--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 8 number: 4 published: 1905-02 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "Utah’s Natural Bridges," *Improvement Era* 8, no. 4 (February 1905): 276–278.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0804unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0804unse start_page: 276 end_page: 278 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1905-02) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0804unse publication_year: 1905 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1905, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Utah’s Natural Bridges UTAH'S NATURAL BRIDGES. {See Frontispiece.) By the publication in the Century of certain photographs and descriptions it would appear that Qtah comes to the front as having, among other wonderful natural attractions, the most colossal natural bridges in the country, and, perhaps, in the world. In the city ticket office of the R. G. W. R. R., certain of these photographs, enlarged and colored by a local artist, showing three bridges, are displayed, and have been attracting a great deal of attention. Since these bridges are upon their line, the railway officials have taken special interest in the phenomena, and undoubtedly their discovery will result in many tourists visiting the neighborhood during the coming season. From the description whic^ has been published of them, it is learned that they are located at the head of White Canyon, in San Juan county, Utah, about seventy-five miles south of the Green River Station, near the Dandy Crossing of the Colorado river. In the August Century, Mr. W. W. Dyar describes them, accompanying his description with several photographs. It was in March, 1903, that Horace J. Long, a mining engineer, with a cattle man named Scorup, entered White Canyon, at a point two day's march from Dandy Crossing, on the Colorado river, southeastern Utah. As early as the fall of 1895, Mr. Scorup said he had caught a distant glimpse of the bridges, or arches, as he termed them, but owing to the difficulty of reaching them, had not been able to examine them very thoroughly. So far as Scorup knew, they were fiist discovered by Emery Knowles in the early part of 1895. It is only in the spring that the district UTAH'S NATURAL BRIDGES. 277 can be reached, since lack of water makes the region inaccessible at any other time of year. Passing over a barren desert, where the plateau had been swept clean by the fierce desert winds, they came to where were located numerous ancient clift dwellers' houses, where they ascended White Canyon several miles before they had their first sight of the great natural phenomena, after two day's journey. The first bridge they named "Caroline" in honor of Mr. Scorup's wife. It measures 208 feet 6 inches from buttress to buttress, across the bottom of the canyon. From the surface of the water to the center of the arch above is a height of 197 feet; and over the arch, at its highest point, a solid mass of sandstone rises 125 feet farther to the level floor of the bridge. A person crossing the canyon on the bridge would stand just 322 feet above the bed of the stream. The floor of the bridge is 127 feet wide— within five feet of the width of the main street of Salt Lake City. Three and a half miles up the canyon from this first bridge is the "Augusta," a photograph of which is reproduced in this copy of the Era, taken by special permission from the colored original in the Century. This bridge was named in honor of the wife of Mr. Long. The height of the "Augusta" is more than twice, and its span more than three times, as great as those of the famous natural bridge of Virginia. Its buttresses are 118 feet farther apart than those of the celebrated masonary arch in the District of Columbia, known as Cabin John bridge, a few miles from Washington city, which has the greatest span of any masonry bridge on this continent. The "Augusta" is 338 feet high, and would overspan the capitol at Washington 51 feet; while it would clear the highest tower of the Salt Lake Temple about 128 feet. Its breadth across the canyon is 335 feet 7 inches, from wall to wall, and the thickess of the arch above, in the center, is 60 feet, with a width of 40 feet. The bridge is composed of white, or very light, sandstone, and, according to the description "filaments of green and orange-tinted lichens run here and there over the mighty buttresses and along the sheltered crevices under the lofty cornice, giving warmth and color to the wonderful picture." "The lateral walls of the arch rise perpendicularly nearly to the top of the bridge, when they flare suddenly outward, 278 IMPRO VEMENT ERA. giving the effect of an immense coping, or cornice, overhanging the main structure fifteen or twenty feet on each side, and extending with the greatest regularity and symmetry the whole length of the bridge." Twelve miles up the canyon is the third bridge, which Long in his notes named the "Little Bridge." This bridge has a span of 211 feet 4 inches, and the under side of the arch is 142 feet above the bottom of the canyon. The crown of the arch is 18 feet 8 inches thick, and the surface or roadway is 33 feet 5 inches wide. Over this bridge Mr. Long and his companion rode their horses, and the former was the first white man to cross it.