Goblin Valley State Park
- Dark Sky Place
Interesting facts
- The valley inspired the design of the rock monsters in Galaxy Quest, and scenes for John Carter and City Slickers II were also filmed in or near the park.
- Arthur Chaffin and two companions first glimpsed the valley from a viewpoint about a mile to the west, seeing five buttes above a floor crowded with strange rock figures.
- Protection of the valley was first proposed in 1954; it began as a state reserve and was formally made a state park on 24 August 1964.
- The Entrada sandstone records the edge of an ancient sea, with traces of tidal ebb and flow, channels draining back to the sea and coastal dunes.
- In 2013 a group leader deliberately toppled a balanced goblin while a companion filmed it; the two later pleaded guilty to criminal mischief.
- Rattlesnakes, scorpions, kangaroo rats, kit foxes and pronghorn live among the goblins, in a valley that receives less than about 8 inches of rain a year.
- In 2016 the park was certified as an International Dark Sky Park at the gold tier, the highest level of darkness in that scheme.
Why it is worth it
A shallow valley in the Utah desert is filled with thousands of squat, rounded sandstone figures — knobby heads on narrow necks, crowded together like a frozen crowd. These hoodoos, called "goblins" locally, are the reason Goblin Valley State Park exists, and together with Bryce Canyon to the southwest they make up some of the largest concentrations of hoodoos in the world. The park lies in the San Rafael Desert on the southeastern edge of the San Rafael Swell, with the Henry Mountains rising to the south and a rim of eroded cliffs closing the valley in.
The goblins are carved from Entrada sandstone, laid down in the Jurassic around 170 million years ago on an ancient tidal flat, in alternating bands of sandstone, siltstone and shale. Networks of joints split the beds into blocks; their edges and corners, exposed on more sides, weathered faster than their faces, rounding each block into a knob. A harder layer on top shields the softer rock beneath, which is why so many goblins wear caps like mushrooms. Wild Horse Butte, about 1,756 metres high, rises within the park, built of four exposed Jurassic formations.
The San Rafael Swell carries pictographs and petroglyphs left by Fremont, Paiute and Ute peoples, but the hidden valley itself was found by cowboys searching for cattle and, in the late 1920s, by Arthur Chaffin, operator of the Hite ferry on the Colorado, who was looking for a route between Green River and Caineville. He came back in 1949 to photograph what he called the Valley of the Mushrooms. Publicity drew visitors despite the remoteness, the state acquired the land, and Goblin Valley became a state park in 1964; it was enlarged with more than 6,000 acres of federal land in 2019. The valley's eerie forms have stood in for an alien world on film, most memorably in Galaxy Quest (1999).
Getting there
The nearest town is Hanksville, about 19 km (12 miles) to the south. Utah State Route 24 passes about 6 km (4 miles) east of the park. The nearest airport is Canyonlands Regional Airport (CNY) near Moab, about 86 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Goblin Valley State Park is a state park in Emery County, Utah in the United States. The park is known for its thousands of hoodoos, referred to locally as goblins. The distinct shapes of these rocks result from an erosion-resistant layer of rock atop relatively softer sandstone. Goblin Valley State Park and nearby Bryce Canyon National Park contain some of the largest occurrences of hoodoos in the world.
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