Goosenecks State Park
- Dark Sky Place
Interesting facts
- The Monument Upwarp, the uplift that trapped the river's bends, rose only about two to three million years ago while the San Juan cut down through it.
- The Monument Upwarp is a broad fold of the crust roughly 90 miles long and 35 miles wide, made of parallel arches and troughs running north to south.
- Canyon cutting sped up during the Ice Ages, when a wetter climate sent floods down the San Juan up to ten times larger than any recorded in human history.
- A few miles away, the Honaker Trail zigzags about 2.5 miles from the rim to the river; it was built around 1900 as a supply route for gold prospectors.
- The Honaker Trail is the type locality of a rock unit named after it, and fossil crinoids and brachiopods from a Pennsylvanian sea can be seen along the way.
- The biggest flood ever recorded on the San Juan, in October 1911, swept away a bridge at nearby Mexican Hat whose deck stood 39 feet above the river.
- The neighbouring town of Mexican Hat is named after a sombrero-shaped rock about 60 feet wide that balances on its northeastern edge.
Why it is worth it
At Goosenecks the San Juan River coils back on itself so tightly that it seems to be going nowhere. From the rim, about 1,000 feet (300 m) above the water, the view takes in a set of entrenched meanders in which the river flows more than six miles while gaining only about a mile and a half on its westward course toward Lake Powell. The walls expose rock that records some 300 million years of geological history, and the loops below are a classic place to see incised meanders.
The shape is inherited. Millions of years ago the San Juan wandered across a nearly level plain, swinging in lazy bends as lowland rivers do. Then the Monument Upwarp, part of the broader uplift of the Colorado Plateau, slowly raised the land beneath it. Rather than straightening out, the river held its course and cut downward as the ground rose, locking its old bends into solid rock. Water, frost, wind and gravity have since widened the gorge into the stepped walls seen today. The San Juan itself rises in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado and travels about 360 miles to its meeting with the Colorado River.
The state park, established in 1962, covers only about ten acres at the edge of the cliff and is deliberately simple: an overlook, scattered primitive campsites and no developed trails. On the horizon Alhambra Rock, a dark volcanic intrusion, rises beyond the town of Mexican Hat, and the buttes of Monument Valley lie to the southwest. The remoteness that keeps the landscape so bare also keeps it dark, and in March 2021 the park was certified as an International Dark Sky Park.
Getting there
The park lies in San Juan County in southeastern Utah, at the end of State Route 316, a road of about 3.5 miles (5.7 km) that branches off SR-261 just north of Mexican Hat. The nearest larger city is Farmington, New Mexico, about 160 km away. The nearest airport is Cortez Municipal Airport (CEZ) in Colorado, about 116 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Goosenecks State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of Utah, overlooking a deep meander of the San Juan River. The park is located near the southern border of the state a short distance from Mexican Hat, Utah. Millions of years ago, the Monument Upwarp forced the river to carve incised meanders over 1,000 feet (300 m) deep as the surrounding landscape slowly rose in elevation. Eroded by water, wind, frost, and gravity, this is a classic location for observing incised meanders.
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