50 Fun Facts About Arches National Park

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

The park entrance is about 4 miles up US 191 from the town, which is also the base for Canyonlands, the Slickrock mountain-bike trail and the annual Jeep Safari.

Roughly how many natural sandstone arches has the park catalogued?

That is the highest density of natural arches anywhere in the world, 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?

The evaporite layer, thousands of feet thick in places, was left behind when a sea flooded the Paradox Basin and dried up around 300 million years ago.

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?

The monument was two small, disconnected sections meant to protect the rock formations for their scientific value; full park status did not come for another 42 years.

In which year was Arches redesignated a national park?

Richard Nixon signed the legislation two years after Lyndon Johnson had greatly enlarged the monument on his way out of office; the park was formally dedicated in May 1972.

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

It is classed as a cold semi-arid climate; the scarce, unpredictable rainfall is one reason the soil crust recovers so slowly from footprints.

What is the highest point in the park?

It reaches 5,653 feet; the lowest point, at 4,085 feet, is the visitor center by the highway.

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

Whole sections of rock subsided between the salt domes; in places the layers turned almost on edge.

The dark, crumbly soil crust that visitors are told never to step on is held together by what?

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

Rain mixing with carbon dioxide forms which weak compound that dissolved the cement holding Arches' sandstone fins?

It ate away the calcium carbonate between sand grains; gravity then dropped the weakened lower layers out of the fins piece by piece.

Which Hungarian-born prospector first drew a railroad's attention to the area in 1923?

He wanted the Denver and Rio Grande Western to promote it as a tourist stop; its passenger traffic manager was impressed enough to lobby the Park Service.

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

The name Devils Garden ended up on the opposite side of Salt Valley, where Landscape Arch is; his own discovery was left out of the 1929 monument entirely.

Which president's 1938 proclamation enlarged the monument to include Delicate Arch?

The 1929 monument covered only the Windows and Devils Garden; the arch that now symbolises Utah played no part in the original designation.

Which president substantially enlarged Arches National Monument in early 1969, just before leaving office?

Congress then trimmed the acreage back two years later while upgrading its status to a national park.

Delicate Arch appears on which of these?

It was also on the postage stamp marking Utah's statehood centennial and carried the Olympic torch relay for the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

How tall is the freestanding span of Delicate Arch?

White-throated swifts nest in the top of it each summer; the 3-mile round-trip trail climbs 480 feet over open slickrock to reach it.

Local cowboys gave Delicate Arch which unflattering nickname?

It was also called the Chaps, Pants Crotch and Salt Wash Arch 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?

The idea was dropped as impractical and against Park Service principles; the arch will eventually fall like all the others.

Photographer Michael Fatali was fined $10,900 in 2000 after doing what beneath Delicate Arch?

He was showing amateurs a lighting technique using flaming logs; the fire scorched the sandstone and the money paid for the clean-up.

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

He made up to six ascents; the old wording only said routes on named arches 'may be closed', which the park attorney judged unenforceable.

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

Balanced Rock is off-limits too, and slacklining and BASE jumping are banned everywhere in the park.

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

That makes it the fifth-longest natural arch in the world after four in China, and only about 6 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 formation, the park's 12th largest span, collapsed unobserved on the night of 4–5 August 2008?

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

Double Arch formed differently from most spans in the park. How was it eroded?

Water pooling on top of the fin cut downward until it met a cavity below; its larger opening is 104 feet high, the tallest in the park.

Double Arch and Balanced Rock both appear in the opening scene of which 1989 film?

Young Indy is 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?

The 55-foot boulder of 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 maze of fins and slots is also a biblical nod (Daniel chapter 3); it hides arches with names like Skull, Surprise and Kissing Turtles.

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

There are no trails inside; walkers must stick to sandy washes and bare rock to protect soil crust, potholes and one of the largest stands of Canyonlands biscuitroot.

The Courthouse Towers were named for their resemblance to what?

The trail through the section starts at the Park Avenue viewpoint and also gives access to the Three Gossips.

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

The full trail with primitive loop and spurs runs 7.2 miles past Tunnel, Pine Tree, Partition, Navajo, Double O and Private arches and the Dark Angel pillar.

What is the Dark Angel at the end of the Devils Garden Trail?

It stands beyond Double O Arch; the primitive loop back to Landscape Arch is steep, sloping and close to drop-offs.

Which writer was a seasonal ranger at Arches in 1956-57 and turned his journals into Desert Solitaire?

He 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.

Delicate Arch featured on a 2014 US quarter. Which coin series was it part of?

More than 465 million were struck, the highest production of the five national-park quarters issued that year.

Which Native cultures lived in the Arches area until about 700 years ago?

Spanish missionaries met Ute and Paiute people when they passed through in 1775; a Mormon mission tried and abandoned settlement in 1855.

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

Geologist Charlie Steen's rich strike south of town 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?

It shares the desert with 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?

Numbers slipped to just under 1.5 million by 2024, partly because of a timed-entry reservation system meant to protect the fragile crust.

Arches National Park lies four miles north of Moab, adjacent to which waterway?

The park lies four miles north of Moab 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?

That is about 120 square miles, ranging from 4,085 feet at the visitor center up to Elephant Butte.

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

Wadleigh was the railroad's passenger traffic manager and visited with photographer George L. Beam at a prospector's invitation.

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

Gould, then a University of Michigan graduate student, was shown the area by local physician J. W. 'Doc' Williams in 1924.

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.