Located in eastern Utah, USA, along the Colorado River, the Arches National Park is an incredible Red Rock Wonderland, which contains thousands of iconic natural sandstone arches, along with giant balanced rocks, spires, sandstone fins, pinnacles, and slickrock domes standing against the enormous sky.
Measuring around 120 square miles (310 square km) and located on the northern edge of the Colorado Plateau, just 4 miles (6 km) north of the sporty town of Moab, the largest city in eastern Utah, at an elevation roughly between 4,000 and 5,600 feet, the park is created and designed by billions of years of weathering and erosion. Initially named a National Monument on 12 April 1929, and designated as a national park on 12 November 1971, it contains more than 2,000 arches, which constitute the highest density of natural arches in the world.
The Arches National Park lies above an underground salt bed, which is thousands of feet thick in places, deposited some 300 million years ago, when a sea flowing in the region eventually evaporated.
Later, sand and boulders and other sediments carried down by streams from the uplands covered and buried the salt bed, which eventually were compressed into rock. The weight of this overlying rock caused the unstable salt bed to shift and thrust up layers of rock to form domes and ridges with valleys in between. When a salt dome collapsed, the rocks on its flanks cracked, and subsequently weathered into a maze of vertical rock slabs called fins of sandstone out of the cracked rock, and after further weathering, sections of those slender walls, especially the sides of the fins, become rock arches, creating the spectacular rock sculptures. The Landscape Arch, located in the Devil’s Garden area and measuring about 300 feet (91 m) long from base to base, is the largest arch the park, and is considered the fifty longest natural freestanding spans of rock in the world. Due to the continuous erosion process, new arches are constantly forming in the park area, while the said process of erosion combined with vertical and horizontal stress causes the old arches to collapse occasionally.
In the recent past, the Wall Arch, one of the park’s most-photographed arches located along Devils Garden Trail, collapsed in 2008.
The Arches National Park contains several notable features, which include among others, the Dark Angel, a natural sandstone rock formation, rising around 150 feet (45 m) above the salt valley and named after the dark coloured sandstone, the 128 feet (39 m) tall Balanced Rock, weighing about 3,577 tons, as well as the Courthouse Towers with spires, resembling skyscrapers of the New York City. The Three Gossips, a mid-sized sandstone tower, resembling three heads talking amongst themselves and measuring 350 feet at its tallest, is also located in the Courthouse Towers area. Apart from that, there is a 100 feet (30 m) tall rock formation in the park, called the Phallus, named for its resemblance of a phallus. The Fiery Furnace, a popular hiking destination located within the Arches National Park, is a collection of narrow sandstone canyons, fins and arches, named for the reddish hue it exhibits in sunset light, while the Elephant Butte is a flat-topped cap surrounded by numerous towers and fins including Parade of Elephants that looks like a rear view of the herd. The Devils Garden, which once contained the Wall Arch that collapsed in 2008, also features a series of rock fins and arches formed by erosion.
As the name suggests, the Arches National Park contains several huge sandstone arches, which include the Delicate Arch, Double Arch, Turret Arch, Sand Dune Arch, Navajo Arch and Landscape Arch, along with the Window Section, comprising the North and South Windows, separated by a huge sandstone fin, popularly known as the nose. Among the famous arches, the 52-feet-tall (16 m) freestanding Delicate Arch, commonly called by the local cowboys as the Schoolmarm’s Bloomers, a type of divided women's garments for the lower body, is the most widely recognised landmark in Arches National Park, as well as one of the most photographed arches in the world. The Double Arch, also known as a pothole arch, is a close-set pair of natural arches sharing the same stone base structure, with its larger opening of 148 feet (45 m) and whopping height of 104 feet (32 m). However, it is one of the most known features of the park, formed by water erosion from above rather than more typical erosion from the side. Nevertheless, the Windows Section, containing a large concentration of arches, is one of the most scenic locations in the park and is considered by many as the beating heart of Arches National Park.
The Arches National Park has an arid climate, and scanty precipitation, although occasional brief but heavy downpour triggers flash flooding in arroyos and canyons. As a high desert region, it experiences wide temperature fluctuations. During hot summer days, temperature in the area frequently exceeds 100 °F (38 °C), while in cold winter days night temperature often falls well below freezing. Apart from scrub, grasses, several species of cactus and a wide variety of wildflowers, especially in spring, flora of the park includes forests of scattered juniper and pine trees, along with cottonwoods, box elders, Russian olives, and the likes. There is an abundance of wildlife in the park, which includes antelope ground squirrels, kangaroo rats, jackrabbits, foxes, desert bighorn sheep, rattlesnakes, collared lizards, and dozens of species of birds, including golden eagles and piñon jays. The Park contains ephemeral pools, which are from a few inches to several feet in depth, and home to tadpoles, fairy shrimp, and insects