BGuthrie Photos: UT -- I-15 @ Green River Pull-Off Vistas

UT -- I-15 @ Green River Pull-Off Vistas:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[1] I15GRE_160716_001_STITCH.JPG

[2] I15GRE_160716_002_STITCH.JPG

[3] I15GRE_160716_003.JPG	[4] I15GRE_160716_007.JPG	[5] I15GRE_160716_010.JPG
[6] I15GRE_160716_016.JPG	[7] I15GRE_160716_019.JPG	[8] I15GRE_160716_022.JPG
[9] I15GRE_160716_028.JPG	[10] I15GRE_160716_031.JPG	[11] I15GRE_160716_034.JPG
[12] I15GRE_160716_040.JPG	[13] I15GRE_160716_046.JPG	[14] I15GRE_160716_048.JPG
[15] I15GRE_160716_052.JPG	[16] I15GRE_160716_055.JPG	[17] I15GRE_160716_058.JPG
[18] I15GRE_160716_060.JPG	[19] I15GRE_160716_063.JPG	[20] I15GRE_160716_066.JPG
[21] I15GRE_160716_076.JPG	[22] I15GRE_160716_081.JPG	[23] I15GRE_160716_085.JPG
[24] I15GRE_160716_088.JPG	[25] I15GRE_160716_091.JPG	[26] I15GRE_160716_094.JPG
[27] I15GRE_160716_103.JPG	[28] I15GRE_160716_108.JPG	[29] I15GRE_160716_111.JPG
[30] I15GRE_160716_116.JPG	[31] I15GRE_160716_118.JPG	[32] I15GRE_160716_119.JPG
[33] I15GRE_160716_121.JPG	[34] I15GRE_160716_122.JPG	[35] I15GRE_160716_127.JPG
[36] I15GRE_160716_130.JPG	[37] I15GRE_160716_132.JPG	[38] I15GRE_160716_141.JPG
[39] I15GRE_160716_143.JPG	[40] I15GRE_160716_148.JPG	[41] I15GRE_160716_158.JPG
[42] I15GRE_160716_166.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. I15GRE_160716_003.JPG: Black Dragon Canyon You have climbed from the valley floor to the top of the San Rafael Reef in eight minutes. The road is steep but the rock layers it cuts through tilt at an even greater angle. The younger overlaying rock has been eroded, so you are standing on rock much older than those at Green River. Anticlines are odd that way. You have gained a thousand feet of elevation, but have lost 50 million years of geologic time. The canyon in front of you is cut into some of the oldest rocks you will encounter on your journey across the Swell. These sedimentary layers were deposited before the Permian extinction over 250 million years ago. The extinction is the largest, most widespread known to modern science. Over 95 percent of all species the living on Earth were wiped out. Behind you is the awesome underbelly of the huge "flat iron" shaped walls of the San Rafael Reef. The striking red cliffs are stained red by the presence of iron oxide. The depth of the color depends on the amount of iron oxide in the stone.
2. I15GRE_160716_019.JPG: The San Rafael Swell You are entering a spectacular but wild landscape, the San Rafael Swell. A massive, eroded anticline, the San Rafael Swell is 75 miles long and 30 miles wide. Its sandstone reefs, buttes, pinnacles, canyons, and cliffs are stunning, if a bit intimidating. This harsh land has attracted only the toughest, hardiest of people. Early river explorer, John Wesley Powell, described the region as "a land of desolation, dedicated forever to the geologist and artist, where civilization can find no resting place." Yet ancient Indian tribes, Mormon pioneers, cowboys, outlaws, prospectors, and miners all found a place here. Exploring the Swell off I-70 can be fascinating but dangerous to the novice. Be sure you have plenty of water, food, gasoline, and a reliable map. Hiring a guide is recommended. For traveler information contact 1-888-564-3600.
3. I15GRE_160716_040.JPG: Outlaw Country This is outlaw country! Hidden deep in these canyons, Butch Cassidy, Elza Lay, Flat Nose George, Kid Curry, Joe Walker, and others eluded the lawmen who pursued them in the late 1800s. In the 1850s Chief Wakara escaped into these badlands with as many as 1,400 horses stolen from ranchers in California. He came across the Spanish Trail, which takes its northern-most route through the San Rafael Swell. Spanish explorers forged the trail about 1800. Later it became a route for slave traders traveling between Santa Fe and the Great Basin. Native Americans were sold for as much as $200 each in Mexico City. Imagine what was in the minds of those prisoners as they traveled through this rugged country. For Information call 1-888-564-3600.
4. I15GRE_160716_046.JPG: Butch Cassidy
5. I15GRE_160716_048.JPG: The Old Spanish Trail
6. I15GRE_160716_052.JPG: The Wild Bunch
7. I15GRE_160716_055.JPG: Lights On: The plumes you see on the northern horizon are proof that today, the lights are on in Utah. The Hunter Plant generates 1,240 megawatts of power and uses 4.5 million tons of coal annually. The power plant is one of three generating facilities that lie in the rich low-sulfur coalfields of central Utah. Combined they provide 2,215 megawatts of power for users in Utah and California. Coal is extracted from large underground mines in the mountains you can see to the west. Once mined, the coal is crushed and then transported to the plant where it is washed and pulverized, making it burn hotter and more completely. The coal is fed into huge boilers that produce superheated steam, which powers the turbine that drives the electric generator. The electricity then leaves the plant on 345,000-volt transmition [sic] lines... and the lights come on.
8. I15GRE_160716_058.JPG: Mining with old undercutting machine
9. I15GRE_160716_060.JPG: Today's "long wall" mining technology
10. I15GRE_160716_063.JPG: How a steam electric power plant works
11. I15GRE_160716_066.JPG: The Sands of Time The magnificent cliffs, canyons, knobs, and spires before you are mostly cut from the 190 million-year-old Navajo Sandstone formation. Imagine the winds that carried sand to this area and deposited it in sand dunes hundreds of feet high. As wind shifted the massive sand dunes, the sands were deposited in a whirl of layers. Buried over eons of geologic time, the sands ceased their movement and turned to stone. Water releases the grains of sand from the grip of stone. Even here in an arid climate, water is the prime agent sculpting the stone into canyons, arches, and pinnacles. You are near the center of the great anticline that is the San Rafael Swell. Here, the layers are nearly flat-lying. It is like a stone dome with the curved top worn away. You are nearly at the top of what is left of the dome. Soon the layers will begin tilting gently to the west.
12. I15GRE_160716_122.JPG: A Place Nobody Wanted When the Mormons fled to Utah in 1847, they were looking for a place nobody else wanted. From Salt Lake City, Brigham Young "called" them to colonize towns and cities all over the great West. The last call came August 22, 1877, when Brother Brigham asked Mormons in the Sanpete Valley to colonize Castle Valley, between the foot of the Wasatch Plateau (to the west) and the edge of the San Rafael Swell. Some have wondered if Castle Valley was the very last place on earth nobody else wanted. Most of those who came were young and filled with hope, looking for an opportunity to get some pastureland and build a new life. But one of the first women in the Valley, Hanna Olsson Seely, saw it differently: "Damn the man who would bring a woman to such a God Forsaken country," she said. But she stayed and like so many others, made a home in a harsh and arid land.
13. I15GRE_160716_132.JPG: Castle Valley Today You are leaving the spectacular San Rafael Swell. About 39 miles away, there are emergency services, service stations, museums, motels, and eating establishments. To visit Castle Valley, take Ranch Exit 97 and travel 11 miles north on the Miller Canyon Road to Emery, continuing north on State Road 10. Whether you picnic, golf, water ski, hike, bike, fish, kayak, or camp, you'll find a beautiful place to do it in Castle Valley. Be sure to ask about numerous recreational trails -- The Arapeen Trail along the Skyline Drive is a favorite. Visit the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, drive the Huntington and Eccles Canyon National Scenic Byway through the Wasatch Plateau, or visit the Museum of the San Rafael in Castle Dale (call 1-435-361-5252 for hours of operation). When exploring the Swell, have an accurate map, plenty of water and gasoline, and food. Tell someone exactly where you are going and stay on trails and roads. For traveler information call 1-888-564-3600 or see www.emerycounty.com .
14. I15GRE_160716_143.JPG: Buried in Stone The San Rafael Swell is a kaleidoscope of colors splashed across a rugged landscape of cliffs, canyons, arches and pinnacles. Erosion sculpts the stone, but the environment in which it was deposited determines its color. In general, the brighter colors, red, yellow, and orange, are present in rocks deposited where oxygen was present. Examples of these environments are sand dunes and floodplain material higher then the water table. The duller colors, gray, light green, and purple, are present in rocks where there was no oxygen as they were deposited. These would be formed at the bottom of an inland sea or below a water table. These boggy places also trapped the bodies of dinosaurs ad preserved their bones as fossils. The Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry to the north of here has yielded hundreds of dinosaur fossils. This world-famous quarry has produced more dinosaur mounts for display in museums then any other in the world.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
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