Capitol Reef National Park

Capitol Reef National Park was established December 18, 1971. It contains 241,904 acres (378 square miles), and preserves the Waterpocket Fold, known to geologists as one of the largest and best exposed monoclines in North America.

Geology

Exposed rock reveal the windswept deserts, rivers, mud flats and inland seas of long ago. Nearly all the layers in the park date from the Mesozoic Era (65-230 million years ago), when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Later uplift and twisting of the land - which continue to this day - built up the Colorado Plateau of southern Utah and also the Rocky Mountains to the east. Immense forces squeezed the rocks until they bent up nd over from east to west in the massive crease of Waterpocket Fold.

Prehistoric and Historic Indians

The first people to roam through the cliffs of this area were members of a simple Desert Culture, the earliest people in the southwest. Ten thousand years later, the Fremont people came tot he rivers and creeks of Capitol Reef and dominated Utah for 500 years. They were recognized and named as a result of research along the Fremont River at Capitol Reef in 1931. By AD 700, Fremont Indians had found good farm land in some of the valleys. They grew corn, beans and other crop to supplement hunting and the gathering of wild plants. Their strain of maize was unique - extremely resistant to drought and climatic extremes, and able to flourish in a short growing season. The Fremont made no elegant houses like their Anasazi neighbors, living in pit-house "ranchettes" on hills above their fields. They protected their food from rodents and insects by carefully constructing stone or wooden storage rooms. Many of these survived in sheltered overhangs, but the pithouse dwelling have nearly all vanished. But they did leave behind other evidence of their sophisticated culture: intriguing pictographs and petroglyphs portray the Fremont adorned with headdresses, shields, sashes and jewelry. Figures of bighorn sheep are seen too.

The Fremont abandoned their farmsteads by AD 1300, when climatic changes destroyed their crops. Their destination remains a mystery, but Southern Paiute Indians newly arrived on the Colorado Plateau may have begun to compete with the Fremont for native plant harvests. Only the Southern Paiutes were living in the area when the first whites arrived several centuries later.

Historical Background

Capitol Reef lay off the trappers' and traders' beaten path, so there is no definitive evidence of explorers having passed through the Fold before 1866. In that year, a troop of Mormon militia chased cattle-rustling Paiute Indians down the Fremont River. Five years later, two prospectors left the first signatures in the "pioneer register" on the walls of Capitol Gorge.

The first real exploration began when John Wesley Powell"s men turned their attention this way in their great survey of the Colorado Plateau. The Powell Survey named the Fremont River for John Charles Fremont, who had struggled across its headwaters, which lie west of the park, in the winter of 1853.

In the 1880s, Mormon pioneers moving into southeastern Utah left Escalante and navigated the Waterpocket Fold via the "road" through Muley Twist Canyon, which had been pioneered by Charles Hall, who operated a ferry at Hall's Crossing. In 1882, Elijah Cutler Behunin took the first wagon through Capitol Gorge.

Fremont bottom land provided good grazing land and irrigable farmland, and the protected valleys at the base of the Fold were as mild as hothouses. At the junction of the Fremont River and Sulphur Creek, a few families established the village of Fruita. For the next eighty years, Fruita averaged about 10 families who grew alfalfa, sorghum (for syrup), vegetables, and a wide variety of fruits; they sold peaches, cherries, apples, and apricots to settlers upriver and to travelers headed east from the High Plateaus.

In the 1920s, local people led by Joseph Hickman and Ephraim Pectol began to press for the establishment of a national monument to promote tourism and to preserve the spectacular country. In 1937, their efforts were rewarded. The last residents of Fruita moved away in the 1960s, although their orchard remain. In 1971, the whole length of the Waterpocket Fold was added to the small original monument to create Capitol Reef National Park.

Driving Tour

Small Waterfall in the Fremont River The river twists through a narrow crack in the rock before making its final plunge unto a pool below. There is a sand path from the parking area to below the falls where they can be safely viewed.

Behunin Cabin was built about 1882 by Elijah Cutlar Behunin. This one-room stone cabin was once home to a family of ten. The parents and two youngest children slept inside, the girls in a wagon box outside, and the boys in a nearby rock alcove. The family moved on when flooding made life too difficult.

Grand Wash is one of the five canyons cutting completely through the reef. Canyon walls of Navajo Sandstone rise 800 ft above the floor and close into as little as 20 ft in width.

Cohab Canyon is a pretty little canyon of Wingate Sandstone overlooking the campground. Mormon polygamists supposedly used the canyon to escape federal marshals during the 1880s.

Hickman Natural Bridge spans 133 ft across a small streambed. Joseph Hickman served as principal of Wayne County High School and later in the state legislature during the 1920s; he an another local man, Ephraim Pectol, led efforts to promote Capitol Reef. A self-guiding trail pamphlet is available at the trailhead or Visitors Center.

Fremont Indian Petroglyphs of several human figures with headdresses nd mountain sheep decorate the cliff about 1.2 miles east of the Visitors Center. More petroglyphs can be seen by walking tot he left and right along the cliff face.

The Fruita Schoolhouse is located .8 miles east of the Visitors Center. Early settlers completed the one-room log structure in 1896. Mormon church meetings, dances, town meetings, elections, and other community gatherings took place here. Lack of students caused the school's closing in 1941.

The Visitors Center lies on the edge of Fruita, the remnants of the Mormon frontier community settled in the 1880s, and now part of the national park.

Panorama Point, and The Goosenecks Turnoff is 2.5 miles west of the Visitors Center ont he south side of the highway. Follow signs south for .15 mile to Panorama Point and views of Capitol Reef to the east and Boulder Mountain tot he west. A sign explains how glacial meltwater carried basalt boulders from Boulder Mountain to the reef 8,000 - 20,000 years ago. Goosenecks of Sulfur Creek are located .9 mile farther on a gravel road. A short trail leads to the Goosenecks Overlook on the rim (elev 6,400 ft).

Chimney Rock, 3 miles west of the Visitors Center on the north side of the highway, is a fluted spire of dark-red rock (Moenkopi Formation) capped by a block of hard sandstone (Shinarump Member of the Chinle Formation.