Arches National Park
Arches National Park, located in the southeastern part of the U.S. State of Utah, preserves over two thousand natural sandstone arches, in addition to a variety of unique geological resources and formations.
Two unusual natural features are cryptobiotic soil and potholes. The park is situated in a high desert, and has elevations ranging from 4,085 ft (1,245m) to 5,653 ft (1,723 m). The summers are very hot, the winters cold, and the rainfall sparse.
While no dwellings have been found in Arches, the northern edge of ancestral Puebloan territory, there are rock inscription panels. Like earlier people, the ancestral Puebloans left lithic scatters.
As the ancestral Puebloan and Fremont peoples were leaving the area, such nomadic Shoshonean peoples as the Ute and Paiute entered, and were here when the first Europeans arrived in 1776. The first Europeans to explore the Southwest were Spaniards.
The Mormons attempted to establish the Elk Mountain Mission in what is now Moab, a nearby city, in 1855; but conflicts with the Utes caused them to leave.
In the 1880s and 1890s, Moab was settled permanently by ranchers, prospectors, and farmers. John Wesley Wolfe built the homestead known as Wolfe Ranch around 1898 in what is now the park
Alexander Ringhoffer, a prospector, wrote the Rio Grande Western Railroad in 1923 in an effort to publicize the area and gain support for creating a national park.
In 1929, President Herbert Hoover signed the legislation creating Arches National Monument, to protect the geological formations.
In 1971, the U.S.Congress changed its status to a National Park.
See map of the park.
We would like to thank Arches National Park and National Park Service for providing information for this page.
(This page was updated in December 2012.)
