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ARCHVC_060601_08.JPG: They had an amazing visitor center. Congress appropriated money for a huge one to replace the modest one they had, costs escalated, they had to drop some of the more energy-efficient features, and Congress refused to pay the additional energy costs involved in the bigger visitor center.
ARCHVC_060601_18.JPG: Park Development:
From the early 1930s through the 1960s, Arches was relatively unknown. The work of scientists, a national public works program, writers, and park managers, along with increasing automobile travel and demands of the vacationing public, changed America's view of this and other national parks.
Discovery:
When newly created, Arches was not well known except by a few local people. The Arches National Monument Scientific Expedition of 1933-1934 was the first effort to map the monument. Frank Asahel Beckwith, head of the expedition, named Delicate Arch, Landscape Arch, and Tower Arch. In the late 1920s, C.H. Diane, a USGS geologist, mapped the Salt Valley anticline and started unraveling the geologic story of the park. Between 1937 and 1949, four men served as custodian or superintendent of Arches.... Each made new discoveries and increased our knowledge of the park.
CCC:
In March 1940, a Civilian Conservation Corps Camp, consisting mostly of enrollees from the southern states, was established to help develop Arches National Monument. They improved the old entrance road, constructed headquarters buildings and started work on a new entrance road. Work was halted when the U.S. entered World War II. The camp, one of the last in the nation, closed in March of 1942. Today the camp is gone, but the lasting contributions of the CCC can still be seen in the historic red sandstone building near the visitor center.
Advertising and Movies:
While filming "The Comancheros" in 1961, John Wayne described Moab as the place where "God put the West." Dramatic scenery has made the landscape around Arches National Park and Moab, Utah, a popular location for Hollywood movies. More than twenty motion pictures have been filmed here, including Wagonmaster, Ten Who Dared, Cheyenne Autumn, Against a Crooked Sky, Rio Conches, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Thelma and Louise, and The Hulk.
Thousands of hours of footage for television shows and commercials and countless advertising stills have used Arches National Park as a backdrop. Modern film makers and commercial photographers must obtain a permit and observe stringent regulations to protect both the park environment and visitor experience. The fees they pay help cover the expenses of supervising their activities.
Bates Wilson:
Bates Wilson accepted the position of Custodian of Arches and Natural Bridges National Monuments in 1949, and stayed on the job until his retirement in 1972. When Wilson arrived, Arches National Monument had few developments beyond dirt roads. During his superintendency, Arches doubled in size and was designated a national park. Roads were paved, hiking trails constructed, a campground and a visitor center were built.
Known to many for his role in the establishment of the Canyonlands National Park, Bates Wilson also left a grand legacy at Arches, as a small and relatively unknown national monument grew into the National Park we know today.
ARCHVC_060601_23.JPG: Park Enjoyment:
Mission 66:
Early travel to the park was difficult. Roads were dirt and often impassable due to deep sand and washouts. Park managers made road improvements one of their top priorities, but little happened until the 1950s when a ten-year plan to upgrade visitor facilities at in National Park Service areas was implemented. Called Mission 66, the program's goal was to increase visitation to NPS areas by accommodating the needs of an increasingly mobile society.
By early 1956, the new entrance road was under construction. Most of the trails that we enjoy today are the product of Mission 66. The road to Balanced Rock was completed in 1958 and extended to Devils Garden by 1964. The American Society of Landscape Architects selected the Arches entrance road as one of the three best roads of the Mission 66 program.
Visitor Services:
Mission 66 funding was not limited to road construction. To replace a leftover CCC building that had been used for years, a visitor center was constructed in 1959. It served the park for more than 40 years. The campground opened in 1964 and is still enjoyed by visitors.
Between 1955 and 1975, visitation to Arches increased 550%. After that, international visitors discovered Arches National Park and use steadily increased. What will Arches be like in 20 years? In 50 years? What does the future hold? Only time will tell. If park visitation continues to grow, park managers and park visitors will face new challenges. All of us must continue to plan for the future by looking for innovative solutions that not only protect the park's resources, but also preserve the experiences that we treasure during a visit to a national park. One thing is certain: we are all part of the future history of Arches. What will our legacy be?
ARCHVC_060601_24.JPG: Park Establishment:
Alexander Ringhoffer:
Alexander Ringhoffer was prospecting in the Klondike Bluffs area in 1922 when he stumbled upon magnificent Tower Arch and the Marching Men. Ringhoffer contacted F.A. Wadleigh of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad in the hope that they might build a tourist line to the area. Wadleigh wrote Stephen T. Mather, the first Director of the National Park Service, about the area. At Mather's request, several survey paries were sent to investigate.
Dr. Frank Oastler, geologist G.M. Gould and others also visited the area and recommended monument establishment.
Frank Pinkley:
Arches was named by Frank Pinkley, then Superintendent of Southwestern National Monuments. "The Boss," as he was affectionately known, visited the Windows in 1925 to evaluate the area for inclusion in the National Park system. With the support of many others, the Monument was established in 1929, and the new monument fell under his administration. At the time of his death in 1940, Pinkley was in charge of 27 park areas, including Arches, in four states.
While many of the monuments under his care were "one-man outfits," watched by a part-time custodian, some monuments had no one assigned to them. Pinkley was frustrated by the fact that support for monuments lagged behind the funding for units designated as national parks and he continually pushed for funding to properly staff the monuments.
Moab Lions Club:
When Arches National Monument was first established, it consisted of two small separate sections, 1,920 acres in the Windows and 2,600 acres in the Devils Garden. There were no roads and access was difficult. It soon became apparent that such a monument would be difficult to manage and Moab community leaders began actively promoting efforts to enlarge the monument. In particular, .... members of the Moab Lions Club were ardent supporters of the monument and were instrumental in getting the monument enlarged in 1938.
Boundary Changes:
Arches National Monument was established by Herbert Hoover's Presidential Proclamation on April 12, 1929, and originally consisted of two separate units totaling 4,520 acres. Since it was established, Arches had undergone numerous boundary adjustments. Franklin D. Roosevelt enlarged the monument to well over 34,000 acres, and Dwight D. Eisenhower later reduced it by 240 acres. Lyndon B. Johnson more than doubled park acreage in 1968, and Congress made it a National Park in 1971. In 1998, more than 3,000 acres near Lost Spring Canyon were added by Congress, resulting in a park of approximately 76,000 acres.
ARCHVC_060601_27.JPG: Native People:
Paleo-Indian Cultures:
The earliest visitors to this area were Paleo-Indians who arrived around 12,000 years ago. These people led a nomadic lifestyle collecting plants and hunting the now-extinct mammoths and mastodons, that lived here at the end of the last Ice Age. Their distinctive Clovis and Folsom points have been found in areas near the park.
The Paleo-Indians saw some of the same arches that we see today but the climate was cooler and wetter and the vegetation was quite different. It was easy for these small bands of people to find everything they needed as the followed herds of animals. Then, the climate changed, and the area became warmer and more arid. The large animals and the forests began to disappear.
Archaic Cultures:
Facing large-scale environmental change, cultural practices changed about 8,000 years ago. Known to archeologists as the Archaic cultures, these later people adapted to a landscape filled with plants and animals similar to today's life. As they exploited the new resources, their technologies became more complex and they made a wider variety of tools. Bone awls, useful for making baskets and nets, grinding stones to process seeds, and other tools appear in the archeologic record.
Fremont and Ancestral Puebloan Cultures:
About 2,500 years ago, there was another shift in lifestyle as different groups of archaic hunter-gatherers began cultivating plants. Two distinct traditions developed. In the Four Corners area, the ancestral Puebloans were able to take advantage of a dependable summer rainfall to grow corn and other domesticated crops. Eventually, they developed the advanced societies that built the large communal pueblos seen today at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde.
To the north, the Fremont led a lifestyle characterized by variety and diversity. Some were settled farmers that lived in small villages of semi-subterranean pithouses and grew corn, beans, and squash, Others were nomads that lived in small, highly-mobile family-sized groups, and relied more on collecting wild plants and animals to support themselves. Still others shifted between these lifestyles.
After successfully adapting to their environment for over 1,500 years, both groups were affected by change. Climactic changes, including decreased precipitation, made farming more difficult, and pressure from other cultural groups may have increased competition for limited resources. By about AD 1300, they were migrating to other areas. The Hopi and Rio Grande pueblo people, who live in New Mexico and Arizona, are direct descendants of the people who once utilized the resources of what is now Arches National Park.
Historic Groups:
In more recent times, southeast Utah was occupied by Utes, Paiutes and Navajos, all of whom still live in the area today.
Ute Indians were nomadic and subsisted by hunting game and gathering wild plant foods in the mountainous areas of Colorado and Utah. The Utes of eastern Utah adopted the horse into their culture soon after the Spaniards re-introduced that animal to the Americas. On horseback, the Utes became even more mobile and traveled to the plains to hunt bison.
ARCHVC_060601_31.JPG: Explorers:
Spaniards in the Southwest:
After the conquest of Mexico, Spain claimed much of what is now the western U.S. Except for a few unofficial trading expeditions, this area was left unexplored by the Spanish until the late 1700s, when Spain began to expand its empire to thwart British and Russian colonial interests in the West.
Earlier explorers had determined that it was not possible to cross the Rio de Tizon, today's Colorado River, in the area around the Grand Canyon. With this knowledge, they sent expeditions northward to discover a route from Santa Fe to California which avoided the rugged canyon country. These routes formed part of the Old Spanish Trail through this part of Utah.
Juan Maria Antonia Rivera:
In 1765, Juan Maria Antonio Rivera explored this part of the Southwest to locate the place where the Indians crossed the Colorado River, what they called Rio de Tizon. Led by Indian guides, Rivera and a small party of Spaniards traveled north from Abiquiu, New Mexico, through southern Colorado along trails used by previous Spanish and Ute traders. They crossed into unknown territory near here between the modern communities of Monticello and Moab, Utah.
Rivera's party is believed to have reached the Colorado River via nearby Spanish Valley, south of the park, or by Castle Valley, a few miles upstream. Warned by their guides about hostile people on the other side, they did not cross the river but they did find the Indian ford and pioneered the route later used as the eastern leg of the Old Spanish Trail.
Fur Trappers:
British and American fur trappers and traders traversed this area in the early 1800s. Most of their names are unknown but one, Denis Julien, left his name on rocks in a number of places in the canyon country. Born in the 1770s, Julien spent the first 50 years of his life near St. Louis, Missouri, before moving west about 1827. He was more than 60 years old when he was exploring the canyons of southeast Utah.
Old Spanish Trail:
The Old Spanish Trail was a horse and burro pack route that connected Sante Fe with California when much of the Southwest was Mexican territory. Beginning in 1829, bustling trade developed between Santa Fe and the missions of southern California.
Trade caravans traveled fairly regularly over the Old Spanish Trail, taking woolen goods west and returning from California with horses and mules. Several branches of the trail developed as travelers sought routes which were easier and shorter with water and grazing for their animals. Many of these routes followed earlier trails that were developed by the native people. By 1848, commercial travel over this segment of the trail had ceased.
ARCHVC_060601_34.JPG: Settlers:
Ranching:
Cowboys, along with Basque and Hispanic sheepherders, began roaming this area when stockmen, drawn by the grasslands, moved their herds into the region in the late 1870s. Grazing was typically seasonal, with the animals using summer pastures in the higher elevations of the Book Cliffs or the La Sal Mountains.
Grazing inside the park is no longer allowed but ranching continues in nearby areas. The cowboys and sheepherders knew the area well but left little evidence of their time spent here other than the stumps of junipers cut for firewood and a few rusty tin cans discarded near their camps.
Wolfe Family:
By 1898, Civil War veteran John Wesley Wolfe and his son, Fred, had settled more permanently than other ranchers, in a cabin on the bank of the Salt Wash. Wolfe found enough water and forage to raise a few cattle. Building a small dam across Salt Wash, they were able to grow a garden. The first cabin was fairly primitive and when John's daughter, Flora Stanley, and her family arrived in 1906, she convinced her father to build a new cabin, this time with a wooden floor! The first cabin washed away in a flood but the 1906 cabin can still be seen today and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Mining:
Prospectors explored this area as early as the 1890s. Although no exploitable deposits were developed, many mining claims were staked in the surrounding area.
The importance of mining to the local economy reached its zenith during the 1950s when Moab became the "Uranium Capitol of the World." In 1952, Charlie Steen discovered a multi-million dollar deposit of uranium ore south of Moab that triggered a uranium boom. Steen and his partners built a mill on the banks of the Colorado River to refine ore from the surrounding area. The boom ended in the 1970s and the mill closed in 1984, but not before drawing attention to southeast Utah and changing Moab from a hamlet into a small city.
Cordova Family:
In 1919, Epimineo and Emmer Cordova established a small ranch in what is now known as Cordova Canyon on the northeastern edge of the park. They hauled lumber from Thompson, Utah, and built a house of several rooms. The original house burned in 1932 and a smaller house was built to replace it.
The oldest Cordova son, Beveline, and his wife Bonita Keel raised their children at the ranch. The ranch was abandoned in the 1930s and is slowly returning to nature. The walls of one room still stand as a testament to the family's determination to make this beautiful part of canon country their home.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
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