49 Fun Facts About Arches National Park

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

Moab is the gateway town; the park entrance is about five miles north of it on US 191, and Moab also serves Canyonlands and the Slickrock mountain-bike trail.

Roughly how many natural sandstone arches has the park catalogued?

More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches stand in the park, and new ones are still forming while old ones fall.

What lies underground beneath the whole 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 park's arches are carved from which rock formation?

The salmon-coloured Entrada sits in layer-cake fashion on the buff-coloured Navajo; both are Jurassic desert deposits.

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

Herbert Hoover used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to proclaim Arches National Monument on 12 April 1929, protecting two small, disconnected sections of rock formations; Congress made it a national park 42 years later.

In which year was Arches redesignated a national park?

Arches became a national park in 1971, when Richard Nixon signed the enabling bill on 12 November; it had been a national monument since Hoover's 1929 proclamation.

About how much rain does the park receive in an average year?

Arches receives under 10 inches of precipitation in an average year, roughly nine, and is classed as cold semi-arid; the scarce rain is one reason its soil crust recovers so slowly from footprints.

What is the highest point in the park?

Elephant Butte is the park's highest point at 5,653 feet; the lowest, 4,085 feet, is at the visitor center beside the highway.

A 2,500-foot displacement along which named break in the rock layers is visible from the visitor center?

The Moab Fault runs along Moab Canyon past the visitor center; layers on one side slipped about 2,500 feet relative to the other, putting rocks of very different ages at road level.

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

Cyanobacteria, lichens and fungi form a living crust that binds the sand, soaks up rain and gives larger plants a start; one footprint can undo decades of growth.

Which weak acid in rainwater 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.

In Arches, what is the prospector's original 'Devils Garden' called today, after surveyors muddled the location?

Klondike Bluffs is the area Ringhoffer called Devils Garden; surveyors attached the name to the opposite side of Salt Valley, where Landscape Arch stands, and his discovery was left out of the 1929 monument entirely.

Which president's proclamation enlarged Arches National Monument to include Delicate Arch?

Franklin D. Roosevelt's proclamation of 25 November 1938 enlarged the monument from about 4,500 to nearly 34,000 acres and brought in Delicate Arch; the 1929 monument had covered only the Windows and Devils Garden.

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

Lyndon B. Johnson's proclamation of 20 January 1969, his last day in office, enlarged the monument from about 34,000 to nearly 83,000 acres; Congress trimmed it back in 1971 when creating the park.

Delicate Arch appears on which of these?

Utah license plates carry Delicate Arch, as did the postage stamp marking Utah's statehood centennial, and it featured in the torch relay for the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

How tall is the freestanding span of Delicate Arch?

Delicate Arch stands 52 feet tall, with an opening about 46 feet high and 32 feet wide; white-throated swifts nest at its top each summer, and the 3-mile round-trip trail climbs 480 feet to reach it.

Local cowboys gave Delicate Arch which unflattering nickname?

The Schoolmarm's Bloomers, the Chaps, Pants Crotch and Salt Wash Arch were all used before Frank Beckwith's 1933–34 scientific expedition settled on the current name.

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

In the 1950s the Park Service studied coating Delicate Arch in clear plastic to slow erosion; the idea was dropped as impractical and against its principles, and the arch will eventually fall like every other.

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

Dean Potter free-soloed Delicate Arch in May 2006; the old rule only said climbing named arches 'may be' prohibited, which park lawyers judged unenforceable, so the park rewrote its rules to ban arch climbing outright.

Under post-2006 rules, you may not climb any park arch with an opening larger than what?

Climbing any arch with an opening greater than three feet is prohibited under the park's compendium, as is climbing Balanced Rock; slacklining and BASE jumping are banned throughout the park.

Landscape Arch, the park's longest span, measured roughly how wide in 2004?

Landscape Arch spanned about 290 feet when measured in 2004, making it the longest natural arch in North America; it is only about six feet thick at its thinnest point.

What happened at Landscape Arch in September 1991 that led to the trail beneath it being closed?

The span went from about 11 feet thick to about 6 in seconds; two more large rockfalls followed in 1995.

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

Wall Arch's rubble temporarily blocked the Devils Garden Trail; it was the first major collapse since the 1991 rockfall at Landscape Arch.

Double Arch formed differently from most spans in Arches National Park; how was it eroded?

It is a pothole arch, carved from above, by water pooling in potholes on top of the fin and cutting down to a cavity below; its larger opening is 104 feet high, the tallest in the park.

Double Arch and Balanced Rock in Arches National Park appear in the opening scene of which 1989 film?

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade opens with young Indy chased through the formations; the cave shown in the film does not exist.

Balanced Rock, the largest of its kind in the 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.

Balanced Rock once had a smaller companion that toppled in the winter of 1975–76. What was it called?

The same recipe did it in: a hard caprock perched on a softer, faster-eroding base.

The Fiery Furnace takes its name from what?

The Fiery Furnace is named for the reddish glow its fins take on at sunset, not for heat; the maze of fins and slots hides arches such as Skull, Surprise and Kissing Turtles.

Why has entry to the Fiery Furnace required a permit or a ranger-led tour since 1994?

Entry was restricted in 1994 to limit damage from heavy visitation: there are no trails inside, so walkers must keep to sandy washes and bare rock to protect soil crust, potholes and a large stand of Canyonlands biscuitroot.

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

The Three Gossips, a monolith of three huddled pillars, stand in the Courthouse Towers section above the Park Avenue trail; the Three Patriarchs are in Zion and the Three Graces in Garden of the Gods.

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

The paved scenic drive runs about 18 miles from the entrance station to the Devils Garden trailhead, passing Balanced Rock and the turn-offs for the Windows and Delicate Arch along the way.

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

A free-standing sandstone pillar 150 feet tall, it stands beyond Double O Arch; the primitive loop back to Landscape Arch is steep and close to drop-offs.

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

Edward Abbey lived in a Park Service house trailer and a ramada he built himself, maintaining trails and collecting campground fees from April to September.

In which year was Desert Solitaire, the classic memoir of Arches, published?

The notes sat unpublished while its author wrote three commercially unsuccessful novels; the book is often compared to Walden.

The 812-mile Hayduke Trail, a backpacking route that begins in the park, is named after what?

George Washington Hayduke is the ex-Green Beret saboteur of The Monkey Wrench Gang; the route crosses the Colorado Plateau to Zion.

Civil War veteran John Wesley Wolfe settled a ranch along Salt Wash in 1898 for what reason?

His daughter arrived in 1906, was appalled by the one-room cabin and got him to build a new one with a wooden floor; it still stands near the Delicate Arch trailhead.

Early US Geological Survey maps labelled the Wolfe Ranch buildings with what name?

Marvin Turnbow, a later owner, helped with the first detailed geologic mapping; the granddaughter of the original settler visited in 1970 and the older name was restored.

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

John F. Asmus, who normally used lasers to restore artworks, zapped the panel with light pulses and removed 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 lived in the Arches area until about 700 years ago?

The Fremont people and Ancestral Puebloans hunted, farmed and left rock art around Arches until about 700 years ago; the Spanish missionaries who passed through in 1775 met Ute and Paiute people instead.

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

Moab called itself the Uranium Capital of the World after geologist Charlie Steen's rich Mi Vida strike south of town in 1952 coincided with the dawn of the nuclear age; by the early 1980s nearly all the mines had closed.

Which of these venomous reptiles lives in the park?

The midget faded rattlesnake, a small pale subspecies of the western rattlesnake with potent venom, lives in Arches alongside spadefoot toads, kangaroo rats, collared lizards, desert bighorn sheep and cougars.

About how many visitors did the park receive in 2021, its busiest year to that point?

Arches logged more than 1.8 million visits in 2021, its record; numbers fell to about 1.5 million a year after a timed-entry reservation system began in 2022, meant to ease crowding and protect the fragile soil crust.

Which river runs along the southern boundary of Arches National Park?

The Colorado runs beside the park, which sits on the Colorado Plateau and holds the highest density of natural arches in the world.

Roughly how much high desert does Arches National Park cover?

Arches covers 76,680 acres, about 120 square miles of high desert, rising from 4,085 feet at the visitor center to 5,653 feet at Elephant Butte.

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; he visited with the railroad's photographer George L. Beam in September 1923 at prospector Alexander Ringhoffer's invitation, then wrote to the Park Service.

Polar explorer Laurence Gould backed the monument while studying which nearby range?

Laurence Gould was mapping the geology of the La Sal Mountains for his University of Michigan doctorate when local physician J. W. 'Doc' Williams showed him the arches in 1924; he urged protection before going to Antarctica with Byrd.

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

Pinkley oversaw the Park Service's southwestern national monuments; Hoover finally proclaimed the monument in April 1929.