The Most Beautiful Natural Arches in the United States
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful natural arches in the United States are Delicate Arch, Landscape Arch and Natural Bridge (Virginia). The list covers 5 natural arches. Last updated 13 October 2026.
The American West has more natural arches than anywhere else on Earth, thanks to thick layers of sandstone laid down as ancient dunes and later lifted, cracked and eroded in a dry climate. Rainwater, frost and wind open the cracks into fins and then windows, and the arid air preserves the results. In the East, rivers have done the same work in limestone.
Delicate Arch in Arches National Park is a freestanding span about 16 metres tall on the rim of a slickrock bowl, so iconic that it appears on Utah licence plates. Nearby Landscape Arch stretches some 88 metres across yet is thin as a ribbon; a large slab fell from it in 1991. In Canyonlands, Mesa Arch frames the canyon below and glows red underneath at sunrise. Rainbow Bridge near Lake Powell, held sacred by the Navajo, is one of the largest natural bridges in the world. Natural Bridge in Virginia, a limestone span over Cedar Creek, was once owned by Thomas Jefferson.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Delicate Arch | Natural arch | |
| 2 | Landscape Arch | Natural arch | |
| 3 | Natural Bridge (Virginia) | Natural arch | |
| 4 | Rainbow Bridge National Monument | Natural arch | |
| 5 | Mesa Arch | Natural arch |
01 Delicate Arch
United States · 19.4 km from Moab38.744° N 109.499° W
Image by ISchneider from Pixabay The approach is part of the experience. The trail climbs steadily across open slickrock, then follows a narrow ledge for the last couple of hundred metres before the arch appears suddenly at its end. Sunset, when the low light warms the sandstone, is the classic time to arrive.
Did you know? Climber Dean Potter made up to six free-solo ascents of the arch in May 2006, which prompted the ban on climbing named arches.
02 Landscape Arch
United States · 24.6 km from Moab38.791° N 109.607° W
Thomas Wolf , www.foto-tw.de · CC BY-SA 3.0 It is also a lesson in how arches end. Large slabs broke away in 1991 and again in 1995, and the trail that once passed beneath it was closed after those rockfalls. You now look at it from a viewpoint at the end of a short spur, knowing that you are watching a landform in the late stage of its life.
Did you know? The 1991 rockfall dropped a slab more than 18 metres long and over a metre thick from the underside of the span.
03 Natural Bridge (Virginia)
Natural Bridge
United States37.627° N 79.545° W
George Wharton James · Public domain The bridge passed through many private owners and grew into a resort, with hotels and, from 1927, floodlighting switched on by President Coolidge. In 2016 it became Natural Bridge State Park, managed by the Commonwealth of Virginia. The trail beneath the arch follows Cedar Creek upstream to the Lost River, where water issues from the side of the gorge, and on to the 9-metre Lace Falls.
Did you know? In 1742 John Howard's exploring party passed under the arch, then floated in buffalo-skin boats down the New, Kanawha and Ohio rivers to the Mississippi.
04 Rainbow Bridge National Monument
United States37.077° N 110.964° W
Image by ArtTower from Pixabay The bridge was sacred long before it was famous. Five tribes, the Navajo, Hopi, San Juan Southern Paiute, Kaibab Paiute and White Mesa Ute, hold it as a place of spiritual importance, and the monument is recognised as a Traditional Cultural Property; visitors are asked to treat it with respect. The first recorded outside visitors arrived on 15 August 1909, when the expeditions of Byron Cummings and William B. Douglass joined forces and were led in by the Paiute guides Nasja Begay and Jim Mike. The next year, on 30 May 1910, President William Howard Taft proclaimed it a national monument, and Theodore Roosevelt was among its early visitors.
Did you know? Kolob Arch and Landscape Arch in Utah have slightly longer spans, but Rainbow Bridge is taller than both of them.
05 Mesa Arch
United States · 34.3 km from Moab38.388° N 109.864° W
Thomas Wolf , www.foto-tw.de · CC BY-SA 3.0 Even without the sunrise the view is extraordinary. Through and around the arch you look out over tiers of canyons cut into the plateau, past rock pinnacles such as Monster Tower and Airport Tower and the delicate Washer Woman Arch, to the La Sal Mountains in the distance. The Island in the Sky is a flat-topped mesa raised high above the surrounding canyons; Mesa Arch sits on its eastern edge and is one of the easiest ways to feel the scale of that drop. The rim beneath the arch is unfenced and the fall is sheer, so it is admired from the ground, not climbed.
Did you know? The arch is carved from Navajo Sandstone, the cemented remains of a vast sea of wind-blown sand dunes from the Early Jurassic.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful natural arches in the United States?
- On our list, Delicate Arch ranks first, followed by Landscape Arch and Natural Bridge (Virginia).
- What is the difference between a natural arch and a natural bridge?
- A natural bridge is a kind of arch formed by flowing water, a stream that cut through the rock beneath it. Rainbow Bridge and Natural Bridge in Virginia are bridges; Delicate Arch and Landscape Arch were shaped by weathering.
- How long is Landscape Arch?
- Landscape Arch spans about 88 metres (roughly 290 feet), making it the longest arch in Arches National Park and one of the longest in the world.
- How many natural arches are on this list in the United States?
- The list covers 5 natural arches.