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Show Queen's Garden, she sits in dignified, dig-nified, autocratic poise, gazing upon a thousand subjects. Other famous natural sculptures are formations known as The Happy Family, complete even to a forbiddingjlooking mother-in-law; Man in a Barber's Chair; The Alligator, and Wall Street. Great natural bridges of etone, an immense im-mense cathedral and the Valley of a Thousand Castles are other conformations con-formations which exact gasps of wonderment from the onlooker. The final colorful sight in this vast area of western wonders is Cedar Breaks National Monument, 67 miles from Bryce, and comprising com-prising 6,052 acres. This great ampitheater does not have the countless figurines and spires of Bryce, tout its pink cliffs have a 2,000 foot thickness and its scale is more gigantic. Constituted of the same substance as Bryce, its rock formations have a greater variety of tints, as many as 47 different shades of color having foeen distinguished. UMMidaHIUjlmi Utah Has Attractive Scenic Spots !n Southern Canyons The historical record of a thousand million years of time is recorded in the 16,000 feet of sedimentary sedi-mentary rock exposed in Zion and Bryce Canyons, Utah and Grand Canyon, Arizona. This fact, attested by Dr. Her- i toert E. Gregory of the U.S. Geological Geolo-gical Survey, plus the breathtaking beauty of these three national parks have long made them one of the greatest tourist attractions of the west. Last year, according to the National Park Service, they were visited by nearly 600,000 vacationists va-cationists from all over America. Another fact in their popularity with summer visitors is their ease of accessibility via hard-surfaced roads, and comfortable, inexpensive inexpen-sive accomodations provided by the. Utah Parks company, a subsidiary of the Union Pacific railroad. Grand Canyon, reached from a scenic route through the mighty Kaibab forest with its towering ponderosa pines, is the most famous fa-mous of them all. This giant gorge, formed by the abrasive action of the silt an average of one million tons past any given point in 24 hours carried ty the Colorado river, is 217 miles long, from 4 to 18 miles wide and a mile deep. From the north rim, at an elevation eleva-tion of 9,100 feet, visitors get the highest view of the oldest rock formation in the world. From the great picture window of the canyon can-yon lodge a billion and a half years of geologic history is bared in a chasm of cool blues and purples mingled with rich red on the face of age-old stone. Ever since its discovery by Don Lopez de Cardenas Car-denas of Coronado's expedition, in 1540, this mighty abyss has been regarded as one of the wonders of the world. The 150 square miles of Zion National Park, 122 miles from Grand Canyon, offers a completely different, yet nearly as awe-inspiring a picture to the visitor. In the canyon itself, which is 8 miles long, one-half mile wide and more than one-half mile deep, are some of the most magnificent rock wall formations ever seen 'toy man. A cross cut of the formations reveal deposits of oceans, swamps, deserts and floods through the eons of time. The canyon begins at The Narrows Nar-rows at its north end, where the Virgin river, which caused it, flows through a 20 foot valley between be-tween walls of colored rock 2000 feet high. Falling at the rate of 50 to 70 feet to the mile, the river winds its way past unbelievable formations of rock named toy early Mormon pioneers with such titles as The Watchman, The Great White Throne, Temple of Sina-wava Sina-wava and Court of the Patriarchs. Many of these Vermillion and white cliffs tower more than two-thirds of a mile into the blue Utah sky and can toe studied either from the floor of the canyon or from their summits, accessible by many horseback trails. One of the many features of Zion is a trip through the Pine Oreek tunnel on the Zion-Mt. Carmel highway. It is toored through the face of a cliff for 5,607 feet and ventilated with six galleries or windows which afford unusual views of the rock walls opposite. The focal point of Bryce Canyon Can-yon National Park, which is 55 square miles in size and 89 miles northeast of Zion, is the canyon itself, a great horseshoe-shaped ampitheater 3 miles long and 2 miles wide. It is filled to the torim with fantastic figures cut from pink and white sandstone so that visitors would think the imagination imagina-tion of some Titanic sculptor had run riot. Domes, spires and temples -oredominate, decorated in all colors" of the spectrum, tout with reds, pinks and creams predominating. predomina-ting. There is hardly a hint of the beauty of Bryce apparent to the tourist until he steps to the rim of the canyon, where it bursts upon him with breath-taking suddenness. sud-denness. No two views of Bryce are ever the same, the colors and shapes changing constantly as the sun moves its orbit. Many of the myriad stone figures in the canyon, caused solely by erosion, are fantastically lifelike in appearance. Probably the most famous is Queen Victoria. In the center of an area known as the |
