Beauty Spots in Southern Utah

Beauty Spots in Southern Utah By George Stewart; M. S., in charge of Field Crop investigations, at the Utah Experiment Station

We have heard much of Utah's southern wonderland. Few of us, however, have seen it and those few not always to — enjoy. Most of these places are visited when they are visited at all — in the summer season. June, July, or August sunshine seems to pour unobstructed in the deep valleys or on to the flat uplands. At noonday the heat is almost consuming and the brightness unbearable. A person flees from the unabated glare as he would from a blizzard. Well he may, for if anything, the dazzling glitter of the merciless sun is even more blinding than the driving snow. A little experience soon teaches the traveler to rest at midday and journey in the mornings and evenings. But it is worth it all, for surely enough, there tucked away in an unsuspected corner lies a spot to make the heart leap. The spot may be an alley between two uptowering cliffs, it may be a sulphur spring steaming forth beneath a dark wall of overhanging rock, it may be a mighty ledge that reaches to the very sky, or a valley miles in extent. It matters not what it is, it always seems small, so enormously immense are its surroundings and so perfectly transparent is the atmosphere. It may be highly colored or of dull gray sandstone. Whatever it may be, it is always a happy surprise after a toilsome journey.

Some are too wayworn to enjoy, but the vigorous have whetted appetites after a day's work. They feel the spell and know the lure. I

I. —Bryce Canyon Bryce Canyon is truly a surprise. You leave Panguitch behind and go southward up the Sevier River. Shortly you turn to the left and go east up Red Canyon, so named because of its being lined on either side with cliffs of red sandstone. Gradually you climb upward and in an hour reach the top. There spread out before you in every direction is the great plateau. Were it not for notches here and there the flatness would seem unbroken. These notches, however, widen into canyons and valleys as you approach. Far away to the left and in front stretch lines of blue foothills. It is June and some

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View of Bryce Canyon, showing a sentinel-like pillar on the right, and the massive sculpture work of wind-blown sand in the center.

of these carry burnished spots of snow. Over at the left a streak of white in the wall of red catches your eye and you look again to see that it is green below and yellow above. The colors startle when seen for the first time. All around you are cedars and flat rocks, checked and partly upturned at the joint planes. If the guide is a good one he has stopped the Ford and invited you to come over and see "this." You get out, straighten your cramped legs, and pick your way across. Then all at once it bursts upon you. You — look and gasp a person is sure to gasp when he first sees Bryce Canyon. When your breath comes back, you close your eyes to make sure you are not being duped. This experiment is repeated a few times. Since the view persists, you decide it must be real, even though your better judgment says it can't be. Finally, after pinching yourself and rubbing your eyes for the "steenth" time, you rally enough presence of mind to take a look. There it is. Right in front of you a circular hollow lies, filled with carved pillars and corniced abutments. A little way to the right a single monolith stands alone like a sentinel. On the left and on the farther side stands a neatly sculptured castle, and between, great crowds of people clad in white. The idea that they are spirits obsesses you, for you are a child again. A so-called "Temple of the Gods" is marked by two immense steeple-like towers with various forms between. In an hour or so the spell begins to wane and you wander about. The little

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basin is about a mile across and still larger when you begin to walk around. Not the least "spooky" part of the canyon is that everpresent and gripping impression that the figures you see in the valley are its inhabitants. Now the groups begin to take form and a firm hold on the imagination is necessary or you see

Left: view showing rough bottom of Bryce Canyon. Note how humanlike are some of the figures in themid-background, especially at the right. Right: sometimes the white-clad figures seem to be human groups.

Columbus at San Salvador, Washington at Yorktown, one of the three Nephites, and yonder the other two, then a mother with infant in arms, three sisters, Ruth and Naomi, Williami Tell and his son, Venus de Milo, hermits at prayer whatever — characters you can recall, and many you cannot, but whom you know to be leaders by their majestic bearing. The last chieftain, Napoleon, and George Rogers Clark are also here memorialized. You might escape the castles and even the people of the canyon were it not for the supernaturalness of the colors. Green and yellow at the base, the pillars pass through brilliant ochres and vermilions to be draped in the white of laundered

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linen. This is the thing that haunts you —these robes and stoles of white. Finally the guide drags you away to hasten on the already delayed journey. Then you open your kodak and run frantically to and fro to get this group or that. Almost before you start you are out of films and have no further excuse for lingering. A few steps, and the canyon vanishes as if by magic. You wonder how it came to be. — The answer is simple too simple for belief. A plateau of variegated sandstone and gypsum, a stream cutting back, a hard layer and hence a gorge at the mouth, a soft spot in the rock and hence the pocket, weak strata beneath and therefore pillars, centuries of whirlwind and sand to file these pillars into endless statuesque, sculptured castles, and chiseled mono- More human-like pillars. liths, carved everywhere with fret- The slender figure to left, work. And finally the glow of a set- in the mid-foreground, is called "Venus de Milo." ting sun binds you for all time to this To the right are groups little niche of the wilderness. suggesting to some a Ma- For years afterward a flame kin- donna, Ruth and Naomi, dles within you when the name of and William TelVs son. Bryce Canyon is mentioned. Logan, Utah

The white stratum has pro- duced some strange effects