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History
Human
Prehistory
Rocks
have attracted visitors to Arches National Park
for thousands of years. However, sightseeing
has not been the main activity for very long.
Hunter-gatherers migrated into the area about
10,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age.
As they explored Courthouse Wash and other areas
in what is now Arches, they found pockets of
chert and chalcedony, microcrystalline quartz
perfect for making stone tools. Chipping or
knapping these rocks into dart points, knives,
and scrapers, they created debris piles that
are still visible to the trained eye.
Then,
roughly two thousand years ago, the nomadic
hunters and gatherers began cultivating certain
plants and settled into the Four Corners region.
These early agriculturalists, known as the ancestral
Puebloan and Fremont people, raised domesticated
maize, beans, and squash, and lived in villages
like those preserved at Mesa Verde National
Park.
While
no dwellings have been found in Arches, the
northern edge of ancestral Puebloan territory,
there are rock inscription panels. Like earlier
people, the ancestral Puebloans left lithic
scatters, often overlooking waterholes where
someone may have shaped tools while watching
for game. People living in modern-day pueblos
like Acoma, Cochiti, Santa Clara, Taos, and
the Hopi Mesas are descendants of the ancestral
Puebloans.
The
Fremont were contemporaries of the ancestral
Puebloans and lived in the same general area,
so distinctions between the two cultures are
blurry. However, Fremont rock inscriptions,
pottery and other artifacts clearly demonstrate
the existence of different technologies and
traditions. Both the Fremont and the ancestral
Puebloans left the region about 700 years ago.
As
the ancestral Puebloan and Fre-mont peoples
were leaving, nomadic Shoshonean peoples such
as the Ute and Paiute entered the area and were
here to meet the first Europeans in 1776. The
petroglyph panel near Wolfe Ranch is believed
to have some Ute images since it shows people
on horseback, and horses were adopted by the
Utes only after they were introduced by the
Spanish.
European History
The
first Europeans to explore the Southwest were
Spaniards. As Spain’s New World empire
expanded, they searched for travel routes across
the deserts to their California missions. In
fact, the Old Spanish Trail linking Santa Fe
and Los Angeles ran along the same route, past
the park visitor center, that the highway does
today.
The
first reliable date within Arches is an interesting
one. Denis Julien, a French-American trapper
with a habit of chiseling his name and the date
onto rocks throughout the Southwest, left an
inscription in this area: Denis Julien, June
9, 1844. If we only knew what he thought of
the wonders he saw!
The
first European settlement of Southern Utah arose
from the colonizing efforts of the Mormon Church.
The Mormons attempted to establish the Elk Mountain
Mission in what is now Moab in June of 1855,
but conflicts with the Utes caused them to abandon
the effort. In the 1880s and 1890s, Moab was
settled permanently by ranchers, prospectors,
and farmers. One settler even found a beautiful
spot within what is now Arches National Park.
John Wesley Wolfe, a veteran of the Civil War,
built the homestead known as Wolfe Ranch around
1898, seeking good fortune in the newly established
State of Utah. It is located on Salt Wash, at
the beginning of the Delicate Arch Trail. Wolfe
and his family lived there a decade or more,
then moved back to Ohio. The cabin remains,
an echo of what must have been a remarkable
experience.
One
of the earliest settlers to describe the beauty
of the red rock country around Arches was Loren
“Bish” Taylor, who took over the Moab
newspaper in 1911 when he was eighteen years
old. Bish editorialized for years about the
marvels of Moab, and loved exploring and describing
the rock wonderland just north of the frontier
town. Some of his journeys were with John “Doc”
Williams, Moab’s first doctor. As Doc rode
his horse north to ranches and other settlements,
he often climbed out of Salt Valley to the spot
now called Doc Williams Point, stopped to let
his horse rest and looked back over the fabulously
colored rock fins.
Word
spread. Alexander Ringhoffer, a prospector,
wrote the Rio Grande Western Railroad in 1923
in an effort to publicize the area and gain
support for creating a national park. Ringhoffer
led railroad executives interested in attracting
more rail passengers into the formations; they
were impressed, and the campaign began. The
government sent research teams to investigate
and gather evidence. In 1929, President Herbert
Hoover signed the legislation creating Arches
National Monument, to protect the arches, spires,
balanced rocks, and other sandstone formations.
In 1971 Congress changed the status of Arches
to a National Park, recognizing over 10,000
years of cultural history that flourished in
this now famous landscape of sandstone arches
and canyons.
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