The stories told of the early-day exploration are endless and delightful. Equipment and supplies were barged down the Colorado River by the old Moab Garage Company; in winter months materials were carried by team and sled over the river ice. They would take a couple of rig timbers and pile a lot of lumber on them (they could take 10,000 feet), then we’d give them a start with a crowbar and the mules would trot all the way downhill to the well. When they’d get there they had a little trouble stopping sometimes; they would turn into the bank, unload, then put the double trees on one mule, ride the other, and head back for a new load of rig lumber.
The evaporation ponds shown in figures [31] and [71] are in Shafer Basin, a synclinal basin separating the Cane Creek anticline and Shafer dome. We cross the axis of Shafer Basin about 2 miles below the county line.
Further downstream is Shafer dome, a closed anticlinal bulge just beyond the W-shaped bend in the river as shown in [figure 29]. Parts of the dome also show up in the lower right of [figure 13] and the lower left of [figure 15]. From almost anywhere in the Goose Neck, the sharp bend of the river shown in [figure 15], we get an excellent view of Dead Horse Point some 2,000 feet above.
Robert R. Norman (oral commun. Feb. 27, 1973) described to me a small petrified forest—which he said resembles a log jam—in the eastern part of the Shafer dome, at mileage 39 (Baars and Molenaar, 1971, p. 65), just north of this point about half way between the river and the jeep trail below Dead Horse Point. He estimated that there probably are 20 to 30 logs, some of which are as large as 18 inches in diameter and more than 20 feet long, and also described a stump about 3 feet in diameter. They occur in red beds at about the middle of the Rico Formation, hence could be either Pennsylvanian or Permian in age (figs. [9], [80]). The original wood has been replaced by silica (SiO₂) and stained a dark reddish brown, as shown in [figure 72].
Mr. Norman and his brother also discovered many teeth of a primitive sharklike fish in the Rico Formation at the same general locality as the petrified wood and also in the Rico on the Cane Creek anticline. I submitted two of the teeth to Dr. David H. Dunkle, curator of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who reported them to be “one tooth of the cochliodont ‘shark’ Deltodus, and one tooth of the petalodont ‘shark’ Petalodus” (written commun., May 22, 1973).
About 4 miles below the Goose Neck, we enter Canyonlands National Park and remain in the park almost to the north end of Lake Powell.
About 6½ miles into the park, at the north end of a bend much like the Goose Neck, is the mouth of Lathrop Canyon, where many boaters stop for lunch and where a side road connects with the White Rim Trail ([fig. 1]).
Six and one half miles below Lathrop Canyon is the mouth of Rustler Canyon, which is joined near its mouth by Indian Creek—the creek followed by the highway leading to The Needles from U.S. 163. Within an airline distance of only 3 miles, the lower reach of Indian Creek, an intermittent stream, flows past four small rincons, three of which ([fig. 73]) are within an airline distance of only 0.8 mile. The stream has cut its new channel into the red sandstones and shales of the Cutler Formation only 15 to 20 feet deeper than the abandoned ones in the two rincons at the left in [figure 73] and only about 25 feet deeper than the one on the right. These figures suggest, at least to me, that these cutoffs probably occurred sometime during the Holocene Epoch, or age of man—that is, probably within the last 10,000 years ([fig. 80]). A detailed study of these rincons might change this estimate, particularly if, say, buried driftwood or other carbonaceous material could be found for an age determination by the radiocarbon method.
PETRIFIED LOG, near middle of Rico Formation, about 1 mile southeast of Dead Horse Point. Log is estimated to be about 18 inches in diameter. Photograph by Robert R. Norman. (Fig. 72)