San Juan County Utah’s Canyon Country! The Worl The The World’s Greatest Outdoor Museum! www.utahscanyoncountry.com 800-574-4386 1 Canyonlands National Park - Needles District Hiking in the Needles District Bursting with the awe inspiring natural icons of the Colorado Plateau, San Juan County, Utah is indeed one of the world’s greatest outdoor museums. From Canyonlands National Park in the north to Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park in the south, Utah’s Canyon Country offers one of the best vacations ever! Canyonlands National Park is a gem in the National Park crown, consisting of three distinct areas: Island in the Sky, the Needles, and the Maze. The Needles is a remote and magical place, easily accessed from San Juan County via Utah Highway 211 which joins US Highway 191 fourteen miles north of Monticello. Named for an area of tall, slender and graceful sandstone formations, this section of the park offers over 60 miles of interconnecting trails into, through, and among stunning canyon scenery. Highway vehicle parking accesses popular Hiker at Druid Arch hiking trails. And Squaw Flat Campground, Wooden Shoe Arch Overlook, Cave Spring, Roadside Ruin, and Big Spring Canyon Overlook are all on easily traveled roads. The Needles also provides challenging back-country adventure for 4 wheel drive enthusiasts with more than 50 miles of jeep roads and trails to campsites, trailheads, and park attractions. These routes re- quire high-clearance, 4 wheel drive vehicles. Canyonlands National Park invites you to explore a wilderness of countless canyons and fatastically formed buttes carved by the the Colorado River, wind, and rain in the desert sandstone. Rangers present in-depth programs on many aspects of the park. Interpretive programs are offered from March through October with evening presentations most nights in the Squaw Flat Campground. Other programs are offered throughout the season - the Visitor Center posts times and subjects. The campground is an ideal base camp for day hikes to popular destinations in Chesler Park, to Druid Arch, and along the Joint Trail. With 26 sites, bathrooms, fire grates, picnic tables, tent pads, and water, the Hikers in the Needles campground offers camping comfort. www.nps.gov/cany 2 3 Hidden deep in the greatest outdoor museum, Hovenweep National Monument offers the experience of true exploration among its ruins and expertly camouflaged rock art. Structures are found on the surface and in the canyons that were built by the Ancestral Puebloan people who once thrived here. The focal point of the park are the towers, unique structures in the southwest. But there are also residences, check dams, and granaries found tucked into over- hangs and along canyon walls. The people who lived here over 10,000 years ago were hunter/ gatherers who foraged the landscape to gather plants and hunt game. By 900 AD settlements began to appear and by the late 1200s Hovenweep was home to over 2,500 residents. The towers were built between 500 AD and 1300 by people associated with the community at Mesa Verde in what is now Colorado and other Four Corner communities. A variety of shapes and sizes, including square and circular, define the towers, D-shaped dwellings, and kivas or ceremonial chambers. The masons at Hovenweep were among the best among the Puebloans and the work is as skillful as it is beautiful. Even the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde National Park rarely exhibit such careful construction and attention to detail. Some of the buildings which were perched on top of bolders remain standing after more than 700 years. The people prepared the land for cultivation much like farmers do today. They created terraces, formed catch basins to hold runoff, and built check dams to retain topsoil. Storage granaries were built under canyon rims to protect the harvests of corn, beans, and squash. While we do not know what the towers were erected to accomplish, theories attempt to explain their use. The towers might have been celestial observatories, defensive structures, The night sky at Hovenweep storage spaces, community buildings, homes, or any combination of the above. But, their actual function remains a mystery. By the end of the 13th century the people at Hovenweep began leaving the area. Many believe they migrated south to New Mexico and Arizona. www.nps.gov/hove Hovenweep National Monument 4 5 Natural Bridges National Monument Sipapu Bridge At Natural Bridges our outdoor museum extends to the heavens. Named the first International Dark Sky Park by the International Dark Sky Association, Natural Bridges provides an oppor- tunity to view the night sky without obstruction. Astronomy programs are offered throughout the summer under the star washed skies of southeast Utah. Stars and planets cover the sky as if carelessly scattered for our enjoyment in one of the darkest night skies in North America. Pro- grams allow visitors to enjoy the night sky without the interference of civilization’s light found in almost every place we live. The park also shelters three of the world’s largest natural stone bridges. Three majestic natu- ral structures invite you to ponder the power of water in a landscape primarily defined by its absence.. Paved trails lead from Bridge View Drive to overlook stations for each bridge and a longer trail descends into White Canyon and allows hikers to walk beneath all three on a day hike. Evidence of previous cultures are also found in the park and Horsecollar Ruin is accessed along one of the trails. The first residents left rock art and stone tools beginning around 7000 BC. Sometime about 700 AD the area was home to farmers who used the mesa tops. Around 1100 AD new people moved into the area and built single family houses but by 1300 AD they had begun to move away. In the early 1800s anglo explorers traveled through White Canyon. National Geographic published photos of the bridges in 1904 and in 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt established the National Monument, creating Utah’s first National Park facility. www.nps.gov/nabr Water at Natural Bridges 6 7 Formed by eons of stream action working on the rock, Rainbow Bridge is the world’s largest known natural bridge. Inspiring people throughout time - from native cultures of long ago to contemporary native people and the over 300,000 visitors each year - the bridge sits majestically wihin its canyon walls near Lake Powell. The bridge was “discovered” by the outside world only a hundred years ago. Louisa Wetherill heard about it from a Navajo trader and convinced her husband, John, to lead the 1909 Cummings-Douglass expedition. Guided by Ute Mountain Ute, Jim Mike, and Piute, Najsa Begay, the group reached the “rainbow” on August 14, 1909. Original party of “discovery.” Rainbow Bridge spans 275 feet across Bridge Creek in an almost perfect parabolic arch. The top of the arch is 42 feet thick and 33 feet wide. The bridge holds special spiritual significance to native peoples of the area. The Park Service asks that visitors respect those beliefs as they approach and move around the span. The rock at the base of the bridge are Kayenta Sandstone laid down by inland seas and winds well over 200 million years ago! The bridge itself is Navajo Sandstone created as sand dunes originally up to 5,000 feet deep (1524 meters) and subsequently hardened into rock. About 5.5 million years ago the Colorado Plateau began to rise, the surface buckled and cracked, river channels grew deeper, water flowed faster, and over time the bridge was formed. Access to Rainbow Bridge National Monument is generally accomplished by boat from Lake Pow- ell. Hardy visitors may acquire a permit from Navajo Parks and Recreation to take the two day A quiet canyon hike from the small community of Navajo Mountain. on Lake Powell www.nps.gov/rabr Rainbow Bridge is one of the endlessly fascinating landforms found in the outdoor museum that is San Juan County. Natural bridges are rare and differ from arches in that they are formed when a watercourse breaks through rock. Arches are more common, although both are shaped by the same erosional processes of wind and rain. Rainbow Bridge National Monument A Rainbow Turned to Stone! 8 9 Glen Canyon National Recreation Area ~ Lake Powell Red rock and deep blue water define Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Hiking, boating, fishing, exploring, camping, and remote and challenging back-country adventure are wating for you at Lake Powell! Camp under crystal clear night skies; ski sparkling blue water within a can- yon’s towering walls; enter one of the lake’s fishing contests and test your skill against the stripers; visit Rainbow Bridge National Monument; explore intriguing canyons. The Recreation Area encompasses over 1.2 million acres and offers unparalleled opportunities for water-based & backcountry recreation. Stretching for hundreds of miles from Lees Ferry in Arizona to the Orange Cliffs of southern Utah, Glen Canyon encompasses scenic vistas, geologic Enjoying Lake Powell wonders, and a vast panorama of human history. The entire eastern shore of Lake Powell is in San Juan County and contributes to our outdoor museum with stunning scenery, hidden canyons, and a fragile ecosystem. Canyons carved out by the Colorado River and its tributaries expose rock layers deposited one over the other through time; the youngest rocks are at the top and the oldest at the bottom. These rock layers reveal fossils and traces of past life forms, princi- pally from the Mesozoic Era, 248 to 65 million years ago. Lush hanging gardens cling to vertical cliff walls and are fed by springs flowing through porous rocks and cracks.