Stones and Stories
Capitol Reef National Park
April/May by Gordon Sullivan
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" . . . slick rock canyons, shadowy ravines and the lasting bounty of the Freemont River . . . " |
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" Up every wash and behind every towering summit in Capital Reef National Park another story awaits. " |
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Strangely, my infatuation with Capitol Reef National Park started in the deep backcountry of Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness. It was over a campfire spitting orange tongues and glowing embers into onyx darkness that Bob Stuart, a fellow photographer, first introduced me to the magic imagery of Capitol Reef. Under a star-sprinkled canopy this poet of a man painted pictures almost clear enough to reach out and touch - images of a secluded landscape hiding at the far end of a washed out dirt road in southern Utah.
Stuart lived on the Colorado Plateau before 1962, before the first paved road weaved its way into Capitol Reef and its jagged backbone, the Waterpocket Fold.
It was the graceful detail of his descriptions, slick rock canyons, shadowy ravines and the lasting bounty of the Freemont River, that inspired my first trip as an aspiring landscape photographer to southern Utah almost four decades ago.
The first thing that strikes a visitor to Capitol Reef is the name itself, a combination of a couple of powerful images: "reef" which takes its meaning from jagged upthrust formations, massive blocks of weathered sandstone rising in vertical splendor from the skin and muscle of the plateau itself - barriers as impassable as those found half exposed in the ocean; and the name "capitol" taken from the white-domed peaks dominating the uneven horizon. Earlier map-makers and explorers likened these sandstone domes to the rotunda of our nation's capitol.
Looking across the face of Capitol Reef, especially in the golden light of early morning when the sun is low on the eastern horizon, a perfect palette of different tints ranging from the deep rust of Kayenta and Moenkopi sandstone, to almost purple of the Entrada formation, to the pale white of Navajo sandstone perform before the eye. Each shade is like an individual page in the journal of physical creation, a process that even today refuses to stand still. The unsettled landscape of Capitol Reef is dominated by the Waterpocket Fold, a huge wrinkle reaching precipitously into a cobalt sky and spread across the face of the park and onward for over a hundred miles through southern Utah. It is the sheer magnitude and loft of the fold, this massive barrier, along with the surrounding high country that in the end brings life to the entire region by supplying the vital gift of water.
The fold and the other geologic formations featured in the park are the result of a monumental collision that took place on America's west coast. Geologists believe that about 70 million years ago the tectonic plate upon which the North American continent rides, like a piece of ice might float on a millpond, smashed headlong into the much harder plate underlying the Pacific Ocean. The tremendous force radiated inland compressing and bulging the earth's hard crust skyward like a carpet pushed against a wall. As the western continent buckled and pushed older bedrock to the surface, vast new landforms like the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone and Colorado Plateau and the east sloping Waterpocket Fold were created. The rising of the highlands caused water to flow to surrounding lowlands; a tireless artist continuing to sculpt places like Bryce, Canyonlands, Grand Canyon and Capitol Reef.
The geologic book that opens before us across the broken strata of Capitol Reef portrays a remarkable story on each page, a story accounting for literally millions of years of change taking place on the physical landscape. Each chapter of the remarkable story is outlined by its own separate color, texture and conclusion. For example, at the base of many of the cliffs including those rising from the Waterpocket Fold, the foundation is composed of Moenkopi mudstone or siltstone left by a slowly receding sea present some 225 million years ago. Across the surface of the Moenkopi mudstone can be found ripple marks left by gentle waves once undulating through the shallow ocean. Eventually, the ancient sea retreated leaving behind tidal flats which today appear as the lighter tinted Chinle formation composed of shale, sandstone and limestone laid in place some 200 million years ago.
Above Chinle formation is perhaps the most dramatic of all the sandstone layers present in Capitol Reef - one which takes the form of sheer vertical cliffs rising hundreds feet above the desert floor. The Wingate Sandstone formation marks yet another climatic era, one dominated by vast deserts, severe dry climate and harsh winds blowing relentlessly across a prehistoric land. The tightly packed grains of sand which make up Wingate sandstone does not erode as readily as other formations. Instead, it fractures in massive blocks along smooth plains creating the sheer cliff faces smeared with a coating of natural varnish reaching sometimes from base to summit.
Many of the most beautiful cliffs in the park are composed of Wingate sandstone, incidentally named after Civil War victim Captain Benjamin Wingate who fell in 1862 in the battle of Valverde, New Mexico.
Blending into the Wingate layer is the Kayenta formation laid in place about 190 millions years ago during a short period of moist lushness. It is topped by the much lighter Navajo sandstone, the result of another time of harsh dry climate and the return of gigantic white sand dunes reshaped time and again over the next 15 million years eventually creating the spectacular domes after which Capitol Reef is named. The tale of ancient oceans and deserts, coming and going, replayed itself over and over during the next 150 million years with each new era creating a different layer of sandstone left to glisten in the warm light of dawn.
As impressive as the story of stone is within the park, the saga of the vast array of living creatures inhabiting the land is just as remarkable. The Waterpocket Fold is named for dish-shaped indentations etched by relentless erosion on the face of stone. These waterpockets provide the background for one of nature's most dramatic accounts of life's adaptation in harsh environs. When the pockets are dry, sometimes for years, lying dormant in the surrounding sun parched sand are the eggs of millions of fairy shrimp. With the passing of a thunderstorm or a flash flood, the eggs suddenly hatch, and a new generation of fairy shrimp almost immediately appear. The shrimp hurry through life, mate, deposit a new crop of eggs in the sand and prepare to die, all during the short course of time rainwater fills their home pocket.
Like the fairy shrimp, the spade-foot toad also follows the fickle cycle of moisture visiting the desert. During dry times, dormant toads nestle deep beneath the sandy surface only to magically rise once touched by moisture. Their loud croaks signal the start of mating as their abbreviated life fleets along. Tadpoles can appear in weeks and rush to adulthood. Those who survive, dig themselves back into the sand using their spade-shaped hind feet once the moisture is gone. There, the toads wait patiently for the next cycle of water to grace the desert.
About a thousand years ago, the Fremont People moved to the bottomland around Fremont River which cuts a narrow swath through Capitol Reef. Unlike the Anasazi occupying cliff dwellings further south, the Fremont lived in simple pit houses dug into the loamy earth and covered with poles and brush. It was the richness of the soil around the river and its tributaries that first attracted the Fremont about AD 950. The ancient farmers were the first to bring irrigation to the bottomland where they grew beans, squash and maize. A short 250 years later, the people abandoned their home at the base of the Waterpocket Fold, probably pushed from the region by reoccurring cycles of drought common to the Southwest.
By the 1800s, white explorers and Mormon settlers entered the valley of the Freemont River. They came through a little known route in the rugged Waterpocket Fold today known as Capitol Gorge. The trip into the valley was rough and demanding and worthy of remembering. Along the route, on a sandstone wall known as Pioneer Register, the names of many who endured the rough trip across the fold are scratched. They were miners, hunters, trappers and settlers all drawn by the promise of the perennial river and the unusual beauty of the fold.
By the first decade of the 20th century, Mormon farmers and their families had built the hamlet of Frutia located in the valley bottom. They brought irrigation back to the district and grew fruit of unequalled quality as a thriving community grew up around the orchards, including a schoolhouse that still stands today.
Just as water had created the picturesque landscape by wearing down parts of the Waterpocket Fold, the same water allowed humans to prosper in the harsh desert.
During the first few years I traveled back and forth to Capitol Reef from my home in Montana, I tried to find a few of the spots my friend and I talked about that night in the Montana wilderness. I spent days hiking through bone dry places like Grand Wash, Capitol Gorge, Muley Twist Canyon and Sheets Gulch mesmerized by the artful way time and erosion had left its mark on soft sandstone. As I explored, I wondered about the names people had given to places around the fold - Bitter Creek, where tainted by alkali the water is truly bitter; or Ford Hill, a mound so steep the old Model Ts once had to back up so gas would continue to feed old carburetors. There was Whiskey Flats and Whiskey Springs left over from the moonshine days.
In my later travels, I would discover the simple grace of Hickman Arch and the moonscape persona of the bentonite hills where even a gentle rain can turn the powdery ground into a field of impassable gumbo. Bentonite is one of those magic minerals - just add water and it swells to over seven times its normal mass.
Capping off my discoveries would be the austere beauty of Cathedral Valley, a magic place isolated in the backcountry by miles of rutted dirt road. Here, the somber presence of great spires, the Temple of the Sun and Moon, rise like majestic shrines set amidst the loneliness and solitude of an untamed desert. Spend time alone in Cathedral Valley and pretty soon the gentle whisper of the desert will visit to repeat stories about a time the valley lay hidden from outsiders.
News of the beautiful Cathedral Valley spread only after a search for a downed World War II military plane made its presence known to the world outside the valley.
Up every wash and behind every towering summit in Capitol Reef National Park another story awaits. Some of the stories come from history, others from a poet's impression of a secluded terrain, and still others are stories not yet lived. Of all the Southwest places I have grown fond of over the years, Capitol Reef is one I just can't seem to get enough of.
Gordon Sullivan is a outdoor writer and photographer living in the northwest corner of Montana. His photographic work has spanned four decades. Gordon and his wife, Cathie, an award-winning portrait photographer, have a number of books to their credit including their recent Saving Homewaters.