A Guide to Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah

book designed and produced by visual communication center inc. denver, colorado
Published by the Canyonlands Natural History Association, an independent, non-profit corporation organized to complement the educational and environmental programs of the National Park Service.
Visitor Center
Welcome to Natural Bridges National Monument. We hope you can take the time to enjoy a relaxed, leisurely visit to the area and that this Guide will help you to do so. If you are like most visitors, you came here specifically to see the three great bridges. If that is all that you want to do, you can get through the area in less than two hours.
We suggest, however, that you plan on spending more time here (if that’s possible in your situation). There are more things here to see and do, and more ways to look at the bridges, than you may have realized. You have invested time and money to get here and you will gain a better return on those investments if you can take a bit more time to visit the Monument.
As you drive along the road, you will occasionally find small parking areas with numbered posts that look like this:
The numbers on the posts refer to numbered sections of this Guide, and each section starts off something like this:
In the above example 4. is the stop number; this is the fourth stop on the trip, 1.7 is the distance (miles) from the previous stop, (4.8) is the mileage from the start of trip at the Visitor Center, and boldface words are the name of the stop.
Some sites are not described in the Guide; there are parking places without numbered posts. There are scenic views or other points of interest at these places, but we thought we’d leave some sites for you to “do your own thing,” if you wish.
At any stop, numbered or not, you must exercise care for your own and your children’s safety and you must be reasonable in your use of the park. There are many unfenced cliffs you can fall off, rocks you can trip over, and other natural hazards that could injure or kill you. We will remind you now and then about them, but we can’t protect you from every hazard. You have to do your part, too. Being reasonable in using the park involves things like not throwing rocks off cliffs (there may be someone below you), not entering or climbing on prehistoric ruins, not defacing things, and stuff like that.