Courthouse Towers Area
About 2.3 miles from the entrance station is a turnoff and parking area at the south end of the Park Avenue trail (stop 2), which is about 1 mile long and ends at another parking area 1.7 miles farther north. An interesting hike is best made from south to north in a downhill direction, and hikers generally meet the cars of relatives or friends awaiting them at the northern parking area. The trail begins in a canyon cut in the soft Dewey Bridge Member and walled by high fins of the Slick Rock Member ([fig. 27]), but farther north the canyon is floored by the bare Navajo Sandstone. The avenue was named from the resemblance of the east wall to a row of tall buildings. Atop the west wall, just to the left of the view in [figure 27], are two balanced rocks ([fig. 28]). The one on the left, which resembles somewhat the head of an Egyptian queen, is offset to the right along a bedding plane, and this offset may have been caused by an earthquake.
As we progress toward Courthouse Towers proper, lofty fins and monoliths lie mostly on our left, and to the right are fine distant views of the La Sal Mountains (stop 4). A general view of the Courthouse Towers is shown in [figure 29], and closeups of two of the named rock sculptures—the Three Gossips and Sheep Rock—are shown in figures [30] and [31]. Just beyond Sheep Rock, which some think resembles the Sphinx, we see “Baby Arch,” shown in [figure 15].
Five miles from the entrance station, the road crosses Courthouse Wash on a modern bridge (stop 6)—a distinct improvement over the two tracks in the sand we used in 1946. The Courthouse syncline, named after the wash, extends northwestward through here. (See figs. [8], [9], [20].) About a mile west of the bridge, Professor Stevens found another pothole arch. A mile and a half north of the bridge is stop 7, where attention is called in the booklet to the vast area of “petrified dunes” east of the road, which are simply dunelike exposures of the crossbedded Navajo Sandstone formed originally by the cementation of a vast area of sand dunes. My view of these was taken about 1 mile beyond the stop ([fig. 32]).
BALANCED ROCKS ON SOUTH WALL OF PARK AVENUE, at south end of trail. (Fig. 28)
COURTHOUSE TOWERS, viewed to the northwest from point on park road about three-fourths of a mile northeast of the south end of Park Avenue trail. Sandstone towers are Slick Rock Member resting on Dewey Bridge Member, which also forms foreground. Three Gossips at upper left, Sheep Rock just beyond. The Organ and Tower of Babel are on right. (Fig. 29)
THE THREE GOSSIPS, shown at upper left of [figure 29]. (Fig. 30)