Rainbow Bridge National Monument
Interesting facts
- The span formed where Bridge Creek once looped around a sandstone fin; swirling eddies carved alcoves on both sides until the water broke through.
- The creek's earlier course, before it cut through the fin, can still be traced in the rock above the bridge.
- Kolob Arch and Landscape Arch in Utah have slightly longer spans, but Rainbow Bridge is taller than both of them.
- Before Lake Powell began filling in 1963, reaching the bridge took several days floating the Colorado River and a six-mile hike up the canyon.
- The novelist Zane Grey was among the first visitors, making the long trek on foot and horseback from Oljeto or Navajo Mountain.
- In 1924 a rustic Rainbow Lodge was built on Navajo Mountain as a base for mule trips; Barry Goldwater later bought a half share, and it burned in 1951.
- In 1974 Navajo families sued the federal government over sacred sites being flooded by Lake Powell, but the court ruled that water storage took priority.
- Ancestral Puebloans knew the bridge long before Paiute and Navajo groups arrived, and centuries before its 1909 publicity.
- Its sandstone was laid down as wind-blown dunes at the end of the Triassic and in the Jurassic, when the region was a vast desert.
Why it is worth it
Rainbow Bridge, in a side canyon on the southern shore of Lake Powell in Utah, is one of the largest natural bridges in the world: a single arch of salmon-pink sandstone that spans 275 feet (84 m) and rises 290 feet (88 m) above the creek bed. At the top the rock is 42 feet thick and 33 feet wide. It counts as a natural bridge rather than an arch because running water shaped it: Bridge Creek passes beneath the span.
The geology is legible in the arch itself. The span and upper body are Navajo Sandstone, the petrified dunes of an ancient desert, pale and smoothly curved; the base, through which Bridge Creek cuts, is the older Kayenta Formation. The contrast between the two rocks, and the way the bow of the arch echoes the shape the Navajo name describes, a rainbow turned to stone, is what you notice on arrival.
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. Today it is administered with Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
Getting there
There is no road to the bridge. Most visitors come by boat across Lake Powell from Wahweap or Antelope Point near Page, Arizona, or from Bullfrog and Halls Crossing to the north, turning into Forbidding Canyon at buoy 49 and following it about 2 miles. From the courtesy dock a trail of roughly a mile, depending on the lake level, leads to the viewing area. Page Municipal Airport (PGA) is about 46 km away, and Flagstaff about 218 km. The overland route is a trek of more than 14 miles across Navajo Nation land from Navajo Mountain and requires a Navajo Nation permit.
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From the encyclopaedia
Rainbow Bridge is a natural arch in southern Utah, United States. With a span of 275 feet (84 m), as reported in 1974 by the Bureau of Reclamation, and height of 290 feet (88 m), it is one of the largest natural arches in the world. At the top it is 42 feet (13 m) thick and 33 feet (10 m) wide. The bridge, which is of cultural importance to a number of area Native American tribes, has been designated a Traditional Cultural Property by the National Park Service. Rainbow Bridge National Monument was protected in 1910, and it is administered by Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
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