99 Fun Facts About Capitol Reef National Park

Capitol Reef National Park is in which US state?

Capitol Reef lies in south-central Utah, some 200 miles south of Salt Lake City; its visitor center sits in the old orchard hamlet of Fruita on the Fremont River.

What are the park's rough dimensions?

About 60 miles long and 6 miles wide on average, the park is a thin north–south strip tracing the fold; its 241,904 acres run far longer than they are broad.

The first half of the park's name comes from what?

White sandstone domes that resemble the US Capitol gave the park the first half of its name; Capitol Dome, above the Fremont River, is one such rounded summit.

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

The Waterpocket Fold runs nearly 100 miles from Thousand Lake Mountain south to Lake Powell; its name comes from the eroded basins in the sandstone that hold rainwater.

The park's great fold is the largest exposed example in North America of what kind of structure?

A monocline is a step-like fold with one steep limb between otherwise flat-lying layers; the park's fold formed during the Laramide orogeny, when a buried fault lifted its west side far above its east.

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

Ephraim Pectol and his brother-in-law Joseph Hickman promoted it in newspapers and even paid a Salt Lake City photographer $150 to lecture on it.

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

Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the 37,711-acre monument on 2 August 1937 under the Antiquities Act; the Depression-era Park Service had no money to develop it and left it unstaffed for years.

In which year did Capitol Reef become a national park?

Capitol Reef became a national park in 1971, when Public Law 92-207, signed on 18 December, converted the 1937 monument into the state's fifth national park.

Which park landmark near the Temple of the Sun is a mound of selenite crystals?

Glass Mountain is a mound of selenite, a crystalline form of gypsum, standing in the park's remote northern district near the Temple of the Sun; collecting its crystals is prohibited.

What did Lyndon Johnson do for the monument on his last day in office?

Added 215,000 acres, roughly six times its size — that was Johnson's proclamation of 20 January 1969, which stretched the monument from Thousand Lake Mountain almost to the Colorado River over furious local objections.

Under what title did Charles Kelly look after the monument before becoming its first superintendent in 1950?

Custodian-without-pay was Charles Kelly's title from 1943, when he and his wife moved to Fruita to watch over the unfunded monument; a salaried post only came in 1950.

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.

Which paved highway, built through the Fremont River canyon in 1962, sent visitor numbers soaring?

State Route 24, driven through the Fremont River canyon in 1962, replaced the flood-prone Capitol Gorge wagon road; the old through-route in the gorge was left to hikers.

Later Paiute called the old stone granaries 'moki huts', believing them to be what?

Homes of a race of tiny people is what the later Paiute took the granaries for; the 'moki huts' were in fact storage bins for harvested crops left by the Fremont farmers centuries earlier.

Which archaeologist named the Fremont culture in a 1931 report?

Noel Morss of Harvard's Peabody Museum named the Fremont culture in his 1931 report on the ancient farmers of the Fremont River valley, distinguishing them from the Ancestral Puebloans to the south.

Which member of John Wesley Powell's expedition crossed the park's great fold in 1872?

Almon H. Thompson, Powell's brother-in-law and chief topographer, crossed the fold in 1872 with a pack train sent overland to retrieve a boat the survey had cached on the Colorado.

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 the park's homestead store?

Gifford House takes its name from Dewey Gifford, whose family lived there from 1928 to 1969; the Park Service restored the 1908 Pendleton-built home and opened it as 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 supposedly used Grand Wash and the Fruita country as a hideout in the 1890s, and the arch above the wash is one visitors can walk across on foot.

Which canyon's name refers to Mormon polygamists who hid 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.

Hickman Bridge, reached by a 2-mile round-trip trail, spans about how far?

133 feet is the span of Hickman Bridge, a Kayenta Formation arch about 125 feet high that stands over a dry wash; the 1.8-mile round-trip trail climbs from the highway.

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

A school principal turned state legislator, Joseph Hickman ran the county high school before winning a seat in the state legislature in 1924; he drowned at Fish Lake the following year.

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

Bighorn sheep, pecked in profile with curling horns, crowd the Fremont petroglyph panel along the Fremont River east of the visitor center, beside stylised human figures.

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

Entrada Sandstone, a soft reddish Jurassic rock, forms both Temples, which stand a short distance apart on the valley floor; the Temple of the Sun is the larger of the pair.

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

Cathedral Road, a graded dirt track, runs north from the highway near Caineville through the valley's sandstone monoliths; the Notom-Bullfrog Road and Burr Trail instead serve the park's southern half.

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

The Golden Throne, a massive yellow-gold sandstone butte, is reached by a 4-mile round-trip trail from the Capitol Gorge trailhead at the end of the 7.9-mile paved Scenic Drive.

The Halls Creek Narrows, the park's longest strenuous hike, runs about how far?

22 miles is the round-trip distance of the Halls Creek Narrows route, which drops from the Halls Creek Overlook, follows the creek bed to the narrows and back, and is usually split over two or three days.

The first rappel on the popular Cassidy Arch canyoneering route drops how far, right beneath the arch?

The route has eight rappels in about 2.3 miles and takes 2.5 to 4.5 hours; every canyoneering route needs its own free day permit.

What was the first mineral claim staked in the area, in 1904?

Uranium was the prize: the 1904 claims in Grand Wash were worked for ore that early promoters touted as a health cure, and the mine's timbered openings are visible from the wash.

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

With fewer than 300 people, it was originally called Youngtown and is thought to be named for a Wyoming legislator who raised cowboy cavalry for the Spanish–American War.

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

Gold Tier, the International Dark-Sky Association's highest rating for a dark-sky park, went to Capitol Reef in 2015 on the strength of its remote location and minimal artificial lighting.

The Kaibab Limestone exposed in the park is the same rock that does what elsewhere?

Rims the Grand Canyon is what the Kaibab Limestone does far to the south, capping both rims; in Capitol Reef the same Permian sea-floor rock is among the oldest layers exposed, in the gorge west of the visitor center.

Which formation in the park was built from logs, mud and wind-blown volcanic ash?

The Moenkopi is the reddish-brown Triassic siltstone; the Chinle above it is the same unit that holds the Petrified Forest's logs in Arizona.

The park'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?

Names carved into the canyon wall by early travellers make up the Pioneer Register: prospectors, settlers and freighters scratched their names and dates into Capitol Gorge's walls from the 1870s onward, along the gorge trail.

How many campsites does the main Fruita campground have?

71 is the count of sites in the Fruita campground, set among the historic orchards beside the Fremont River with no hookups of any kind; two free primitive campgrounds lie in the backcountry.

Where is bicycling permitted in the park?

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.

How much did the local civic club raise in 1933 to hire a Salt Lake City photographer?

J. E. Broaddus then travelled and lectured on the area for years, which helped persuade federal investigators.

Roughly how old is the Waterpocket Fold at the heart of Capitol Reef?

65 million years is the rough age: the fold formed between about 50 and 70 million years ago during the Laramide orogeny, when the Farallon plate sliding beneath North America buckled the continent's interior.

What crop pairing did the Fremont people irrigate beside the river around the year 1000?

Maize and squash, along with beans, were irrigated by the Fremont on the river's floodplain; the harvest went into small stone-and-mud granaries tucked into cliff ledges above the fields.

What most likely caused the Fremont to abandon their settlements in the 13th century?

A long drought in the late 1200s is the leading explanation: the Fremont farmers vanished from the region around 1300, at the same time the Ancestral Puebloans abandoned the Four Corners cliff dwellings.

Which geologist spent several summers studying the area after Powell's 1872 survey?

Clarence Dutton, Powell's protégé, worked the High Plateaus west of the fold through the summers of 1875 to 1877, producing his 1880 High Plateaus report for the survey.

Which 1880s Mormon settlement on the lower Fremont River was abandoned after repeated floods?

Aldridge, a hamlet a few miles downstream of Caineville, was abandoned by the early 1900s after Fremont River floods repeatedly wrecked its fields and ditches; Caineville itself barely survived the same floods.

What was the name of the uranium working in Grand Wash that followed the 1904 claim?

The Oyler mine, dug into the wall of Grand Wash, is the working in question; its low-grade ore was sold in small lots, some of it as a supposed health tonic, before the mine fell idle.

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

Natural basins in the rock that hold rainwater make up The Tanks, a cluster of potholes reached by a steep quarter-mile spur beyond the Pioneer Register; they kept early travellers and their stock alive.

Which postwar Park Service programme built Capitol Reef's visitor centre and Fruita campground?

Mission 66 — the Park Service's ten-year push to modernise facilities before its 1966 golden anniversary — paid for Capitol Reef's visitor centre, finished in 1966, and the Fruita campground.

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

Wingate Sandstone, a Triassic–Jurassic dune deposit, forms the sheer red cliffs that run the length of the park under the white domes; it lies directly beneath the stream-laid Kayenta beds.

Roughly how thick is the stack of sedimentary rock exposed in the Capitol Reef area?

Nearly 10,000 feet of sedimentary strata are exposed in the Capitol Reef area, spanning roughly 200 million years from Permian rocks about 270 million years old to Cretaceous layers around 80 million years old.

Rock layers on the west side of the fold sit how much higher than the same layers on the east?

7,000 feet, roughly, is how far the layers on the west side were lifted above their counterparts to the east, which is why older rocks crop out on the fold's western side and younger ones on the east.

Small earthquakes centred beneath the fold in which year hinted at a hidden basement fault?

Geologists suspect the fold formed when Laramide compression reactivated a fault buried in Precambrian rocks far below any exposed layer.

Which Triassic member caps the Egyptian Temple near the park's west entrance?

Shinarump, a pale, pebbly channel sandstone laid down by Triassic streams, forms the resistant cap on the Egyptian Temple's soft red Moenkopi layers, protecting them from erosion.

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

An erg is a vast sand sea; the Early Jurassic erg behind the park's white domes covered much of the Colorado Plateau, leaving dune deposits roughly 1,000 feet thick here and twice that farther west.

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.

Dinosaur bones are abundant in the Brushy Basin Member of which formation?

Morrison Formation's Brushy Basin Member, a Late Jurassic floodplain and lake deposit, has yielded Allosaurus, Stegosaurus and Apatosaurus skeletons at quarries across the interior West, although in the park its bones are usually scattered.

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

Goblin Valley, at the south end of the San Rafael Swell, is crowded with mushroom-shaped hoodoos eroded from the same Jurassic sandstone as the park's Temples of the Sun and Moon.

Where did the black volcanic boulders strewn around Fruita come from?

Volcanic flows on Boulder and Thousand Lake mountains shed the dark andesite and basalt boulders; ice-age debris flows and floods carried them down the Fremont River valley and scattered them across the park.

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

Water does most of the carving: flash floods in the washes, the Fremont River and frost wedging in cracks strip the soft layers, while wind mainly polishes and gravity brings down the undercut cliffs.

Which river, named during the 1872 Powell survey, was the last in the lower 48 to be identified?

Escalante is the answer: the survey's 1872 overland party, finding that a stream they had mistaken for another river was an unmapped one, named it for the Franciscan friar Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, who had crossed the region in 1776.

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

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 the park, makes up half of which plateau?

Aquarius Plateau, whose southern half is Boulder Mountain, is often called the highest timbered plateau in North America; its nearly flat top, above 10,000 feet, is dotted with dozens of small lakes.

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

The Fremont rises at Johnson Valley Reservoir near Fish Lake and runs 95 miles before the two streams meet.

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

Sulphur Creek has cut entrenched meanders — the 'goosenecks' — hundreds of feet deep into the rock west of the visitor center; the overlook is a 0.1-mile walk from a spur road off the highway.

The 6.25-mile Sulphur Creek canyoneering route starts near which trailhead?

Chimney Rock's parking area, three miles west of the visitor center, is the usual put-in; the route descends the creek past three small waterfalls and the park's oldest exposed rock to end at the visitor center.

Who led the Mormon group that founded the settlement at Fruita in 1880?

Nels Johnson staked the first homestead in 1880 where a side creek meets the Fremont River; other Mormon families followed, and the hamlet grew into Fruita.

Fruita was the setting for which 1970 Western directed by Al Adamson?

The low-budget film starred Robert Dix, Scott Brady and John Carradine, with the location revealed on the DVD commentary.

Who was the first teacher at the Fruita schoolhouse?

Nettie Behunin, just 12 years old, taught the first classes in the log schoolhouse her father Elijah Behunin helped build in 1896; the school closed in 1941.

What is the oldest surviving building in Fruita, dating from 1895?

The Fruita Rural Historic District covers a farming settlement active from 1895 to 1947 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Fremont rock-art human figures in the park are typically drawn with what body shape?

Trapezoidal bodies — broad shoulders tapering to the waist, often topped with horned or antennaed headdresses and hung with necklaces — mark the Fremont figures pecked into the park's canyon walls.

What kind of dwelling did most Fremont families live in?

Pithouses — rooms dug a few feet into the ground, roofed with poles, brush and earth over a central hearth — sheltered most Fremont families; a village held two to a dozen, only a few occupied at once.

Before taking its present name in 1885, Hanksville went by what name for its surrounding area?

Graves Valley was the name Mormon settlers used for the Fremont River bottoms where Ebenezer Hanks's party arrived in 1882; the post office took the Hanksville name in 1885.

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

Mars Desert Research Station, established by the Mars Society in 2001, houses rotating crews who live in a two-storey cylindrical habitat and wear mock spacesuits outside to rehearse Mars exploration amid the red badlands.

What created the waterfall on the Fremont River beside the park's highway?

Highway construction that rerouted the river is the origin: in 1962 road crews building the route through the canyon diverted the Fremont over a sandstone ledge, and the river has poured over it ever since.

The Wayne County seat takes its name from what?

A Hawaiian volcano, Mauna Loa, supplied the name: Franklin W. Young, a Mormon who had served a mission in the islands, proposed 'Loa' for the Rabbit Valley settlement in the 1870s.

Thurber renamed itself Bicknell in 1916 in exchange for what?

Rhode Island's Thomas Bicknell had offered the books to any Utah town that took his name; Grayson became Blanding, after his wife, and the towns split the prize.

Wayne County, home of the park, was carved out of which county in 1892?

Piute County gave up its eastern part in 1892 to form Wayne County, which took its name from Wayne Robison, the son of Willis Robison, the legislator who sponsored the split.

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

Tidal flats beside a shallow sea left the Moenkopi's chocolate-brown siltstones in the Early Triassic; ripple marks, mudcracks, salt casts and the trackways of early reptiles and amphibians record the wet-and-dry mudflats.

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 is the knife-edge stretch of Byway 12 a few miles south of Boulder, where the pavement rides a narrow ridge with steep drop-offs on both sides; the roughly 120-mile All-American Road ends near the park's west entrance.

Boulder, at the western end of the Burr Trail, did not get electric power until which year?

1947 was the year power lines finally reached Boulder, a ranching hamlet so isolated that its mail had arrived by mule train into the 1930s.

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

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, 1.25 million acres around Lake Powell, wraps the park's southern tip; it was established in 1972 to manage recreation on the reservoir behind Glen Canyon Dam.

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, sparing drivers a long detour around the reservoir; low lake levels have halted it at times.

Which grey Cretaceous shale, the park's youngest layer, forms badlands along its eastern edge?

Mancos Shale, a grey marine mudstone from the Cretaceous seaway, is the youngest formation in the park, weathering into the barren badlands along the eastern boundary toward Caineville.

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

The Castle, a fortress-like mass of sheer red sandstone topped by thin ledges, rises directly across the highway from the visitor center where the Scenic Drive begins, its cliffs the same rock as the reef's long western wall.

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

Moccasins, sewn from a deer's hind leg with the dewclaws left on as treads, are a Fremont hallmark; their Ancestral Puebloan neighbours to the south wore woven yucca sandals instead.

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

Interstate 70 construction through Clear Creek Canyon in 1983 uncovered the Five Finger Ridge village; thousands of its artefacts fill the museum at Fremont Indian State Park, which sits beside the highway.

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

Apples close the Fruita harvest, ripening from September into October after the cherries of June, the apricots of early summer and the peaches and pears of August.

The Cassidy Arch Trail climbs roughly how much in under two miles?

700 feet, roughly, is the climb: the trail leaves the Grand Wash road, switchbacks up ledges onto the slickrock bench and reaches the arch in about 1.7 miles, gaining some 670 feet.

Dixie National Forest, southwest of the park, takes its name from what?

A nickname for warm southern Utah — 'Dixie', from the 1860s Mormon cotton mission near St. George — gave the nearly two-million-acre forest its name; it is the state's largest national forest, covering the high plateaus west of the park.

Which giant aspen clone grows in Fishlake National Forest's Fremont River Ranger District?

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 strenuous 4.5-mile round trip in the park's south ends at a natural bridge?

Brimhall is the bridge: the route drops from the Halls Creek Overlook, crosses the creek and scrambles up Brimhall Canyon past pouroffs to the double natural bridge at the canyon's head.

Which 1999 comedy used the Entrada 'goblins' near Hanksville as an alien planet?

Galaxy Quest used the hoodoo-studded valley floor as the surface of the planet where the crew hunts a beryllium sphere and is chased by a rock monster; Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman starred.

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, the loose-knit gang that used Robbers Roost southeast of the park as a hideout, was the subject of Kelly's The Outlaw Trail, which he researched by interviewing surviving outlaws and ranchers.

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

It was laid down in a periodically flooded graben and has been stripped from the crest of the fold.

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.