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Arches National Park

Arches National Park

Incredible what nature and time can built ..

Water and ice, extreme temperatures and underground salt movement are responsible for the sculptured rock scenery of Arches National Park. On clear days with blue skies, it is hard to imagine such violent forces, or the 100 million years of erosion, that created this land that boasts the greatest density of arches range in size from three-foot opening, the minimum considered an arch, to the longest one, Landscape Arch, which measures 306 feet from base to base. New arches are being formed and old ones are being destroyed. Erosion and weathering are relatively slow but are relentlessly creating dynamic landforms that gradually change through time. Occasionally change occurs more dramatically. In 1991 a slab of rock about 60 feet long, 11 feet wide and 4 feet thick fell from the underside of Landscape Arch, leaving behind an ever thinner ribbon of rock. Delicate Arch, an isolated remnant of a bygone fin, stands an the brink of a canyon, with dramatic La Sal Mountains for backdrop. Towering spires, pinnacles and balanced rocks perched atop seemingly inadequate basas vie with the arches as scenic spectacles.


 

Delicate Arch Arches National Park, Utah



Arches National Park

Native Americany utilized the area for thousands of years. Archaic people, and later ancestral Puebloan, Fremont and Utes searched the arid desert for dame animals, wild plant foods and stone for tools and weapons. They also left evidence of their passing on afew pictograph and petroglyph panels. The first white explorers came looking for wealth in the form of minerals. Ranchers found wealth in the grasses for their cattle and sheep. John Wesley Wolfe, a disabled Civil War veteran and his son, Fred, settled here in the late 1800s. A weathered log cabin, root cellar and a corral remain as evidence of the primitive ranch they operated for more than 20 years. A visit to Wolfe Ranch is a walk into the past.




 

parking lot - view from Delicate Arch



Travel Arches