91 Fun Facts About Capitol Reef National Park

Which treat is the old farmhouse store beside Capitol Reef's orchards best known for selling?

Pies, baked locally with fruit fillings, are the old farmhouse's best-known draw; the park has no restaurant, so the store, which usually reopens on 14 March, Pi Day, is where visitors go for a snack.

Capitol Reef is one of five Utah national parks that the state markets together under which nickname?

The Mighty 5 is the tourism office's label for Utah's five national parks; the idea is to send visitors on beyond a single park, to the other four and to the towns and state parks in between.

Capitol Reef's white sandstone domes reminded early settlers of the dome on which building?

The US Capitol in Washington was the likeness settlers saw in the rounded white summits; 'reef' was the travellers' word for a line of cliffs that barred the way like a reef at sea.

The geological backbone of Capitol Reef is a nearly 100-mile warp in the Earth's crust called what?

The Waterpocket Fold runs nearly 100 miles south to Lake Powell; the park is long and thin because its boundary simply traces the fold.

Capitol Reef's great fold is a textbook example of which kind of geological structure?

A monocline is a step-like fold with one steep limb; here the west side stands more than 7,000 feet above the east, which is why the oldest rocks crop out in the west and the youngest in the east.

What did local boosters call the area in the 1920s while campaigning for its protection?

Wayne Wonderland was the name Ephraim Pectol and Joseph Hickman pushed in their newspaper stories; in 1935 it was dropped for 'Capitol Reef' as sounding too local for a national monument.

Which president proclaimed Capitol Reef National Monument on 2 August 1937?

Franklin D. Roosevelt set aside the 37,711-acre monument in the depths of the Depression, when the Park Service had no money to run it; no paid staff arrived for years.

Which president signed the 1971 law that made Capitol Reef a national park?

Richard Nixon signed the bill on 18 December 1971, after Congress had argued over how big the park should be and how long ranchers could go on grazing it.

Which Capitol Reef landmark near the Temple of the Sun is made of selenite crystals?

Glass Mountain is a plug of selenite, the glassy crystal form of gypsum: gypsum that had worked its way through the surrounding rock gathered here in one mass, which erosion has since laid bare.

What did Lyndon Johnson do for the monument on his last day as president?

Enlarged it more than sixfold is no exaggeration: his proclamation of 20 January 1969 added 215,056 acres to a monument of about 40,000, and in the same final hours he enlarged Arches too.

Under what title did Charles Kelly look after the monument before becoming its first superintendent?

Custodian-without-pay was Charles Kelly's title because the monument had no budget of its own; Charles and Harriette Kelly looked after it from the war years until funds finally arrived.

Until it had its own staff, the monument was administered from which other park?

Zion administered the monument as a satellite from its 1937 creation, the new unit having neither a budget nor paid staff of its own.

Capitol Reef sits on which high-desert region of layered rock, roughly centred on the Four Corners?

The Colorado Plateau rose thousands of feet as a single block, which left its rock layers almost flat; the park's great fold is a rare place where they were bent instead.

Besides the bow and arrow, Fremont hunters at Capitol Reef used which spear-throwing stick?

An atlatl is a hooked stick that works as a lever, letting a hunter fling a light spear far harder than the arm alone; the Fremont used it alongside snares, nets and the bow.

Mormon settlers founded the village at the heart of the park in 1880 under what original name?

Junction was the settlement's first name, for its site where a creek meets the Fremont River; it became Fruita in the early 1900s as its orchards flourished.

What may visitors do in Fruita's historic orchards at harvest time?

Pick the fruit for a small fee is the harvest rule: visitors may eat what they like inside the orchard for nothing, then pay by the pound for whatever is in season and carried out.

Which Fruita farmhouse, built by Calvin Pendleton in 1908, later became Capitol Reef's homestead store?

Gifford House is named for Dewey and Nell Gifford, who farmed there from 1928; when they sold up in 1969 they were Fruita's last residents, and their home became a store and museum.

The one-room Fruita schoolhouse, opened in 1896, was also used for what?

Dances and religious services also filled the log schoolhouse, which doubled as Fruita's church and community hall; classes ran there until 1941, when the dwindling village could no longer fill a school.

The arch above Grand Wash is named after which outlaw, said to have hidden nearby while on the run?

Butch Cassidy is the namesake: the outlaw is thought to have hidden in Grand Wash now and then, and the arch high on its wall is one of the few that visitors can stand on.

Which canyon is named for the Mormon polygamists said to have hidden there from federal marshals?

Cohab Canyon, a hidden canyon above the Fruita campground, is said to have sheltered 'cohabs' — polygamist Mormon men dodging the federal marshals who enforced the 1880s anti-polygamy laws.

Which large ground squirrel, also known as a rock chuck, is a common sight in Fruita's orchards each spring?

Yellow-bellied marmots feed on Fruita's lush orchard grass from mid-March, then vanish: they can be back in their burrows to hibernate as early as August.

Hickman Bridge is named after Joseph Hickman, who was what?

A school principal turned state legislator, Joseph Hickman had just won a state parks board for the area when he drowned in Fish Lake; without him the campaign stalled until the 1930s.

Which animal is the signature figure of the park's Fremont petroglyph panels?

Bighorn sheep crowd the Fremont panels beside the highway; the Fremont hunted them for meat and hide, and the sheer number of carvings suggests the animals may have been revered as well.

The Temples of the Sun and Moon are freestanding monoliths of which sandstone?

Entrada Sandstone is soft enough for erosion to whittle it into free-standing monoliths like the two Temples; the same rusty-orange layer forms the spans of Arches National Park.

Which unpaved route leads to the Temples of the Sun and Moon?

Cathedral Road threads the valley that Charles Kelly named in 1945 for monoliths that reminded early explorers of Gothic cathedrals; the Notom-Bullfrog Road and Burr Trail serve the park's south instead.

Which landmark's trail starts at the Capitol Gorge end of the Scenic Drive?

The Golden Throne owes its colour to a cap of younger rock that tints the normally white sandstone beneath; its trail climbs 2 miles from the Capitol Gorge trailhead.

Which backpacking route at Capitol Reef's southern tip runs about 22 miles round trip?

Halls Creek Narrows is a deep gorge that the creek has cut into the white sandstone of the fold; hikers wade, and sometimes swim, between its arching walls.

Which mineral came out of the Oyler Mine in Grand Wash in the early 1900s, when it went into patent medicines?

Uranium was dug here long before anyone wanted it for reactors or bombs; the Oyler Mine's gated tunnels still pierce the cliff at the mouth of Grand Wash, though the ore proved too thin to pay.

Which town about 11 miles west of the visitor center is Capitol Reef's gateway?

Torrey, a town of fewer than 300 people, is where Scenic Byway 12 ends; in 1901 the ten-mile wagon trip from there to Fruita took more than an hour and a half in the best weather.

In April 2015 the International Dark-Sky Association recognised the park at which level?

Gold Tier was the association's top rating for night-sky quality; to earn it the park spent a year refitting outdoor lights, lifting its share of night-friendly fixtures from 30 to 70 percent.

The Kaibab Limestone, among the oldest rocks exposed at Capitol Reef, also forms the rim of which famous canyon?

The Grand Canyon's rim is Kaibab Limestone, the floor of a Permian sea; at Capitol Reef the same layer lies near the bottom of the pile, seen in the deep gorges west of the visitor center.

Which formation at Capitol Reef was built from logs, mud and wind-blown volcanic ash?

Chinle streams buried fallen logs under mud and volcanic ash, and the ash probably helped turn the wood to stone; the same formation holds the fossil trees of Arizona's Petrified Forest.

Capitol Reef's white domes are made of which sandstone, laid down as fossilised desert dunes?

Navajo Sandstone, a Jurassic dune deposit whose sweeping cross-beds record ancient sand seas, weathers into the rounded white domes and knobs that gave the park its name.

What is the 'Pioneer Register' in Capitol Gorge?

Travellers' names cut into a cliff make up the Pioneer Register: in the late 1800s prospectors, settlers and freighters signed the gorge wall beside what was then the main wagon road through the fold.

Which venomous snake, coloured to blend with the park's pink sandstone, is Capitol Reef's one resident species?

Midget faded rattlesnakes seldom reach two feet long and eat mostly small rodents; adults lose their juvenile blotches until the pattern almost melts into the ground colour.

Where is bicycling permitted in Capitol Reef?

Only on paved and unpaved roads may bikes go — any road open to cars, including the Scenic Drive and the backcountry dirt roads — while every hiking trail is closed to cycles.

Which 1906 law let presidents proclaim national monuments such as Capitol Reef without waiting for Congress?

The Antiquities Act lets a president create a monument by proclamation alone: it made Capitol Reef a monument in 1937, whereas park status in 1971 took an act of Congress.

Capitol Reef's great fold was bent 50 to 70 million years ago by the upheaval that raised which range?

The Rocky Mountains and the fold both came from the Laramide orogeny, which squeezed western North America; at Capitol Reef the strain bent flat rock layers instead of breaking them.

Which pair of crops did the Fremont people farm beside the Fremont River around the year 1000?

Maize and squash, along with beans, fed the Fremont, who farmed the floodplain while still hunting and gathering; they ground the corn on a stone slab with a hand-held stone.

How are Capitol Reef's historic orchards still irrigated, much as they were in pioneer days?

Gravity-fed ditches dug by the settlers in the 1880s still feed the trees from the Fremont River; without that irrigation, farming here would have been impossible.

Which geologist, who later coined the term 'isostasy', spent 1870s summers studying the high plateaus around Capitol Reef?

Clarence Dutton mapped Utah's High Plateaus for the Powell survey in the summers of 1875 to 1877, yet like the other early expeditions he never explored the park's great fold in any detail.

What are 'The Tanks', reached by a spur off the Capitol Gorge trail?

Rock basins that hold rainwater, The Tanks are natural potholes a steep climb above the gorge floor; pools like these keep desert wildlife alive between storms.

Which sandstone forms Capitol Reef's sheer red cliffs directly below the Kayenta?

Wingate Sandstone splits along vertical cracks: softer beds beneath it wear away faster and undercut it, so slabs fall and leave the sheer red wall that runs the length of the park.

Which oceanic plate, sliding beneath North America, set off the upheaval that folded Capitol Reef's rock layers?

The Farallon Plate slid under the continent at such a shallow angle that it dragged along beneath the crust, which is why the mountains and folds it raised lie so far inland.

Lake Powell, which laps the southern end of Capitol Reef's great fold, is a reservoir on which river?

The Colorado River and its tributaries drain about nine-tenths of the surrounding canyon country, so nearly every stream that crosses the park ends up in Lake Powell behind its dam.

Geologists think Capitol Reef's great fold formed when pressure reactivated what, deep underground?

An ancient fault buried far below slipped, lifting its west side, and the rock layers above bent over it instead of breaking, so the same layers now sit thousands of feet higher in the west.

Which element tints Capitol Reef's rock layers red in some beds and green in others?

Iron colours both: exposed to oxygen it rusts red, the mark of a dry ancient landscape, while iron starved of oxygen in bogs and swamps turns the rock green.

What do geologists call the Sahara-like sand sea that left Capitol Reef's white domes?

An erg is a sea of wind-blown dunes; this Jurassic one buried the region deep in sand, and the slanting lines of its dunes can still be read in the rock walls.

Swelling clays in the Bentonite Hills dry into a crumbly surface that looks like what?

Popcorn is the usual description: the smectite clays of the Brushy Basin Member swell when wet and shrink as they dry into a crumbly, puffed surface, which also makes the Bentonite Hills' roads treacherous after rain.

Which Jurassic formation, known across the West for Stegosaurus and Allosaurus skeletons, forms the park's Bentonite Hills?

Morrison Formation mudstones have yielded Allosaurus, Stegosaurus and Apatosaurus elsewhere, but few fossils in the park; here its volcanic-ash clays turn so slick when wet that roads across them become impassable.

The same sandstone as Capitol Reef's northern monoliths forms the hoodoos of which state park?

Goblin Valley's hoodoos are the same soft Jurassic sandstone as the park's Temples of the Sun and Moon; cracks split the rock into blocks, and the corners weather fastest, rounding each one into a goblin.

Where did the black boulders strewn around Fruita come from?

Lava flows on nearby mountains, Boulder and Thousand Lake, broke up in giant landslides; debris flows as thick as wet cement then rafted the black boulders for tens of miles down the valleys.

Despite the desert climate, what has done most of the carving of Capitol Reef's landscape?

Water does most of the carving, even here: flash floods sweep loosened rock down the washes, while gravity brings down the cliffs and wind plays only a minor part.

Which river, named by the Powell survey in 1872, was the last of its size found in the lower 48 states?

Escalante was the name Almon Thompson's survey party gave it in 1872, for Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, a Franciscan friar who had crossed the region in 1776 looking for a route to California.

A free-roaming herd of about 350 of which animal lives in the Henry Mountains east of Capitol Reef?

Bison roam the Henry Mountains in a herd descended from 18 animals trucked in from Yellowstone in 1941; it is one of the few free-ranging, genetically pure wild herds in the country.

Why, by local account, does Thousand Lake Mountain have boulders and Boulder Mountain lakes?

A cartographer labelled the wrong peaks, so the story goes: the lake-dotted plateau became Boulder Mountain and the boulder-strewn one Thousand Lake Mountain; the two flank Rabbit Valley west of the park.

Boulder Mountain, west of Capitol Reef, makes up half of which plateau?

Aquarius Plateau is the highest plateau in Utah; Boulder Mountain, which makes up half of it, is less a peak than a flat, forested tableland dotted with small lakes more than 10,000 feet up.

The Fremont River joins Muddy Creek near Hanksville to form which river?

Dirty Devil was the name Powell's 1869 expedition gave the stream for its muddy, salty water; Powell later named a far cleaner creek Bright Angel by way of contrast.

The short Goosenecks Overlook trail looks down on the tight meanders of which stream?

Sulphur Creek kept its looping course while cutting some 800 feet into the rock, leaving the tight 'goosenecks' seen from the overlook, a 0.1-mile walk from the road.

The creek route that passes three small cascades and ends behind the visitor center starts near which trailhead?

Chimney Rock is the nearest trailhead: the 5.8-mile route starts just west of it, follows the creek down through Capitol Reef's oldest exposed rock and finishes behind the visitor center.

Fremont artists made petroglyphs by pecking through which dark natural coating on Capitol Reef's cliffs?

Desert varnish is a thin dark film that slowly builds up on desert rock; chipping it away exposed the pale stone beneath, though a fresh patina is now dimming some of the park's panels.

Most of Capitol Reef's dangerous flash floods are set off by which seasonal weather pattern?

The summer monsoon pulls moist air north from Mexico, typically from July to September; its cloudbursts can send a flood down a slot canyon from a storm many miles away.

Who became Fruita's first schoolteacher at just 12 years old?

Nettie Behunin first taught her 22 pupils, three of them her own siblings, in the family home; her father Elijah gave the land for the log schoolhouse built in 1896.

Which large animal is a common sight grazing around Fruita's orchards and campground?

Mule deer in Fruita are so used to people that visitors are told not to feed or approach them, and to back away if a deer walks up.

Fremont rock-art human figures at Capitol Reef are typically drawn with what body shape?

Trapezoidal bodies, often crowned with horned headdresses and hung with necklaces and earrings, mark the Fremont figures; what they meant is unknown, though they may record hunts, journeys or sacred stories.

What kind of dwelling did most Fremont families live in?

Pithouses, dug partly into the ground and roofed with poles and brush, sheltered most Fremont families; a village might hold two to a dozen, though only a few were lived in at any one time.

Which seldom-seen nocturnal relative of the raccoon dens among the rocks near Fruita and Pleasant Creek?

Ringtails hunt at night and climb with ease through treetops and rocky canyons; their huge eyes and banded black-and-white tail are seldom glimpsed, even though they live around Fruita.

Which simulated-planet habitat stands 7 miles northwest of Hanksville?

Mars Desert Research Station, built by the Mars Society in the early 2000s, houses rotating crews who live in a two-storey cylinder and wear mock spacesuits outside to rehearse exploring Mars among the red badlands.

Loa, a town west of Capitol Reef, was named by a returning Mormon missionary after a volcano in which US state?

Hawaii's Mauna Loa is the namesake: a Mormon settler back from a mission in the islands suggested 'Loa' for the valley town, and its post office has carried the name since 1879.

The town of Thurber, west of Capitol Reef, renamed itself Bicknell in 1916 in exchange for what?

Half of a 1,000-volume library was the prize: Thomas Bicknell of Rhode Island offered the books to any Utah town that took his name, two applied, and Grayson settled for his wife's maiden name, Blanding.

Juniper shares Capitol Reef's dry woodland with which pine, prized since ancient times for its edible nuts?

Pinyon pine nuts were gathered by the Fremont people a thousand years ago and are still collected across the Southwest; the trees line trails such as the one to Hickman Bridge.

The Moenkopi Formation's chocolate-brown siltstones were laid down in what setting?

Tidal flats beside a shallow sea left the Moenkopi's siltstones; ripple marks, mud cracks and the swim tracks of early reptiles are still printed on the slabs.

What distinction does SR-24, the highway through the park, hold among the state's highways?

Utah's longest contiguous state route, SR-24 runs 163 miles from the Sevier Valley near Salina east through the park to rejoin the interstate near Green River; part of it is signed as the Capitol Reef Scenic Byway.

Which narrow ridge with no guardrails or shoulders does Scenic Byway 12 cross?

The Hogback carries Byway 12 along the crest of an ancient boulder-strewn debris flow, with canyons dropping 500 to 600 feet on either side; the 123-mile road ends near the park's west entrance.

Which New Deal agency built Capitol Reef's stone ranger station and early trails between 1938 and 1942?

The Civilian Conservation Corps put young men to work on the new monument's roads, bridges and trails and built its stone ranger station; flash floods later destroyed some of what they made.

Which NPS unit adjoins the southern end of Capitol Reef around Lake Powell?

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area wraps the park's southern tip; the canyon it is named for was drowned when the dam was finished in the 1960s and now lies mostly beneath Lake Powell.

The Charles Hall boat linking Bullfrog and Halls Crossing is Utah's only what?

Auto ferry is its role: the Charles Hall carries vehicles across Lake Powell between Bullfrog and Halls Crossing, but only when the lake is high enough, and falling lake levels have kept it from running for long stretches.

Which grey Cretaceous shale, laid down on the floor of an inland sea, forms badlands along Capitol Reef's eastern edge?

Mancos Shale is mud from the seaway that split North America in two during the Cretaceous; it weathers into the barren grey badlands along the park's eastern boundary toward Caineville.

Which sandstone landmark looms directly across the highway from the visitor center?

The Castle rises nearly 800 feet above the visitor center; its sheer red cap sits on softer grey-green beds that crumble away beneath it, which keeps the walls vertical.

Unlike their Ancestral Puebloan neighbours, what did Fremont people generally wear on their feet?

Moccasins made from the lower-leg hide of deer and other large animals, with the dewclaws left on the sole, perhaps for grip, are a Fremont hallmark; their Ancestral Puebloan neighbours wore sandals.

Utah's largest Fremont site, now a state park, was discovered during construction of what?

Interstate 70 was being cut through Clear Creek Canyon when crews struck the village at Five Finger Ridge; thousands of its artefacts now fill the museum at Fremont Indian State Park beside the road.

Which fruit closes the harvest in the Fruita orchards each autumn?

Apples close the Fruita harvest, lasting into mid-October; settlers planted fruits that ripen in turn, from early cherries and apricots onward, so that income arrived all season rather than in one rush.

Routes across Capitol Reef's bare slickrock are marked by small stacks of stones known as what?

Cairns show the way where bare rock holds no footprints; rangers ask hikers never to build new ones, because a stray pile can lead the next party off the route.

Southern Utah's nickname 'Dixie', carried by the national forest beside Capitol Reef, recalls Mormon settlers sent south to grow which crop?

Cotton was the crop: Mormon settlers grew it in the warm far south of the territory from the 1850s, and 'Dixie', a nickname also owed to the climate and some settlers' Southern roots, later passed to the forest.

Which giant aspen clone grows beside Fish Lake, in the national forest northwest of Capitol Reef?

Pando, a single male quaking aspen with some 47,000 stems sharing one root system, is by some estimates the heaviest organism on Earth at about 13 million pounds across 106 acres beside Fish Lake.

In 1889 Native water rights to Fish Lake were sold for nine horses, flour, one steer and what else?

A suit of clothes completed the price the Fremont Irrigation Company paid the lake's Native band in 1889 for rights to Fish Lake, with nine horses, flour and a steer; McKinley made the lake a forest reserve ten years later.

Which 1999 sci-fi comedy filmed its alien planet among the rock hoodoos of a state park near Hanksville?

Galaxy Quest shot its rock-monster scenes there; fans took the monster for a nod to rock creatures cut from Star Trek V, but the film's makers say they had Captain Kirk's old foe the Gorn in mind.

Before taking charge of Capitol Reef, Charles Kelly made his living in Salt Lake City as what?

A printer by trade, Kelly learned to set type as a boy for his father's religious tracts and later co-owned Salt Lake City's Western Printing Company, selling his share before moving to Fruita.

Charles Kelly's 1938 book The Outlaw Trail told the story of which gang?

The Wild Bunch made a stronghold of Robbers Roost, a tangle of steep-walled canyons that pursuing lawmen never managed to penetrate; Kelly's history of the gang appeared in 1938.

Which banded, gypsum-rich formation forms the 'flatirons' on the fold's eastern rampart?

Carmel beds formed where seawater flooded in again and again and evaporated, which left the bands of gypsum; most of the formation has since been stripped from the fold's crest.

Studying the Henry Mountains, G. K. Gilbert coined which term for a blister-like intrusion?

Laccolith (Gilbert's original spelling was 'laccolite') describes a lens of magma that spreads between rock layers and domes those above it; his 1877 Henry Mountains report made the range the type example.