Scenes of Grandeur

AN ARCH OF FOLID SANDSTONE Forming a natural bridge in Escalante Canyon — 300 feet wide, 200 feet high. Scenes of Grandeur. BY CHARLES H. BAKER Among the grand scenes of Southern Utah, many of which are located in the eastern part of Garfield county, are abrupt tables or small plateaus of solid sandstone, capped with slate and sand. Many cattle and sheep graze on them during the winter months, and these plateaus are known to the stockmen as benches. Some have but one trail, and that being built by man, by which stock are enabled to surmount them. These benches are often fenced by a single cedar tree which has grown in a crevice Cave in which are several cliff houses in of the rocks, and chosen and the dark cavity. conveyed by man for that

SCENES OF GRANDEUR 1057 purpose, and are separated one from the other by deep box canyons which vary in depth from 200 to 600 feet. By considerable blasting, a wagon road has been constructed across the Escalante canyon, from Escalante to Boulder, the two most easterly towns of Garfield county. The road is both difficult and dangerous to travel. Five hundred pounds in an ordinary wagon is sufficient load for one good span of horses. The United States mail is carried on the backs of mules, and comes and goes to and from Boulder but once a week. The Escalante canyon, through which flows the Escalante river, is one hundred miles in length. The river rises about one and a half miles east of Escalante and joins the Colorado river above Lee's Ferry, on the old emigrant road from Utah to Arizona. The walls of the canyon are broken every mile or two by deep, narrow, side-canyons, one in particular whose sides rise in perpendicular height ovet three hundred feet. This canyon is about nine miles long. One other i? spanned by an arch of solid sandstone, forming a natural bridge more than 300 feet wide and 200 feet high. On the shelves and in the caves of these cliffs are the ruins of many cliff houses, constructed of willows, mud and stone. Most of these are very near the bottom of the canyons, but some are located at a considerable height. One in Calf Creek canyon is Cliff House, Escalante Canyon, Garfield County, Utah. near the top of a ledge nearly 400 feet high, and can be reached only by a rope ladder suspended from the top of the cliff. It is marked by parenthesis in the illustration. BOULDER, GARFIELD CO., UTAH