48 Fun Facts About Arches National Park

Arches National Park sits just north of which small Utah town?

Moab lies a few miles south of the park entrance; Mormon missionaries tried to settle the spot in 1855 but abandoned it within months after clashes with Utes, and ranchers and prospectors returned a generation later.

Roughly how many natural stone arches have been documented in Arches National Park?

About 2,000 are on record; as recently as 1970 the park's own literature listed 'nearly 90', until dedicated arch hunters began surveying the backcountry systematically.

What lies deep beneath Arches National Park and is the main reason its arches, fins and spires exist?

A thick salt bed, the Paradox Formation, underlies the park; deposited when an inland sea dried up about 300 million years ago, it later flowed and buckled the overlying rock into the fins that became arches.

Most of the arches in Arches National Park are carved from which rock formation?

Entrada Sandstone, laid down as desert dunes, is so porous that rainwater soaks in and slowly dissolves the cement between its sand grains, rotting the rock from the inside out.

Hoover protected Arches as a national monument in 1929 using powers from which 1906 law?

The Antiquities Act of 1906 let Herbert Hoover proclaim Arches National Monument on 12 April 1929, weeks after he took office; the Park Service had backed the idea since 1926, but the previous Interior Secretary had resisted it.

How did Arches' size change when it became a national park?

Shrank: the 1971 act that made Arches a national park drew tighter boundaries, leaving out land the monument had held even as it raised the area's status.

About how much precipitation does Arches National Park receive in an average year?

About 9 inches, inside the park's own 8-to-10-inch figure, is just enough: much more rain would wear the sandstone away before arches could form, and with none the erosion would stop.

Which other national park lies a short drive south-west of Arches and shares its gateway town?

Canyonlands owes its start to an Arches superintendent, who explored the country to the south-west in the 1950s and campaigned for the national park that was created there in 1964.

Beside the entrance to Arches, rock layers of very different ages meet at road level; what brought them together?

A geological fault runs past the park entrance: one side moved about half a mile against the other, so layers laid down ages apart now face each other across the highway.

Visitors to Arches are told never to step on the dark, crumbly soil crust; what holds it together?

Cyanobacteria, lichens and fungi weave a living crust that binds the sand and soaks up rain; a single footprint can kill the patch beneath it, and mature crusts may be thousands of years old.

Which acid in ordinary rainwater slowly dissolved the cement binding the sand grains of Arches' fins?

Carbonic acid, formed when rainwater absorbs carbon dioxide, dissolved the calcium carbonate cement between sand grains; gravity then dropped the weakened lower layers out of the fins piece by piece.

Which prospector first drew a railroad's attention to the Arches area in 1923?

Alexander Ringhoffer, a Hungarian-born prospector, took a railroad's passenger traffic manager to see the rock formations in 1923, hoping the line would promote the area as a tourist stop; the railroad then lobbied the Park Service.

The area a 1920s prospector first named 'Devils Garden' goes by what name today, after the label moved elsewhere in Arches?

Klondike Bluffs is the area he called Devils Garden; government surveyors attached the name to the opposite side of Salt Valley, and his own discovery was left out of the 1929 monument entirely.

Which Depression-era president's proclamation enlarged Arches National Monument more than sevenfold?

Franklin D. Roosevelt's proclamation of 25 November 1938 added some 29,000 acres; until then Delicate Arch, now the emblem of Utah, lay outside the protected land.

Which president substantially enlarged Arches National Monument shortly before it became a national park?

Lyndon B. Johnson signed the proclamation on 20 January 1969, his last day in office, adding almost 49,000 acres and more than doubling the monument.

Delicate Arch appears on which of these?

Utah license plates have shown Delicate Arch since a 1992 design marking the state's coming centennial, and a centennial postage stamp used it too: the arch has become Utah's unofficial emblem.

What was carried through Delicate Arch in February 2002?

The Olympic flame passed beneath the arch at sunrise on 4 February 2002, after a blessing by a member of the Northern Ute tribe: it was the torch's first stop in Utah on the way to the Salt Lake City Winter Games.

Local cowboys gave Delicate Arch which nickname?

The Schoolmarm's Bloomers was one cowboy name for it and the Chaps another; 'Delicate' arrived only in 1934, in an article on a scientific expedition that called it 'the most delicately chiseled arch in the entire area'.

In the 1950s the Park Service studied protecting Delicate Arch from erosion by doing what?

Coating it in clear plastic was studied in the 1950s as a way to slow erosion; the idea was dropped as impractical and against Park Service principles, so the arch will one day fall like any other.

Which climber's free solo of Delicate Arch in May 2006 forced Arches to rewrite its climbing rules?

Dean Potter free-soloed Delicate Arch in May 2006; the park's attorney judged the old ban on climbing named arches too loosely worded to enforce, so the rules were rewritten within the month.

Park rules ban climbing on any arch in Arches with an opening larger than what?

Three feet is also the park's own threshold for counting a hole in the rock as an arch, so the ban covers every official arch; Balanced Rock is closed to climbers too.

What happened at Landscape Arch in September 1991?

A 60-foot slab fell from its underside in 1991 and two more rockfalls followed in 1995; the trail that once ran beneath the arch has been closed ever since.

Which span in Arches' Devils Garden, the park's 12th largest, collapsed unobserved on the night of 4–5 August 2008?

Wall Arch fell in the night: campers at Devils Garden reported a rumble like thunder under clear skies, and next morning the remains of the 71-foot span lay across the hiking trail.

How was Double Arch in Arches National Park eroded?

From above, by water pooling in potholes: most arches are worn through the side of a fin, but Double Arch was cut downward from the top, and its larger opening is the tallest in the park.

Which 1989 film opens with scenes shot in Arches National Park?

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade opens with young Indy's scout troop passing under Double Arch into a cave that does not really exist.

Balanced Rock, a landmark of Arches National Park, weighs approximately how much?

Balanced Rock's 55-foot boulder weighs about 3,600 tons; its hard Slick Rock sandstone sits on a pedestal of softer Dewey Bridge mudstone that erodes faster, so it will eventually topple.

What was the name of Balanced Rock's smaller companion, which toppled in the winter of 1975–76?

Chip Off the Old Block fell for the reason its big sibling eventually will: a hard sandstone boulder perched on softer rock that erodes away beneath it.

The Fiery Furnace takes its name from what?

Its reddish glow at sunset gave the Fiery Furnace its name, not any heat: the place is a shady labyrinth of narrow passages between tall sandstone walls.

Why does entering the Fiery Furnace require a permit or a ranger-led tour?

To limit damage from heavy visitation: groups are capped at six, and every party must watch an orientation film on keeping to rock and sandy washes, which spares the plants and wildlife living between the fins.

Which three-pillared monolith stands in Arches' Courthouse Towers section?

The Three Gossips stand among the Courthouse Towers, a sandstone tower whose three heads seem to lean together as if trading secrets, which is how it got the name.

How far is the drive from the Arches entrance to the Devils Garden trailhead at the end of the main road?

About 18 miles of paved road, a drive of some 45 minutes, now link the entrance to Devils Garden; in the 1950s the monument lay at the end of a little-used dirt road.

What is the Dark Angel, the landmark at the end of the Devils Garden Trail in Arches National Park?

A free-standing sandstone pillar about 150 feet tall, Dark Angel takes its name from the dark rock it is made of and marks the far end of the Devils Garden Trail.

Which writer spent 1956 and 1957 as a seasonal ranger at Arches and turned his journals into Desert Solitaire?

Edward Abbey lived in a housetrailer near Balanced Rock and railed against 'industrial tourism' when the monument was a quiet place at the end of a dirt road; that road is paved now and the park world-famous.

Desert Solitaire, the Arches memoir, is often compared to which earlier classic?

Walden is the usual comparison, another account of living alone with nature; the Arches journals became a book only in 1968, about a decade after their author's seasons as a ranger there.

The Hayduke Trail, a backpacking route starting in Arches, is named after what?

The saboteur hero of a 1975 eco-novel: George Hayduke is one of the saboteurs defending the wilderness in The Monkey Wrench Gang, which helped inspire the founders of Earth First! and became a handbook of the environmental movement.

Why did John Wesley Wolfe leave Ohio in 1898 to ranch beside Salt Wash?

A drier climate for his bad leg, hurt in the Civil War, drew Wolfe west with his son; when his daughter arrived in 1906 she was so shocked by the one-room cabin that he built the one still standing.

Which trail in Arches shares its name with a famous New York street?

Park Avenue earned the name because the sheer sandstone walls lining the canyon reminded early visitors of buildings along a big-city street.

In 1980 Arches brought in a laser physicist to undo what kind of vandalism?

Kitchen cleanser scrubbed onto petroglyphs was the damage; John F. Asmus, who normally used lasers to restore works of art, zapped the panel with light pulses and lifted most of the abrasive.

The 2014 quarter showing Delicate Arch belonged to which US coin series?

The 2014 Arches quarter belonged to the America the Beautiful Quarters series; more than 465 million were struck, the most of the five national-park quarters issued that year.

Which Native cultures left rock art around Arches until about 700 years ago?

Fremont people and Ancestral Puebloans left rock art here, but few dwellings have been found, so they may have come only in season; by the time Europeans arrived, this was Ute and Paiute country.

The gateway town to Arches boomed in the 1950s as the self-styled world capital of what?

Uranium made the town's name after geologist Charlie Steen struck a rich deposit south of it in 1952, turning a quiet farming settlement into a bustling mining centre almost overnight.

Which of these venomous reptiles lives in Arches National Park?

The midget faded rattlesnake, a small subspecies of the western rattlesnake, has extremely toxic venom, yet it delivers a full dose in only about a third of its bites and is mostly active at night.

About how many visits did Arches National Park record in 2021, its busiest year to that point?

About 1.8 million visits made 2021 the record; the crowds matter because a single footprint off the trail can kill the living soil crust that holds the desert floor together.

Which river runs along the edge of Arches National Park?

The Colorado flows past the park and carries it away grain by grain: rain washes the sand eroded from the arches down gullies and canyons into the river.

Where is the lowest point on Arches' park road?

The visitor center sits at the bottom, beside the highway: from there the road climbs steep switchbacks onto the plateau, and the park's high point, Elephant Butte, stands roughly 1,500 feet above.

Frank Wadleigh, who alerted the Park Service to Arches in 1923, worked for which railroad?

Frank Wadleigh was passenger traffic manager of the Denver and Rio Grande Western; after touring the rocks in September 1923 with the railroad's photographer, he urged the Park Service to protect them, hoping for tourist traffic.

Polar explorer Laurence Gould urged protection for Arches while studying the geology of which nearby range?

Laurence Gould was a Michigan geologist mapping the La Sal Mountains when he saw the Windows and wrote to Utah's senator urging protection; a few years later he was chief scientist on Byrd's first Antarctic expedition.

Which Park Service superintendent suggested the name 'Arches' after a 1925 visit?

Frank Pinkley, who oversaw the Park Service's south-western monuments, proposed the name after touring the Windows in July 1925, four years before there was any monument to carry it.