteor crater and has been called such by some. Because beds of salt are known to underlie the park, some have suggested that the salt may have thickened and welled upward to form a salt dome, similar to domes along the Gulf Coast (Mattox, 1968). However, only 1,470 feet of salt was encountered in an oil test just east of Upheaval Dome (Robert J. Hite, U.S. Geol. Survey, oral commun., Feb. 13, 1973); so although salt may have played a role, Upheaval Dome clearly is not a salt dome with dimensions similar to the Gulf Coast types. It may be related to a mound on the deep-seated Precambrian rocks (Joesting and Plouff, 1958, fig. 3; Joesting and others, 1966, p. 13, 14, 17), but the exact origin of the dome is not clear.

The central part has the structure of a dome, in that the strata dip downward away from the middle. A ringlike syncline, or downward fold in the rock layers (fig. 26), surrounds the dome, beyond which the strata resume their nearly flat position. The white rock in the bottom of the craterlike depression is not salt, but jumbled large fragments of the White Rim Sandstone. Surrounding that are slopes of the Moenkopi and Chinle Formations, cliffs of the Wingate Sandstone, a circular bench of the Kayenta Formation, and outer ramparts of the Navajo Sandstone. Upheaval Canyon leads to Stillwater Canyon of the Green River at the upper left.

One mile before the road ends, a well-marked foot trail leads to the top of Whale Rock, a prominence on the Navajo Sandstone that forms the outer ring of the dome. At the end of the road, another foot trail ascends from the picnic area to the foot of the Wingate Sandstone cliffs around the central part of the dome. The views of the dome from these trails are interesting, but you are really too close to get a true picture of the unusual feature, which is obtainable only from the air, as shown in figure 25.

Just west of Upheaval Dome, Bighorn Mesa is connected to Steer Mesa by a neck only 15 feet wide flanked by 300-foot vertical cliffs, as pointed out by McKnight (1940, p. 12). I later learned from Ed McKnight (oral commun., June 6, 1973) that during his field work in this area in 1926 he was riding a mule across this narrow neck when the half-asleep mule suddenly became aware of the dropoff on one side and began to turn around and head back. Ed hastily but cautiously dismounted and led the mule across! When this neck is finally breached by erosion, Bighorn Mesa will be just as isolated and inaccessible as Junction Butte, now cut off from Grand View Point. (See frontispiece and fig. 27.)

Hatch Point

The high mesa east of Canyonlands National Park and the Colorado River canyons, called Hatch Point, contains several vantage points ideally suited for viewing scenic features of the park and adjacent areas. Hatch Point is part of the vast public domain administered by the Bureau of Land Management—a sister agency of the Geological Survey and the National Park Service, all in the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Bureau, hereinafter referred to simply as the B.L.M., has made many improvements on Hatch Point, including fine roads, two modern campgrounds with sanitary facilities and piped water from wells, and two overlooks with protective fences, benches, paths, sanitary facilities, and ramadas containing panels that describe the features visible from the viewpoints. Because of these improvements, the B.L.M. has appropriately named this area “Canyon Rims Recreation Area.”

Geologically, Hatch Point is similar to Island in the Sky. Both are bordered by towering cliffs of the Wingate Sandstone capped by the resistant Kayenta Formation, and rounded remnants of the overlying Navajo Sandstone rise above the otherwise-flat mesa surface in many places.

Access to this high tableland is by a good paved road leading west from U.S. Highway 163 at a point 32 miles south of Moab and 22 miles north of Monticello. About 5 miles west of the highway we pass Windwhistle Campground, nestled in an attractive cove of Entrada Sandstone cliffs, and 16 miles from the highway we reach an intersection. From here it is 7 miles west by paved road to Needles Overlook, 10 miles north to Anticline Overlook. Like the other high mesas, Hatch Point contains peripheral areas of scattered piñon and juniper trees and large flat grasslands used for grazing. Grain tanks here and there store winter feed for the cattle.

NEEDLES OVERLOOK

Let us follow the pavement to Needles Overlook, from which fine morning views of Canyonlands National Park can be seen to the south and west. Northwestward (fig. 27) we look 10 miles across the Colorado River canyon to Junction Butte and Grand View Point. (This view is along the line of the east half of the cross section in fig. 10.) The feather edge of the White Rim Sandstone caps the White Rim west of the Colorado River, but the White Rim is absent on the east side of the canyon and in the entire Needles district to the southwest, where the important scenic features are carved from the underlying Cedar Mesa Sandstone Member of the Cutler Formation, referred to hereinafter simply as the Cedar Mesa Sandstone. Both these sandstones are missing in the foreground of figure 27—their place being taken by thin beds of red siltstone, mudstone, and sandstone similar to those that comprise the Organ Rock Tongue shown between the two sandstones in figure 22. These are additional examples of facies changes mentioned earlier (p. 34).

CANYONLANDS OVERLOOK

Turning north from the intersection 7 miles east of Needles Overlook, we traverse a nearly flat grassy tableland to Hatch Point Campground. In figure 1 the campground is shown west of the old road; the new road is west of the campground, but no map of the new route was available for plotting in figure 1. About a mile before we reach the campground a jeep trail heads west then northwest about 5½ miles to Canyonlands Overlook, a scant mile from, but some 1,400 feet above, the eastern border of Canyonlands National Park. This overlook affords fine views of the Colorado River canyons and the eastern shore of Island in the Sky, but at present (1973) there are no plans to improve the trail for passenger-car travel.

Two miles north of the campground we cross a minor drainage leading northeastward into the north fork of Trough Springs Canyon. The B.L.M. plans a road down this canyon to Kane Springs Canyon, 1,100 feet below, where it will connect both with a scenic drive to Moab, the lower part of which is paved, and with the jeep trail going west over Hurrah Pass (fig. 30) and thence south along the eastern benches of the canyons of the Colorado River to the Needles district of the park. E. Neal Hinrichs (U.S. Geol. Survey, oral commun. Feb. 16, 1973) reported specimens of blue celestite (strontium sulfate, SrSO₄) and barite (barium sulfate, BaSO₄) in the Cutler Formation at a point where a sharp bend of this jeep trail crosses a fault, or fracture (fig. 56), in the northeast fork of Lockhart Canyon (shown in fig. 1 as the easternmost loop of the trail about 6 miles northeast of Lockhart Basin). Farther south, the trail swings west of Lockhart Basin, whose center exposes part of a syncline (fig. 28).

U-3 LOOP

Two and a half miles farther north, or about 2 miles south of Anticline Overlook, a short road leads to the west and entirely around a small conical butte of the Navajo Sandstone. This new circular drive has not yet been formally named and is simply called the U-3 loop, as designated in the surveyor’s notebook. It affords splendid views to the west and is to be equipped with picnic tables. Looking west (fig. 29) we see a W-shaped loop of the Colorado River, Dead Horse Point on the right skyline, and Island in the Sky on the distant skyline. The strata curving over Shafer dome appear in the right middle background.

ANTICLINE OVERLOOK

Two more miles takes us to Anticline Overlook for the most sublime views in this part of the area. To the north (fig. 30) we look across the northeast flank of the Cane Creek anticline, an upfold of the rocks (figs. 13, 14). Hurrah Pass straddles the narrow wall separating the Colorado River and its canyon at the left from Kane Springs Canyon on the right. The Colorado River appears again in the right background, where it leaves Moab Valley. The Kings Bottom syncline, or downfold (fig. 26), seen in the middle distance between the Cane Creek anticline and the Moab anticline, exposes a wide area of the Navajo Sandstone. The ridge on the right skyline, composed of the Entrada Sandstone, is The Windows Section of Arches National Park, and the left skyline shows faintly the distant Book Cliffs.

On the east wall of Kane Springs Canyon just to the right of figure 30 is the Atomic King mine in the Cutler Formation, from which uranium ore has been mined at intervals during the last 2 or 3 years.

To the northwest (fig. 31; see also fig. 13) is a textbook example of a rock fold—the Cane Creek anticline—laid bare by the Colorado River cutting directly across its crest (fig. 1). Anticlines are noted as sources of or at least hunting grounds for oil and gas, and this one is no exception, although production has been relatively small and was stopped altogether in about 1963. Some oil and gas was produced also from wells on the north flank of Shafer dome, just beneath Dead Horse Point (figs. 1, 15), but other favorable-looking structures farther south that were tested, such as Lockhart anticline, Rustler dome, and Gibson dome (fig. 1), failed to yield commercial amounts (Baker, 1933, p. 80-84). Some of the colorful events in the early days of wildcatting are noted on page 100.

Exploration for oil and gas led to the discovery of potash beneath several anticlines in eastern Utah and western Colorado. According to Hite (1968, p. 325), the Cane Creek anticline is underlain by about 5,200 feet of salt-bearing rocks in the Paradox Member of the Hermosa Formation (fig. 9), of which about 84 percent is halite (common salt, sodium chloride) and associated potash salts (sylvite, potassium chloride). The potash mine of Texas Gulf, Inc., is shown at the right in figure 31. The white area to the left of the mine is waste common salt, which is recovered with the potash salts, and the white area with dark stripes at the left is a small part of more than 400 acres of evaporation ponds built to separate the salts. These ponds also can be seen from Dead Horse Point. The dark stripes are the visible parts of plastic membranes lining the ponds. Mining of an 11-foot bed of ore began by usual underground methods from the bottom of a shaft 2,788 feet deep but became too difficult because of intense and intricate folding of the salt beds. Now the salts are being extracted by a method involving solution, wherein river water is introduced into the former workings and allowed to stand long enough to dissolve the salts, then the brine is pumped out to evaporation ponds, and the valuable potash salts are separated from the sodium salts. Closeup views of the mine and evaporation ponds are seen in figures 70 and 71.

As noted earlier, most of the readily recognizable thin beds, such as the White Rim Sandstone, pinch out south of here, and figure 31 marks the northeasternmost exposure of the Shafer limestone at the top of the Rico Formation. Northeast from here the Rico and overlying Cutler Formation are not readily separable and are included in the so-called Cutler Formation undifferentiated. This land-laid unit of red sandstone, siltstone, and shale is as much as 8,000 feet thick just southwest of the ancient Uncompahgre highland (present Uncompahgre Plateau, in western Colorado and eastern Utah), from which it was derived by erosion during the Permian Period (fig. 80).

Orange Cliffs

The high mesas west of Canyonlands National Park do not form as distinct a mainland as does Hatch Point, but rather are broken up into a maze of peninsulas and islands, as shown in figure 1. Owing to the gentle northwestward dip of the rock strata, the altitude of the mesas declines from about 7,000 feet in the south to about 5,300 feet in the north and northwest, where the whole aspect of the country becomes more rounded and subdued. As shown on the map (fig. 1), however, the name Orange Cliffs is applied to much of the eastward-facing cliffs, which are made of the Wingate Sandstone capped by the Kayenta Formation. Remnants of the Navajo Sandstone increase in number to the north and west, where remnants of the next two younger rock units—the Carmel Formation and the Entrada Sandstone—also occur. Thus, the cliff-forming units dip downward beneath younger rocks that form the relatively flat Green River Desert to the northwest, also referred to as the San Rafael Desert. Figure 32 is a view southeastward from The Spur, shown on the map (fig. 1) as the northern section of the Orange Cliffs.

At present (1973), the areas west of the Green River and the main stem of the Colorado River are the least accessible of any in the park and in this respect have not changed much since Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch roamed the area, except that the former main horse trails are now jeep trails. A secondary road south from the town of Green River goes past the north side of the Horseshoe Canyon Detached Unit (figs. 1, 2) and connects with another secondary road to the west, which joins Utah Highway 24 at Temple Junction, 20 miles north of Hanksville; near Horseshoe Canyon a jeep trail leads south to the Orange Cliffs. Owing to blowing sand, these “roads” are not considered reliable for passenger cars and are best negotiated by four-wheel-drive vehicles or horses.

According to Baker (1971, p. 12), the road leading eastward along North Point was used by the Wild Bunch in traveling to French Spring, whence they dropped down Millard Canyon (fig. 33) and crossed the Green River at Bonita Bend, which is just east of Buttes of the Cross (fig. 64). They also followed the Old Spanish Trail from the Henry Mountains eastward across the Dirty Devil River, up North Hatch Canyon, across Sunset Pass, and down across the Land of Standing Rocks to Spanish Bottom on the Colorado River (fig. 1). After crossing the river, they followed the trail up Lower Red Lake Canyon (fig. 59) and eastward through The Needles to Monticello.

The Benchlands

The White Rim, a broad benchland some 1,000-1,200 feet below the southern half of Island in the Sky, and some of the associated benchlands west of the Green River and between the Colorado River and Hatch Point have already been discussed as viewed from Island in the Sky, the White Rim Trail, or Hatch Point. There remain for consideration several other prominent benchlands.

The Maze and Land of Standing Rocks

The Maze, an intricately carved series of canyons and gullies, has been called a “Thirty-square-mile puzzle in sandstone” (Findley, 1971, p. 71-73), and one can readily visualize a king-sized rat struggling in vain to find a way out. The rock is the Cedar Mesa Sandstone, which here underlies red shales beneath the White Rim Sandstone. South of The Maze an area containing tall spires was appropriately named by the Indians “_Toom’-pin wu-near’ Tu-weap’_,” or “Land of Standing Rocks” (Powell, 1875, p. 154).

West of The Maze is Elaterite Basin, so named because of a dark-brown elastic mineral resin called elaterite, which seeps from the White Rim Sandstone. One of these seeps is shown in figure 34, and a wedge-shaped layer of the sandstone is shown in figure 35. In the Range Canyon area shown in figure 35, sand was being laid down in an offshore bar at the left, while red silts and muds were being deposited on land to the right. The dark bed just above the White Rim near the middle of the photograph is the Hoskinnini Tongue of the Moenkopi Formation, which intertongues with and pinches out in beds of the Moenkopi Formation to left. These are excellent examples of what geologists call facies changes.

South of the Land of Standing Rocks are equally colorful areas known as The Fins and Ernies Country (named after Ernie Larson, an early-day sheep man). A prominent row of spires near Cataract Canyon is known as The Doll House (fig. 36).

The Needles district

The Needles district is currently (1973) the most highly developed part of the unfinished park as the result of design, not accident, for this district includes the greatest number and widest variety of spectacular features—The Needles proper, The Grabens (pronounced gräbǝns), colossal arches and other erosional forms, large meadows such as Squaw Flat and Chesler and Virginia Parks, a wide variety of prehistoric ruins and pictographs, and Confluence Overlook for viewing the joining of two mighty rivers—the Green and the Colorado. Like the White Rim and The Maze, the Needles district is another of the broad benchlands about midway between the high mesas and the deep canyons.

Utah Highway 211, as mentioned already, is a 38-mile-long paved road leading to the Needles district from U.S. Highway 163 at a point 15 miles north of Monticello and 18 miles south of La Sal Junction. The intersection is well marked by Church Rock (fig. 37), a butte of the Entrada Sandstone. Highway 211 gradually climbs an eastward-dipping slope of the Navajo Sandstone dotted with a few buttes and patches of the Entrada Sandstone, such as Church Rock, and reaches the first of two summits 3 miles west of Highway 163. The road crosses a broad gentle valley in the Navajo Sandstone, reaches the second summit about 10 miles from the highway, then descends steeply through the Navajo Sandstone and part of the Kayenta Formation to Indian Creek, 1½ miles below, and follows this creek nearly to The Needles. Half a mile down the canyon takes us to the top of the cliff-forming Wingate Sandstone, and another half mile brings us to Indian Creek State Park and its striking Newspaper Rock (fig. 5). Another 1¾ miles takes us to the base of the Wingate and top of the underlying Chinle Formation, which forms the red slope beneath the cliffs.

Historic Dugout Ranch (p. 14) is 19 miles west of the highway, and from here a dry-weather road leads southward up north Cottonwood Creek 37 miles to Beef Basin and connects with roads to Elk Ridge and the Bears Ears, both just west of the Abajo Mountains. Just west of the ranch we get a good view ahead of two historic landmarks—North and South Six-Shooter Peaks (fig. 38), so named because of their resemblance to a pair of revolvers pointing skyward. The guns are sculptured from slivers of Wingate Sandstone resting upon conical mounds of the Chinle. These can be seen from a wide area; both appear in figures 38 and 40, and the north one is seen in figure 77.

A mile west of Dugout Ranch we descend to the top of the Moss Back Member of the Chinle, a ledge of gray-green sandstone forming the base of this generally red formation, and reach the base of the member at the top of the Moenkopi Formation in the next mile and a half. The Moss Back is uranium bearing in nearby areas.

At 3.8 miles west of Dugout Ranch a poorly marked road on the left crosses Indian Creek, then forks; the left-hand fork follows the bed of Lavender Canyon, and the right-hand fork goes into Davis Canyon. Headwaters of both these canyons are new additions to the park.

The red Organ Rock Tongue of the Cutler Formation is seen about 3 miles beyond the turnoff, or about 6 miles west of Dugout Ranch. Another 1½ miles takes us down in the rock column (fig. 9) to the top of the Cedar Mesa Sandstone. The White Rim Sandstone, which forms such a prominent bench around the southern part of Island in the Sky (figs. 20-23) and west of the Green River, is missing from the Needles district, its place in the rock column being taken by red shales and sandstones of the Cutler Formation. South of Indian Creek other underlying red beds of the Cutler are gradually replaced in turn by the thick Cedar Mesa Sandstone. Erosion has reduced the general level of the Needles district to or into the Cedar Mesa Sandstone, but many streams have cut into the underlying Rico Formation, and the Colorado River has cut also into, and in places through, the limestones of the unnamed upper member of the Hermosa Formation. Our first view of The Needles is another 4 miles, and 1 more mile takes us to the park boundary, nearly 32 miles from the U.S. Highway 163. We pass a road on the right leading to Canyonlands Resort, and on the left is a new line camp which replaces the restored one at Cave Spring (fig. 6).

The unusual features of the Needles district are due in some part to the character and thickness of the underlying rocks but in large part to erosion along joints and faults. Joints are fractures along which no displacement has taken place, and faults are fractures along which there has been displacement of the two sides relative to one another (fig. 76). The Cedar Mesa Sandstone comprises 500 to 600 feet or more of hard well-cemented buff, white, and pink beds of massive sandstone. On the basis of the type and amount of deformation and erosion of the Cedar Mesa Sandstone and underlying rocks, the Needles district can be divided into three differing areas: (1) an eastern area where the rocks are relatively undeformed but are carved into an intricate series of canyons, including Salt Canyon and the upper reaches of Davis and Lavender Canyons—the section of the district that contains most of the arches and Indian ruins; (2) The Needles proper, where tensional forces have cracked the brittle Cedar Mesa Sandstone into a crazy-quilt pattern of square to rectangular blocks separated by joints widened by erosion, creating a myriad of spires and pinnacles; and (3) The Grabens, where the previously jointed rocks were later subjected to additional tensional forces that produced a series of nearly parallel faults that trend northeastward and separate downdropped blocks of rock, called grabens, from intervening stationary or upthrown blocks of rock, called horsts.

Let us examine each of these areas in the order named. For traveling to most features a four-wheel-drive vehicle is strongly recommended. Some visitors negotiate the jeep trails with dune buggies or motorcycles, but four-wheel-drive vehicles are considered safer and generally more reliable. A few trails can be traveled only on foot.

Squaw Flat, in the western part of the relatively undeformed area, is a nearly flat area of lower Cedar Mesa Sandstone covered here and there by a thin layer of sparsely vegetated soil and surrounded by generally low hilly erosional forms in the upper part of the sandstone. Short canyons and alcoves in the sandstone hills along the west side afford excellent semi-private campsites, each of which has its own paved access road, picnic table, and trash can (fig. 39). Moreover, ground water at shallow depth in the underlying sandstone has encouraged the growth of exceptionally large piñon and juniper trees that provide welcome shade.

SALT, DAVIS, AND LAVENDER CANYONS

A glance at the southeast corner of the map (fig. 1) shows that most of the arches and prehistoric ruins in the park are in Salt Canyon and its main tributary, Horse Canyon. A few are in adjacent Davis and Lavender Canyons, whose headwaters were recently annexed to the park. These canyons are accessible only by negotiating the streambeds on four-wheel-drive vehicles, horseback, or foot. Salt or Horse Canyons are best conquered by four-wheel-drive vehicles plus short hikes in the northern part and long hikes in the southern part.

An aerial view (fig. 40) eastward across Salt Canyon shows that erosion has produced an intricate series of meandering canyons separated by rather narrow walls of the Cedar Mesa Sandstone, resembling somewhat The Maze, west of the Green River.

The massive sandstone beds of the Cedar Mesa are composed of sand grains cemented together by calcium carbonate (CaCO₃), which also forms the mineral called calcite and the rock known as limestone. Limestone and calcite are soluble in acid, even weak acid such as carbonic acid (H·HCO₃), formed by solution of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in water. Ground water, found everywhere in rock openings at differing depths beneath the surface, contains considerable dissolved carbon dioxide derived from decaying organic matter in soil, from the atmosphere, and from other sources. Even rain water and snow contain small amounts absorbed from the atmosphere—enough to dissolve small amounts of limestone or of calcite cement in sandstone. The calcite cement in the Cedar Mesa and many other sandstones is unevenly distributed, so the cement is removed first from places that contain the least amounts, and once the cement is dissolved, the loose sand grains are carried away by gravity, wind, or water. Thus, relatively thin walls of sandstone containing irregularly distributed patches of soluble cement are prime targets for the formation of potholes (fig. 46), alcoves, and caves. Once a breakthrough occurs, weakened chunks from the ceiling tend to fall off, and arches of various shapes are produced, because an arch is naturally the strongest form that can support the overlying rock load. Man, from the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians to modern day, has long made use of arches in building bridges, aqueducts, temples, cathedrals, and other enduring edifices. All the spectacular arches we are about to see were carved from the Cedar Mesa Sandstone.

Let us begin our tour of Salt and Horse Canyons by driving a four-wheel-drive vehicle eastward from the fine campground at Squaw Flat. After about a mile we pass the Wooden Shoe (fig. 41) capping a ridge south of the highway; it contains one of the smallest arches we will encounter. Three quarters of a mile east of the temporary ranger station we come to Cave Spring, an old restored cowboy line camp pictured in figure 6. This and an adjacent cave containing a spring are part of the interesting well-marked Environmental Trail, well worth the half hour or so it requires.

The jeep trail up Salt Canyon lies mostly in the sandy bed of Salt Creek but includes a few shortcuts across goosenecks and some rough rocky stretches around rapids or waterfalls. It is best traveled when the canyon bottom is moist but not soaked. When the sand is soft and dry, a shift into four-wheel drive is generally necessary. Signs warn of quicksand, which occurs when the sand is fully saturated; hence, summer thundershowers sometimes require delaying or postponing the trip. When in doubt, consult a park ranger for expected weather and trail conditions. Thundershowers sometimes occur so suddenly and violently as to cause serious floods, and the “road” is closed when heavy rain is expected. However, if an unexpected storm occurs while you are up in the canyon, try to reach high ground and wait until the flood subsides. If you do not have time to get your vehicle out of the flood’s path, at least get yourself and passengers to a safe spot.

Two and a half miles south of Cave Spring we reach the confluence with Horse Canyon, marked by a sign at the Y giving distances to points of interest up each canyon. Let us try Horse Canyon first. After about a mile we pass Paul Bunyans Potty on the left—one of the most aptly titled features of the park (fig. 42). Two miles south of the Y is Keyhole Ruin, nestled in a cleft high on the cliff to our left—a granary built by the Anasazi. Here we face another Y. The left fork leads half a mile east to Tower Ruin (fig. 4), one of the largest and best preserved Anasazi granaries in the park. The right fork takes us on up Horse Canyon, and in about 2 miles we pass Gothic Arch on the right. In 2 more miles, 4 miles from Salt Canyon, a short hike up the tributary to the right leads to Castle Arch and Thirteen Faces. Assuming we have taken photographs of the important features along the way, it probably is about time to return to camp at Squaw Flat, unless we choose to spend the night at Peek-a-boo Spring and primitive campground in Salt Canyon, about 1.2 miles above the confluence with Horse Canyon.

Another drive takes us up Salt Canyon 8½ miles past the confluence with Horse Canyon to another confluence and Y, which has a primitive campsite without water. One mile up the left, or southeast, tributary is a parking area where we begin the ½-mile walk to Angel Arch, considered by many people to be the most beautiful and spectacular arch in the park if not in the entire canyon country. Angel Arch was drawn for the front cover by John R. Stacy and is pictured in figure 43.

From the last Y we can proceed only about 2½ miles farther up main Salt Canyon by vehicle, and the remaining features shown on the map (fig. 1) can be reached only on foot. The All American Man, a unique pictograph referred to earlier (fig. 3), is about 3½ miles up the canyon. Those hardy souls who wish to hike many additional miles to the head of Salt Canyon will be rewarded with views of four additional arches and several ruins. Two of these arches are shown in figures 44 and 45.

The more adventuresome may wish to explore upper Lavender and Davis Canyons by driving up the sand washes in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, but inquiry should be made from a park ranger regarding access to the canyon mouths and condition of the washes. Hand Holt Arch (fig. 46) and Cleft Arch (fig. 47) are two of the rewarding sights in Lavender Canyon, and figure 48 shows one of the arches in Davis Canon.

THE NEEDLES AND THE GRABENS

The northeastern edge of The Needles proper can be seen from Squaw Flat (fig. 49), but the true character of The Needles can be appreciated better from the air (fig. 50). You cannot get far into The Needles without traversing part of The Grabens, so we will consider them together. An aerial oblique view (fig. 51) shows The Needles in the foreground and The Grabens in the middle background. As shown on the map (fig. 1), you can hike into The Needles and The Grabens from Squaw Flat, but let us make the trip using a four-wheel-drive vehicle and several short hikes.

Ordinary passenger cars now can go 2¾ miles west of Squaw Flat to Soda Spring, at the east base of Elephant Hill, but beyond Soda Spring four-wheel-drive vehicles should be used. Some people conquer the hill in dune buggies or on motorcycles, but this is considered quite dangerous. Both sides of this short (1¼ miles) but formidable hill have switchback curves too sharp to negotiate in the regular manner, so special driving techniques must be followed. On the east side, you must drive out on a flat rock, jockey back and forth until turned completely around, then proceed up the hill. On the west side, you descend a 40-percent grade to a shelf, _back_ down a narrow stretch of about 30-percent grade and back sharply to the left onto a flat rock, then go forward again. On the return trip the whole procedure is carried out in reverse order.

West of Elephant Hill, the road reaches a Y, at which you must turn left on a one-way road; the right-hand road is for later one-way return to the Y. Why the left-hand fork is one way soon becomes apparent, for the road leads into a narrow shallow graben, called Devils Pocket (fig. 51), between rock walls, and is barely wide enough for one car. After about 2 miles the graben widens out into a beautiful spot called the Devils Kitchen, which contains several picnic tables tucked into shady recesses in the sandstone walls. This is the starting point for two trails leading southward by different routes to Chesler Park, from which other trails lead to Druid Arch or back to Squaw Flat.

From the Devils Kitchen, the road turns abruptly westward for about half a mile to another Y in about the middle of Devils Lane, one of the larger grabens and one of two whose entire length is traversed by roads, as shown on the map (fig. 1). Only the left fork is a two-way road, so let us take the left fork 2¾ miles southwestward to the next road junction. About halfway down Devils Lane, a fault crossing the graben has created a narrow steep ridge appropriately called SOB Hill, because the road over it creates a challenge that some vehicles fail to meet on the first attempt!

The next road intersection is now shown on the map (fig. 1) as a sharp turn leading southwest to Ruin Park and Beef Basin. The abandoned left fork (not shown) leads east into Chesler Park. This park, shown in figure 50 and near the bottom of figure 51, is a beautiful natural meadow of several hundred acres fenced by a natural wall of needles and containing a central island of needles. Because of vehicular damage to meadow vegetation, the National Park Service found it necessary to close the road. To reach Chesler Park now, vehicles must go right a short distance to the Chesler Canyon turnoff, then left about half a mile to a parking area. From here, a ½-mile hike east through the narrow Joint Trail gets us to the south side of Chesler Park, where we join the abandoned road to reach the northeast corner of the park and the trails into The Needles proper (fig. 1).

This change adds 1¾ miles (one way) to the hike to Druid Arch, making the round trip about 11½ miles. At the old trailhead, near the northeast corner of Chesler Park, is a sign proclaiming the need for rubber-soled shoes and water, and I strongly support these admonitions, for much of the hike is on bare smooth sandstone and includes steep slopes and _generally_ dry waterfalls. The hike should not be attempted by anyone not in good physical condition, and it should not be undertaken alone; two or more people should travel together.

As shown in figure 52, the trail to Druid Arch from Chesler Park starts out on bare Cedar Mesa Sandstone marked by a succession of rock cairns, two of which are visible and without which the trail would soon be lost. The trail drops rapidly down into Elephant Canyon, which is then followed southward 2 miles to the arch. This canyon has cut through the Cedar Mesa into the underlying Rico Formation, and much of the canyon is quite narrow and steep sided, as shown in figure 53. Although much of the Rico consists of red beds laid down above sea level by ancient streams, the trail crosses several thin beds of dark-gray hard limestone containing fossil marine seashells and ancient sea anemones whose original calcium carbonate parts have been locally replaced by jasper (red iron-bearing silica). When at last the weary hiker makes the steep climb out of the canyon and rounds the final bare-rock curve, the sudden and striking view of Druid Arch (fig. 54) seems worth every bit of the effort—at least it was to me and my hiking companion.

After my friend and I hiked to Druid Arch and after the length of this route was increased to a round-trip distance of 11½ miles, a new route was constructed having a round-trip length of only 8½ miles. This new trail starts at the end of the passenger-car road at the east edge of Elephant Hill, goes 1¼ miles southwest to join an older trail in Elephant Canyon, then follows this canyon 3 miles south to the arch.

After returning to our vehicle west of Chesler Park and backtracking over SOB Hill to the intersection in the middle of Devils Lane, let us proceed northward on a one-way road to and beyond the Silver Stairs for a closer look at Devils Lane and other grabens to the west and for a look at the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. But first let us pause and reflect upon the possible origin of The Grabens.

Geologists have different opinions as to just how grabens and complex systems of joints have formed, but all seem to agree that tensional forces were involved. Some think that solution of salt and gypsum from the Paradox Member of the Hermosa Formation by ground-water movement allowed the brittle Cedar Mesa Sandstone and other overlying rocks to sag, producing tension cracks and faults. Others believe that removal of the salt and gypsum occurred by plastic flowage toward the Meander anticline (see p. 108 and fig. 61), whose axis follows the Colorado River southwest from The Loop, past the confluence, and to and beyond Spanish Bottom. Some suppose that compaction due to the weight of the abnormally thick pile of sedimentary rock underlying the area may have caused the sagging, cracking, and faulting. The rock deformation may have resulted from a combination of these and possibly other things, of course, but whatever the cause, the resulting features are very striking. There was room to show only two of the named grabens within the park on the map (fig. 1), but all are shown in figure 51, and several appear in figure 59. A diagramatic cross section of a typical graben is shown in figure 55. The tension faults shown in figures 55 and 56 are called normal faults, in contrast to faults formed by horizontal compression, which are called reverse faults (figs. 75, 76).

The Grabens range in width from about 7 or 8 feet at the north end of Devils Pocket to nearly 2,000 feet at the south end of Red Lake Canyon, but the average width is about 500 feet. The floors of The Grabens are covered by soil and grass, but the displacement along the faults is believed to approximate the height of the walls—nearly 300 feet. That The Grabens are of fairly recent origin is attested by the fact that most of the walls are vertical fault faces showing little sign of erosion (fig. 57); that no through drainage has yet been established in Cyclone Canyon, which is a series of basins with low divides between; and that several pre-existing streams were interrupted or diverted by the faulting.

Now let us continue our journey northward along Devils Lane. Just before reaching the Silver Stairs we may wish to pause long enough to take in the distant view to the northwest toward Junction Butte and Grand View Point. (See frontispiece.) After descending the steep Silver Stairs in a narrow cleft between rock walls, we reach another intersection: a two-way road continuing northwest goes to our destination, and a one-way road turning right returns to Elephant Hill via part of Elephant Canyon (fig. 58).

About 2 miles to the northwest we cross the north end of Cyclone Canyon, the largest graben. It contains a road 3½ miles long and is well worth seeing. About one-half mile from the south end, an old trail follows Red Lake and Lower Red Lake Canyons to the Colorado River across from Spanish Bottom (figs. 1, 61).

From near the north end of Cyclone Canyon (figs. 1, 59), we drive west three-fourths mile to a parking area and hike one-half mile to an overlook for a spectacular view of the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers (figs. 59, 60) and of the northern part of Cataract Canyon (fig. 61). These and other canyons are discussed in the next chapter.

Canyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers

We have discussed two of the three major topographic divisions of the park—the high mesas and the benchlands—and there remains to consider the third division—the canyons of the mighty Green and Colorado Rivers and some of their tributaries. After we discuss a few features common to both rivers, we will take up the details of each river.

A glance at the map (fig. 1) shows that above the confluence both rivers are very crooked and contain many loops, or meanders, the most striking of which are Bowknot Bend of the Green River (fig. 62), several miles north of the park, and The Loop of the Colorado River (fig. 74). In contrast, the main stem of the Colorado River below the confluence is considerably straighter. Not apparent on the map are the facts that the crooked rivers above the confluence have very gentle grades and are free from rapids or falls, whereas a few miles south of the confluence the main stem plunges into Cataract Canyon—the steepest and wildest reach of the river, containing 64 rapids. These differences are partly explicable on the basis of the geologic structure and character of the rocks through which the rivers have cut. Above the confluence, the soft strata dip gently northward, so in flowing generally southward the two rivers are cutting “against the grain,” which tends to impede their flow and thus reduce their grades. Below the confluence, the hard limestones of the Hermosa Formation lie relatively flat for several miles and then begin to dip gently southward, thus allowing the river to cut “with the grain” and therefore drop more rapidly.

The quiet, smooth waters above the confluence permit power boating between the towns of Green River, Utah, and Moab during part of the year, whereas the rapids below Spanish Bottom, 3½ miles below the confluence, restrict river travel to float trips using sturdy boats or rafts.

Above the confluence, a so-called Friendship Cruise is run each year during the Memorial Day weekend. Participants tow their own power boats on trailers to the town of Green River, and after the boats are launched, facilities are available at nominal cost for transporting cars and boat trailers to Moab to await the arrival of the boats. Although some high-powered speedboats are reported to have made the run down the Green River to the confluence then up the Colorado River to Moab in a few hours, the trip for most boats requires 2 to 7 days.

Trips by power boats, including jet boats, can be arranged from either Green River or Moab. Some passengers from Moab return by jeep from Lathrop Canyon via the White Rim Trail, and some from Green River return on land via the Horsethief Trail. Many prefer the quieter float trip down to the confluence, with return to either town by a prescheduled power boat, and some more adventurous souls float through the rapids of Cataract Canyon all the way to Lake Powell.

In the spring of 1972, a 93-foot 150-passenger stern-wheeler (fig. 69) began passenger service on the Colorado River from just above Potash to the foot of Dead Horse Point and return (Lansford, 1972).

Entrenched and cutoff meanders

Meanders such as those above the confluence generally are formed by streams flowing in soft alluvium consisting of clay, silt, and sand, such as along the Mississippi River below Cairo, Ill. But there is no soft alluvium along the Colorado and Green Rivers, so how did these meanders form? They probably attained their serpentine shape while cutting in softer, younger material, which long ago was removed by erosion, and then continued to cut their crooked channels down, until they created the deep rock-walled canyons in which they now flow as “entrenched” meanders.

Meandering streams tend to shorten their lengths from time to time by cutting through narrow walls between adjacent loops, leaving abandoned horseshoe-shaped channels or lakes. In most of the United States these are known as oxbows or cutoff meanders, but in the desert Southwest they are commonly called by the Spanish term “rincon.” Cutoffs are common along soft alluvial channels such as the lower Mississippi River valley but are rare along channels whose meanders are entrenched into hard rock. Thus, there have been many natural (and several manmade) cutoffs along the lower Mississippi during historic times, but the most recent ones along the Green and upper Colorado Rivers probably occurred a million or so years ago, during the Pleistocene Epoch (figs. 65, 80).

Mark Twain served several years as an expert riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River during which several cutoffs took place. Chapter 27 of his “Life on the Mississippi” contains sage references to both natural and artificial cutoffs and concludes with a few good-natured jibes at geologists in particular and scientists in general:

Therefore the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve
hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy six years ago.
It was eleven hundred and eighty after the cutoff of 1722. It was one
thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off. It has lost
sixty-seven miles since. Consequently, its length is only nine hundred
and seventy-three miles at present.

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and
“let on” to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had
occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the
far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is
here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue
from! Nor “development of species,” either! Glacial epochs are great
things, but they are vague—vague. Please observe:

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower
Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty two miles. That
is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.
Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that
in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next
November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three
hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico
like a fishing rod. And by the same token any person can see that
seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will
be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will
have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along
under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is
something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns
of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Green River

Much more has been written about the Green River and the main stem of the Colorado than about the Colorado above the confluence (the former Grand River), because all but one of the early float trips began on the Green. The first reports concerning Powell’s memorable voyages of 1869 and 1871 were his articles published in Scribners Monthly during 1874 and 1875 followed by his formal 1875 report “Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries.” As pointed out by Porter (1969, p. 21), however, Powell’s narrative

is written _as if_ everything chronicled therein occurred during the
first trip. Events which actually occurred in 1871 and 1872 are
reported as happening in 1869. There is no mention of the personnel of
the 1871-72 party, nor is there an indication that there even _was_ a
second trip. The engravings illustrating the report were made from
photographs taken by Beaman and Hillers between 1871 and 1874, but
this fact is not noted.

For these reasons, Porter’s account contains Powell’s diary of the first (1869) trip and many of the missing photographs, plus his own beautiful color prints. Much more complete and accurate accounts of the 1871 voyage than those of Powell, including many of the photographs taken by Beaman and Hillers, were given by Dellenbaugh (1902, 1962), who was a member of Powell’s 1871 expedition.

Numerous river trips were undertaken in the years following Powell’s pioneering expeditions. The ill-fated Brown-Stanton voyage of 1889-90 included starts on both the Grand and the Green Rivers. (See section on “Colorado River.”) More successful were Nathan Galloway and William Richmond, trappers who left Henrys Fork, Wyo., late in 1896 and reached Needles, Calif., on February 10, 1897 (Kolb, 1927, p. 338). Trappers Charles S. Russell, E. R. Monette, and Bert Loper left Green River, Utah, in three steel boats on September 20, 1907; Russell and Monette reached Needles in one boat in February 1908, but Loper was drowned. Dellenbaugh’s 1902 book was carried by the Kolb brothers as a guide for their 1911 trip down the river (Kolb, 1927). In addition to making superb still photographs, the Kolb brothers took the first moving pictures in the canyons, and these are still being shown in the Kolb Studio on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Julius F. Stone and party traversed the canyons in 1909, and his account (1932) also contains excellent photographs. E. C. La Rue, of the U.S. Geological Survey, and assistants made two trips down the Green and Colorado Rivers in 1914 and 1915 and additional trips from 1921 through 1924. Their comprehensive hydrographic findings and studies, plus excellent photographs, are given in two reports (La Rue, 1916, 1925). The 1916 report also contains (p. 16-22) a good condensed account of earlier explorations and voyages from 1531 through 1911, taken in part from Dellenbaugh (1902).

As noted earlier, a modern river runners’ guide by Mutschler (1969), which logs the Green and Colorado Rivers from Green River, Utah, to Lake Powell, is now available. River mileages in this log were taken from detailed topographic maps of both rivers prepared under the direction of Herron (1917). We will visit only a few notable features of the canyons; the mile-by-mile details for the Green River can be obtained from Mutschler (1969), and those for the Colorado River, from Baars and Molenaar (1971, p. 61-99). Several other references are given below, and additional ones are given by Rabbitt (1969, p. 20-21).

All travelers down the Green River embarking from Green River, Utah, or above, were impressed with Bowknot Bend (fig. 62), so named by Powell and his men (1875, p. 54) near the beginning of Labyrinth Canyon, which they also named for its deeply entrenched meanders. The upper photograph in figure 62 was taken by Beaman on September 10, 1871, looking eastward from the west end of the narrow saddle separating the upper and lower reaches of the river; the lower photograph was taken from the same point on August 19, 1968, by Hal G. Stephens nearly 97 years later. Although there are changes in the vegetation, as described in the caption, there are virtually no visible changes in the bedrock. Nevertheless, the distant future will likely see a breakthrough, whereby Green River will shorten itself by about 7 miles (Herron, 1917, pl. 15C). It is interesting to note that the vertical cliffs of Wingate Sandstone in and west of Bowknot Bend are only a few hundred feet above the river, whereas, because of the gentle northward dip of the beds and the gentle southward grade of the rivers, the Wingate cliffs are more than 2,000 feet above the two rivers at Grand View Point and Junction Butte, at the southern tip of Island in the Sky.

At the mouth of Horseshoe Canyon, about 3 miles below Bowknot Bend, we pass a large rincon where the Green River shortened its course by about 3 miles. Some idea of the rincon’s antiquity is gained from the facts that the river is now some 350 feet lower than at cutoff time, whereas Bowknot Bend (fig. 62) has shown no visible deepening in 97 years. This rincon was not noted by Powell or other early voyagers, seemingly because they did not happen to climb the banks at this point, but it is quite noticeable on modern topographic maps and on aerial photographs. This rincon and Jackson Hole along the Colorado River may be as old as late Tertiary (fig. 80).

At a point reported to be 350 yards above the mouth of Hell Roaring Canyon, which enters from the east about 3½ miles below the rincon, an early day trapper named Julien left his mark. Stone (1932, p. 69, pl. 39A) seems to have been the first river runner to find (from a description given him by a Mr. Wheeler at Green River), record, and photograph the inscription shown in figure 63. Mutschler (1969, p. 31) indicated that this inscription is carved on a massive Moenkopi sandstone bed about 40 feet above the canyon floor. A similar inscription by Julien was found in Cataract Canyon, 31 miles below the confluence, but it is now covered by Lake Powell (Mutschler, 1969, p. 65).

Some boaters are met by car and taken out to Moab or Green River via the Horsethief Trail (fig. 1), just north of the park. The road along the river here continues south for 6½ miles to the mouths of Taylor and Upheaval Canyons, where it becomes the White Rim Trail.