Later arrivals in and near Arches National Park included first Spanish
explorers, then trappers, cattlemen, cattle rustlers and horse thieves,
followed in the present century by oil drillers, uranium hunters,
jeepsters, and tourists. Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and other
members of The Wild Bunch are known to have frequented parts of what is
now Canyonlands National Park (Baker, Pearl, 1971), but it is not
certain whether or not any of them traversed what is now Arches National
Park.
The first settler in what is now Arches National Park was a Civil War
veteran named John Wesley Wolfe, who was discharged from the Union Army
about 3 weeks before the Battle of Bull Run because he suffered from
varicose veins. In 1888 his doctor told him he had to leave Ohio for a
dryer climate or he would not live 6 months, so he took his son Fred
west and settled on a tract of 150 acres along the west bank of Salt
Wash, where his “Wolfe cabin” still stands (figs. 1, 3). From family
letters and newspaper clippings compiled by Mrs. Maxine Newell and other
members of the National Park Service (Maxine Newell, written commun.,
1971), we learn what life in the area was like:
We have started a cattle spread on a desert homestead. We call it the
Bar-DX Ranch. Fred and I live in a little log house on the bank of a
creek that is sometimes dry, sometimes flooded from bank to bank with
roaring muddy water. We are surrounded with rocks—gigantic red rock
formations, massive arches and weird figures, the like of which youve
[sic] never seen. The desert is a hostile, demanding country, hot in
summer, cold in winter. The Bar-DX Ranch is a day’s ride from the
nearest store, out of the range of schools.
Although John Wolfe had promised his wife and his other children that he
would return home the first fall that his cattle sales netted enough
money, he and Fred stayed on and on, and his wife refused to go west and
join her husband and son. Eighteen years later he sent money from his
pension check to his daughter, Mrs. Flora Stanley, his son-in-law, Ed
Stanley, and his two grandchildren, Esther and Ferol, to join him and
Fred at the ranch. Their train was met at Thompson Springs (now
Thompson), Utah (fig. 7), by John Wolfe for the 30-mile ride to the
ranch by horse and wagon. Sight of the tiny log cabin with only a dirt
floor brought tears to his daughter’s eyes, but her spirits rose
considerably after John Wolfe promised to build a new log cabin with a
wooden floor. But the children were enchanted with this strange country,
with the building of the new cabin, and, especially, with getting to go
rabbit hunting with Grandpa Wolfe. The Stanleys stayed at the ranch
until Esther was 10, then moved to Moab to await the arrival of their
third child, Volna.
In 1910 John Wolfe sold the Bar-DX Ranch, and the entire family moved to
Kansas. John Wolfe later moved back to Ohio, and died at Etna, Licking
County, on October 22, 1913, at the age of 84, 25 years after his doctor
had warned him to move to a dryer climate or face an early death.
Wolfe had sold his spread to Tommy Larson, who later sold it to J. Marv
Turnbow and his partners, Lester Walker and Stib Beeson. The old log
cabin gradually came to be known as the “Turnbow cabin,” and this name
appeared on early maps of the area by the U.S. Geological Survey and on
early pamphlets by the National Park Service, partly because Marv
Turnbow served as a camphand in 1927 assisting in the first detailed
geologic mapping of the area (Dane, 1935, p. 4). In 1947 the ranch was
sold to Emmett Elizondo, who later sold it to the Government for
inclusion in what was then the monument.
From information supplied by Wolfe’s granddaughter, Mrs. Esther Stanley
Rison, and his great-granddaughter, Mrs. Hazel Wolfe Hastler, who
visited the cabin in July 1970, the original name Wolfe cabin, or Wolfe
Ranch, has been restored, and appears on the newer maps and pamphlets.
(See fig. 1.) What remains of Wolfe’s Bar-DX Ranch is shown in figure 3.
[Illustration: WOLFE’S BAR-DX RANCH, on west bank of Salt Wash at
start of trail to Delicate Arch. Left to right: Corral, wagon, “new”
cabin, and root cellar. “Old” cabin, which formerly was to right of
photograph, was washed away by a flood in 1906. (Fig. 3)]
Arches National Park is surrounded by active uranium and vanadium mines
and by many test wells for oil, gas, and potash; it is underlain by
extensive salt and potash deposits. Oil and gas are produced a few miles
to the north and east, and potash is being produced about 12 miles to
the south (Lohman, 1974).
Uranium and vanadium have been mined on the Colorado Plateau since 1898
(Dane, 1935, p. 176) and in the Yellow Cat area (also called Thompson’s
area), just north of the park (fig. 1), since about 1911 (Stokes, 1952,
p. 7). The deposits in the Yellow Cat area occur in the Salt Wash
Sandstone Member of the Morrison Formation (fig. 4). According to Pete
Beroni (U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, oral commun., August 6, 1973),
some ore is still being produced in the Yellow Cat area, and the
production of vanadium ore will increase as soon as the uranium mill at
Moab is converted to also handle vanadium ore. The Corral and so-called
Shinarump mines along the southwest side of Moab Canyon just north of
Sevenmile Canyon (fig. 1) are still actively producing uranium ore from
the Moss Back Member of the Chinle Formation, according to Mr. Beroni.
The occurrences of salt and potash in and near the park and the attempts
to find oil and gas nearby are discussed in a recent report (Hite and
Lohman, 1973), and the deposits beneath Moab, Salt, and Cache Valleys
are discussed in later chapters.
In 1955 and 1956 the Pacific Northwest Pipeline, known also as the
“Scenic Inch,” was constructed by the Pacific Northwest Pipeline Corp.
to transmit natural gas from wells in the San Juan Basin of northwestern
New Mexico for a total of 1,487 miles to the Pacific Northwest, with
additional pickups from gas fields in northeastern Utah, northwestern
Colorado, and southwestern Wyoming (Walters, 1956). This 26-inch
pipeline follows the general route of U.S. Highway 163 from Cortez,
Colo., past Moab to Sevenmile Canyon 10 miles northwest of Moab, where
it turns abruptly to the northeast and crosses about the middle of
Arches National Park. It crosses the park road and the flat area between
the Fiery Furnace and the southeast end of Devils Garden, but the scars
are so well healed that most visitors are unaware of its existence
unless they happen to look southwestward across Salt Valley, where the
filled excavation is still visible. The filled trench also appears in
the lower middle of figure 23.
Unlike Canyonlands National Park a few miles to the south, Arches was
not on the route of the famous early-day river expeditions of John
Wesley Powell or of most of those that followed; however, the
southeastern boundary of the park is the Colorado River, formerly the
Grand, which was traversed by the first leg of the ill-fated
Brown-Stanton expedition (Dellenbaugh, 1902, p. 343-369; Lohman, 1974).
The canyon of the Colorado River along the southeastern park boundary is
deep and beautiful and is a favorite stretch of quiet water for boaters
and floaters. Partly paved State Highway 128 on the east bank is a part
of a most scenic drive from Moab to Cisco—a small railroad town about 32
miles northeast of the eastern border of figure 1 (fig. 7). This road
has been variously called the “Moab Mail Road,” the “Cisco Cutoff,” the
“Dewey Road,” or the “Dewey Bridge Road” after an old suspension bridge
(fig. 7) across the Colorado River at the old townsite of Dewey about 12
miles south of Cisco. During the summer this deep colorful canyon may be
viewed at night by artificial illumination. Each evening one-half hour
after sundown, an 80-passenger jet boat leaves a dock north of the
highway bridge, carries passengers several miles upstream, then floats
slowly downstream followed by a truck on the highway carrying 40,000
watts of searchlights which play back and forth on the colorful red
canyon walls, while the passengers listen to a taped discourse. The
entire trip requires about 2 hours.
The spectacular arches and red rocks of Arches and vicinity have been
used to advantage in making color movies and color TV shows. Parts of
the recent Walt Disney film “Run, Cougar, Run” were filmed beneath
Delicate Arch (fig. 43), in Professor Valley of the Colorado River just
east of the park (fig. 7), and in other sections of the canyon country.
Ever since military jet aircraft broke the sound barrier, there has been
a growing number of protests from concerned citizens, organizations, and
National Park Service officials concerning the dangers sonic booms have
posed to Indian ruins and delicate erosional forms in our national parks
and monuments, such as natural bridges, arches and windows, balanced
rocks, and natural spires or towers. Many instances of damaged ruins,
roads, erosional forms, and broken windows were reported. My wife and I
can vouch for the destructive power of such booms, for in October 1969,
while we were having breakfast at Squaw Flat Campground in The Needles
section of Canyonlands National Park, a particularly severe blast from a
low-flying jet not only violently rocked our jack-supported trailer but
broke the windshield of our car.
At Arches National Park, particular fear was felt for Landscape Arch
(fig. 53), thought to be the longest natural stone arch in the world,
and many a special round trip from headquarters involving 47 road miles
and 2 trail miles was made to check on the condition of this arch after
especially loud sonic booms were heard. Finally, in April 1972,
following a rash of newspaper and magazine articles that spread across
the nation, the Secretary of the Air Force put a virtual stop to this
danger by ruling that, except in an emergency (Moab Times-Independent,
April 12, 1972):
Supersonic flights must not only avoid passing over national parks,
they also may not fly near them, according to the new regulation. For
each 1,000 feet of altitude, the pilot must allow one-half mile
between the flight path and the park boundary. The regulation also
prohibits supersonic flights below 30,000 feet (over land) so the high
speed planes must allow 15 miles between the nearest park boundary and
the flight path.
Let us hope that with the aid of this long-needed regulation and
cooperation from visitors, the arches will remain intact for many more
generations to see.
[Illustration: Petroglyph figure]