Raplee Anticline, on the horizon six miles east of the Goosenecks, is an GOOSENECKSGOOSENECKS example of folding made visible by erosion. STATESTATE PARKPARK Across the canyon you see 'steps' in the wall formed where softer shale erodes. The resistant limestone layer is UT #316 undercut and breaks off in large blocks forming vertical ledges. The blocks are visible lying on the slopes before they break apart and slide to the river where they are rolled, ground, and worn into rounded cobble stones and eventually are ground into sand. FOR MORE PARK SPECIFIC In the 1890's, prospectors INFORMATION looking for gold flocked to Mexican Contact: Goosenecks State Park is out where

Hat. They built the Honaker Trail to the highways end! An astonishing access the deepest part of the gorge. view of the great Goosenecks of the The trail, 1½ miles northwest of the San Juan River is spread at your feet park toward John's Canyon, is narrow 660 West 400 North at this small but breathtaking park. and winding and drops 1,000 feet in its Blanding, UT 84511 The river flows 1,000 feet below the 2½ mile length from top to bottom. 435-678-2238 overlook nine miles west of Goosenecks State Park provides Mexican Hat via Utah Highways the opportunity to study the earth's 163, 261, and 316. skeleton. The desert landscape reveals For information about the surrounding The paved entrance road the underlying structure not easily Four Corners area attractions contact is easily traversed by discernable in areas where flora Utah's Canyon Country! 800-574-4386 highway vehicles. obscures the earth's bones. Activities include picnicking, sight-seeing, and hiking. Camping is allowed but, due to PLEASE USE CAUTION! the strong wind on the mesa, tent There are many loose rocks and camping is not recommended. Camp- high ledges. There is no barrier grounds and lodging are available at the canyon edge. nearby. Open year round. Small parking area and pit toilets. No water or firewood is available. GEOLOGIC HISTORY A 'fossil oil field' also exists here. The water moved slowly across the On the edge of a deep canyon Long ago oil rose to the surface and was fairly level land in a lazy, winding stream above the sinuous river meander known as subsequently covered by multiple layers of pattern much like the Mississippi or a 'gooseneck' this small park affords a view sediment. The river continues to cut its way Danube Rivers of today. As the land of one of the most striking and impressive through those layers freeing the trapped oil continued to rise, the river flowed faster examples of an entrenched river meander on the and allowing it to seep into the river. Small and eroded through the geologic layers. It North American continent. The San Juan oil seeps can often be seen in the canyon. cut deeply into the land and created this River twists and turns through the At other locations in the Four Corners, 1,000 foot deep entrenched meander. meander, flowing a distance of over six these geologic layers are important oil Several thousand feet of earth have been miles while advancing 1½ miles west producers. eroded from this site over the past several toward Lake Powell. Other formations were deposited million years. What you see is the result of over after the Honaker. Four footed animals Erosion has also exposed volcanic 300 million years of geologic activity. The known as tetrapods developed, the age of 'intrusions'. Alhambra Rock, on the oldest rocks are found at the bottom of the the dinosaurs came and went, and the age horizon southwest of Mexican Hat, canyon and the youngest are all around you of mammals began. Environments also Shiprock to the east in New Mexico, and on the mesa top. The lower third of the changed beginning with the ancient sea, El Capitan (Algathla Peak) to the south canyon walls are limestone in the Paradox developing to a stream covered plateau, are all igneous intrusions created by Formation, which was created in an ancient and ultimately becoming the desert you see molten rock forced up through the sea during the Pennsylvanian period, today. Evidence of each epoch is in the overlying layers of sandstone and between 310 and 300 million years ago. As geology visible from Goosenecks State hardened. The sandstone eroded leaving the sea evaporated, mineral deposits of Park. The Colorado Plateau began rising 70 the intrusions standing as lone sentinels. gypsum, salt, or carbonates such as or 80 million years ago and the last sea Erosion has also revealed the folded crust limestone and dolomite were left behind. poured out to the southeast as the earth's or anticlines and synclines. These deposits can be found throughout crust began folding in upwarps or the Four Corners region. The same process 'anticlines' and downwarps or ‘synclines' is going on today in northern Utah as the and 'cut and fill' erosion began. Drainage Great Salt Lake slowly evaporates. courses developed which eventually The upper two-thirds of the canyon became the Colorado and San Juan Rivers. are the Honaker Formation from the Upper Pennsylvanian period, 300 to 270 million years old. The formation is composed of alternating beds of shale and limestone topped with sandstone. Many of the limestone layers contain the fossil remains of crinoids, brachiopods, and corals.

Photo: George Konizer