From
California we crossed Northern Nevada and stopped for a stamp cancellation at
Great Basin National Park. The Great
Basin stretches from California’s Sierra Nevada to Utah’s Wasatch Mountains.
Congress created Great Basin National Park in 1986, including much of the South
Snake Range which is a great example of a desert mountain island. The Great Basin is named for its lack of
drainage. The streams and rivers mostly
find no outlet to the sea, and water collects in shallow salt lakes and marshes
to evaporate in dry desert air. It’s not
just one basin, but many that are separated by mountain ranges.
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Entering Utah,
I became excited because we had already witnessed in 2015 the beauty of the
national parks in that state.
Our first
stop was Zion National Park, one that we had not seen in 2015. And it was magnificent. Located in Southwestern Utah, a prominent feature of the 229 sq. mile park is Zion Canyon, which stretches 15 miles long and spans up to half a mile deep. It cuts through the reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone by the North Fork of the Virgin River. The lowest point in the park is 3,555 ft. at Coalpits Wash and the highest peak is 8,726 ft. at Horse Ranch Mountain. The park was established in 1919.
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Bryce
National Park was next. This was one of
my favorites because of the colors in the limestone formations. We did not see this park in 2015. We traveled north to Idaho instead. Established
in 1928, Bryce Canyon National Park is in southwestern Utah. Bryce Canyon, despite its name, is not a
canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side
of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. It is
distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost
weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rocks.
Before this
area was full of hoodoos it was full of water.
Between 55 and 40 million years ago today’s Utah was a mountain
encircled basin. For millions of years,
rivers deposited sediments – mostly dissolved limestone—into a system of large
lakes. Twenty million years ago, as the
Colorado Plateau began to rise, the lakes dried up and their mixtures of sediments
became the muddy limestone called the Claron Formation.
Bryce Canyon
is called, “Poetry in Stone.” (as
borrowed from the brochure. Take your time reading this in a relaxing place.) Bryce
Canyon’s serene vistas are deceptive; the landscape is never static. Stand at the rim in early morning and
experience the chilly dawn, crystalline blue sky, and rocks ablaze with the
ruddy light of sunrise. After breakfast,
walk the rim and your shifting perspective dramatically recomposes the scene
below. The Sun arcing across the sky
casts a kaleidoscope of slowly altered hues and shifting shadows over the
land. You peel off layers of clothing as
the air rapidly warms—as much as 40 degrees F from dawn to late afternoon. Thin air can leave you short of breath. The high elevation that causes these effects
also creates the climate that weathers the cliffs and hoodoos. After sunset, as the chill returns, listen
through the advancing twilight for the faint clatter or murmur of the stones
tumbling in the distance. At Bryce
Canyon the forces of weathering and erosion never rest, not even for a
day. This dynamic, mesmerizing place is
like no other.
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Capital Reef
we had seen before, but only quickly. I gained a new appreciation of this
park. A giant
buckle in Earth’s crust stretches across south-central Utah. This vast warping of rock, created 65 million
years ago by the same great forces later uplifting the Colorado Plateau, is
called the Waterpocket Fold. Capitol
Reef National Park preserves the Fold and its eroded jumble of colorful cliffs,
massive domes, soaring spires, stark monoliths, twisting canyons, and graceful
arches. It is a place that humans used
for thousands of years, from early indigenous peoples to Mormon pioneers. The
village within the park was named Fruita since fruit trees grew naturally in
the area. This national park inspires
poets, artists, photographers, and seekers of solitude. The world of the Waterpocket Fold stretches
100 miles – and beyond. Capital Reef
National Park was established in 1971.
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Canyonlands
National Park was not my favorite. Canyonlands preserves a wilderness of rock
at the heart of the Colorado Plateau.
Water and gravity, this land’s prime architects, cut flat layers of
sedimentary rock into hundreds of canyons, mesas, buttes, fin, arches, and
spires. At center stage are two canyons
carved by the Green and Colorado rivers.
Surrounding the rivers are vast, very different regions: Island in the Sky on the north, The Maze on
the west, and The Needles on the east. They share a common primitive spirit and Wild
West atmosphere. Few people knew these
remote lands and rivers well when the national park was established in 1964. Only Native Americans, cowboys, river
explorers, and uranium prospectors had dared enter this rugged corner of
southeastern Utah. Canyonlands remains
largely untamed—its roads mostly unpaved, trails primitive, and rivers
free-flowing. Bighorn sheep, coyotes,
and other native animals roam its 537 square miles. Canyonlands is wild America.
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Arches was
the last national park that we saw in Utah on this trip. It was the first one in 2015.
Established in 1971, the park lies on top of
an underground salt bed that is responsible for the arches, spires, balanced
rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths of this mecca for sightseers. Thousands of feet thick in places, this salt
bed was deposited across the Colorado Plateau 300 million years ago when a sea
flowed into the region and eventually evaporated. Over millions of years, residue from floods,
winds, and the oceans that came and went covered the salt bed. The debris was compressed as rock, at one
time possibly a mile thick. Salt under
pressure is unstable, and the salt bed lying below arches was no match for the
weight of this thick cover of rock. The
salt layers shifted, buckled, liquefied, and repositioned itself, thrusting the
rock layers upward as domes, and whole sections fell into the cavities. Faults deep in the Earth made the surface
even more unstable. Fault-caused
vertical cracks later contributed to the development of arches. More than 2,000
natural sandstone arches are in the park.
The park contains the highest density of natural arches in the
world. Located in the Colorado Plateau in south east Utah,
the park consists of 76,679 acres of high desert.
Native
Americans used this area for thousands of years. The Archaic peoples, and later ancestral
Puebloan, Fremont, and Ute peoples, searched the arid desert for food animals,
wild plant foods, and stone for tools and weapons. The first non-native explorers came looking
for wealth in mineral forms. Ranchers
found abundant grasses for cattle and sheep.
Free roaming cattle abound.
Arches
National Park is a very popular park because of its ever-changing
characteristics. Today new features are
being formed as old ones are destroyed.
Erosion and weathering work slowly but relentlessly, creating dynamic
landforms that gradually change through time.
Change sometimes occurs more dramatically. In 1991 a rock slab 60 feet long, 11 feet
wide, and 4 feet thick fell from the underside of Landscape Arch, leaving
behind an even thinner ribbon of rock.
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The national
parks in Utah were truly amazing. If you’re
a geologist, science teacher, history teacher, rock climber, adventure seeker, off-road
adventurist, or hiker you will benefit more than Buck and I did while visiting
these five super terrific national parks.
I would like to encourage you to come while you are still physically
able. In Moab, where we camped while
visiting Arches National Park, we saw a TV commercial for the adventures the
national parks provide. A guy from North
Carolina was interviewed. He goes every
year to Utah with his off-road team to explore the wonders of these parks. He’s young enough and physically able to really enjoy the national parks in Utah.
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As a retired educator I can't help but think of different ways to teach a lesson on the national parks in Utah.
We could begin with a lower level thinking skill:
- List the 5 national parks in Utah and the date each was established.
- List the 5 national parks in Utah and their location in the state.
Then we could move to middle level thinking skills:
- Compare and contract the differences and similarities of the 5 national parks in Utah. You may use a graphic organizer or simply list them separately.
- Considering the location of each national park in Utah, determine from the article the cause for the creation of each park.
Upper level assignments:
- Research the national park of your choice and state the reasons for your decision. Write a commercial for the public to learn about your chosen park.
- Based on the history of each national park, what would you predict to be the future of each park?
Sorry, I couldn't help myself.