The Geologic Story of Arches National Park: Geological Survey Bulletin 1393Lohman, Stanley William
Science
The Geologic Story of Arches National Park: Geological Survey Bulletin 1393
Lohman, Stanley William
Arches National Park (Utah); Geology -- Utah -- Arches National Park -- Guidebooks
In 1955 and 1956 the Pacific Northwest Pipeline, known also as the
“Scenic Inch,” was constructed by the Pacific Northwest Pipeline Corp.
to transmit natural gas from wells in the San Juan Basin of northwestern
New Mexico for a total of 1,487 miles to the Pacific Northwest, with
additional pickups from gas fields in northeastern Utah, northwestern
Colorado, and southwestern Wyoming (Walters, 1956). This 26-inch
pipeline follows the general route of U.S. Highway 163 from Cortez,
Colo., past Moab to Sevenmile Canyon 10 miles northwest of Moab, where
it turns abruptly to the northeast and crosses about the middle of
Arches National Park. It crosses the park road and the flat area between
the Fiery Furnace and the southeast end of Devils Garden, but the scars
are so well healed that most visitors are unaware of its existence
unless they happen to look southwestward across Salt Valley, where the
filled excavation is still visible. The filled trench also appears in
the lower middle of figure 23.
Unlike Canyonlands National Park a few miles to the south, Arches was
not on the route of the famous early-day river expeditions of John
Wesley Powell or of most of those that followed; however, the
southeastern boundary of the park is the Colorado River, formerly the
Grand, which was traversed by the first leg of the ill-fated
Brown-Stanton expedition (Dellenbaugh, 1902, p. 343-369; Lohman, 1974).
The canyon of the Colorado River along the southeastern park boundary is
deep and beautiful and is a favorite stretch of quiet water for boaters
and floaters. Partly paved State Highway 128 on the east bank is a part
of a most scenic drive from Moab to Cisco—a small railroad town about 32
miles northeast of the eastern border of figure 1 (fig. 7). This road
has been variously called the “Moab Mail Road,” the “Cisco Cutoff,” the
“Dewey Road,” or the “Dewey Bridge Road” after an old suspension bridge
(fig. 7) across the Colorado River at the old townsite of Dewey about 12
miles south of Cisco. During the summer this deep colorful canyon may be
viewed at night by artificial illumination. Each evening one-half hour
after sundown, an 80-passenger jet boat leaves a dock north of the
highway bridge, carries passengers several miles upstream, then floats
slowly downstream followed by a truck on the highway carrying 40,000
watts of searchlights which play back and forth on the colorful red
canyon walls, while the passengers listen to a taped discourse. The
entire trip requires about 2 hours.
The spectacular arches and red rocks of Arches and vicinity have been
used to advantage in making color movies and color TV shows. Parts of
the recent Walt Disney film “Run, Cougar, Run” were filmed beneath
Delicate Arch (fig. 43), in Professor Valley of the Colorado River just
east of the park (fig. 7), and in other sections of the canyon country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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