The Land of Flaming Canyons and Jeweled Amphitheatres
Touched by a light that hath no name,
A glory never sung,
Aloft on sky and mountain wall,
Are God’s great pictures hung.
—Whittier
Southward from the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude the surface of Western Utah descends in magnificent “Cyclopean steps” from the flattened summits of the Wasatch Mountains, 11,000 feet high, to 3,000 feet at the Rio Virgen, then ascends gently in Arizona to the colossal arch of the Kaibab Plateau, 9,000 feet in elevation and overlooking the Grand Canyon. These Titanic terraces and palisaded plateaus, more particularly the flaming canyons and jeweled amphitheatres cut from their color-saturated rock layers, form scenic spectacles without peer or rival on the globe. Nothing else is comparable to these wonderlands. To see them is both a thrilling adventure and an artistic delight.
Measured by civilization’s yardstick, the unknown land in which they lie is a frontier, still in the pioneer stage of existence. It is not so long since the forts along the way actually repelled Indian attacks; it is not so far to fastnesses where cougars come forth to prey on deer, or to desert valleys where wild mustangs range. On the edge of the plains are ruins of primitive dwellings of which the modern Indian knows nothing; in many a secluded canyon are the more inscrutable habitations of the cliff dwellers. The indomitable ranchers have built quaint, poplar-shaded villages with homes of adobe, and their farms are often fenced with stone.
The Watchman, Zion National Park
It is a mysterious land of purple sage and empurpled distances, of incredible color, of sun-magic and the wizardry of wind and water. It is a place to drink in beauty, to form new conceptions of the divine.
Geologists recognize three subdivisions of the region from north to south: the High Plateaus; the Terraced Plateaus; the Grand Canyon Platform. From Cedar Breaks on the High Plateau it is more than 100 miles to Bright Angel Point on Grand Canyon’s rim; from Hurricane Ledge on the west, eastward to the Colorado River is more than 100 miles.
The country reveals fascinating chapters of geologic history. It is a region that has undergone great transitions, alternately sea bottom and mountain top; a region broken and tilted by tremendous displacements; a region scorched and branded by intense volcanic action; but more than all else, from the viewpoint of human interest, a region profoundly sculptured and given its most distinctive character by the beauty-creating genius of erosion.
From Cedar Breaks, cut into mountains 11,000 feet high, the vision has a sweep of 100 miles, and the vast terraces may be seen thrust out to the south like promontories into the sea. Where one succeeds another, the uppermost presents sinuous cliff walls, hundreds of miles in length and superbly distinctive in color and carving. More than 10,000 feet of strata are exposed, “a library of the ages in vivid bindings” that contains the fossil remains of creatures since the morning of life on earth. Each step down indicates the removal, by streams, rain, frost and wind, of all the rock-layers above it. From the Grand Canyon Platform, these 10,000 feet of strata have been completely swept away.[1]
The highest of the Terraced Plateaus, the Markagunt and Paunsaugunt, in which Cedar Breaks and Bryce Canyon lie, break down in spired palisades of the Pink Cliffs, endless in sculptured variety. Beneath the Markagunt the southern scarps of the Kolob Plateau, into which flaming Zion Canyon is sunk, form noble cliffs of pure, reposeful white. The next step downward displays the glowing Vermilion Cliffs, castellated with ornate prodigality and perhaps the grandest of all. Lower still are the Shinarump Cliffs, banded with reds, browns, yellows, greens and purples. Between them and the Kaibab lies a stretch of desert like a flattened rainbow. Such is the strange, magnificent and colorful structure of the land.
Angels Landing, Zion National Park
Zion Canyon is a profound gorge with the colors of blood, fire and snow, a matchless carving by the greatest of all sculptors, erosion. Several of its mighty rock temples rank with the most majestic masses in the land. The variety of its endless etchings, the exquisite harmonies of its painted precipices, the sustained grandeur of its stupendous buttes and walls, its glorious cycle of color from dawn to sunset are sources of undimmed delight to the artistic instinct within everyone. It has one aspect of beauty from its green-garbed floor, another from its dizzy rim of white; from the dusky depths of the Narrows the dominant sensation is soul-gripping awe.
Zion National Park includes other canyons of extraordinary interest, and the entire terrace-top of the broad Kolob Plateau is a domain of incredibly fantastic formations.
Cedar Breaks, the highest of Utah’s jeweled amphitheatres, is a place of wild and lofty beauty, a series of vast sculptured basins sunk into the summits of the mountains. Endless outflung bastions and buttresses, supporting towers, parapets and craggy spires, parade from the rim down into the painted abyss where, dotted by the green of pines, red, orange, yellow, purple and white are banded and splashed in a symphony of color literally unbelievable till the eyes confirm.
Bryce Canyon also is an amphitheatre, a richer, more compacted bit of resplendence. You hardly believe that Bryce Canyon exists until you have gazed many times; so amazing is its beauty that it seems like the flashing vision of a dream. It is something heretofore unknown and unsuspected in scenery—a miracle of erosion, a peerless fantasy of color. From its depths, in pairs, in groups, in clusters, in hosts and in myriads, leap to the eyes the most amazingly bizarre forms, slender, dainty, bulky, grotesque—a bewildering combination of heaven and hell in which the angelic easily predominates. These myriad forms, human, animal and geometrical, lighted with unearthly radiance, seem to dance from their celestial castles and gorgeous grottoes to meet the beholder. Bryce contains all that architecture, all that sculpture knows, in one great glory hole painted pink, red, white, orange and purple.
East Temple and the Twin Brothers, Zion National Park
What magic the morning and the evening sun performs on the pigmented palisades of this unique land! A dull rust red a moment ago, that distant peristyle now glows like fiery embers; the whites are more dazzlingly white and caressingly soft; the orange tones are enriched; the purple shadows swarm like birds. Colors flit mysteriously from salient to salient as if some one back stage were focusing spotlights. Dormant, crouching bulks rise, stretch and add to their girths, decking themselves in their most splendid raiment to bid farewell to the master of ceremonies, the vivifying sun.
Farther to the south is the Kaibab Forest and the North Rim of Grand Canyon, remote from traveled ways. Kaibab National Forest is the largest and most beautiful virgin forest in the United States. Beneath the stately pines, spruces and firs, the grassy forest floor is as clean as a carefully groomed lawn, and there are many open parks, aspen encircled, of bewitching charm. Numberless deer roam unmolested through this fairy forest and the rare white-tailed squirrel flits ghostlike through its aisles. There Roosevelt hunted and discriminating beauty-lovers have sought the region for years.
Words are of little avail to describe the Grand Canyon. Across the great plateau the Colorado River has cut a series of canyons about 220 miles long, a mile in depth and twelve miles in width. The Kaibab division is the deepest and wildest part of the Grand Canyon and presents its sublimest scenes. On the North Rim are some of the most celebrated of all the viewpoints, though known only to a few hundred adventurous travelers—Bright Angel Point, Point Sublime, Point Imperial, Cape Final and Cape Royal.
The way is now prepared for you to see these miracle places of America in comfort.
The Temple of Sinawava, Zion National Park