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Show jitol Reef National Park Vl I Must Fcr Area Vacationers Capitol ' Reef Niioal Park i TWf'quarters, although actually lo-lliijjin lo-lliijjin Wayne County, is easily I Ifi' feasible from Garfield County via Villi Boulder Mountain road, in its . 11 stage of completion and suit-m suit-m ) for travel for all vehicles. hie traveler can save more than piles of travel and see some of Ss finest an(J most spectacular mery on earth by traveling this -w route connecting Bryce Afjjj nyon, Capitol Reef and Canyon-jj Canyon-jj ds National Park. The park is also accessible from Burr Trail, an improved dirt road Ol Itj of Boulder. It is suitable for scnger vehicles in good weather y)ornj..: not recommended for those with ,ilers. It traverses the park's in-ce in-ce 1 tdible "Waterpocket Fold" C'igh some of the world's most es ;-kable scenery and leads to ibis Prog Marina at Lake Powell. 7 p The Navajo Indians called the rk the "Land of the Sleeping "linbow" a strange but beautiful uniry where colors of the rainbow ANTE n be seen in the many rock lay-' lay-' CE!5. Today, 378-square-milc Capitol Qi-xf National Park, one of Utah's k naiional parks, is located in the rt of "Canyon Country" on state ghway U-24, about halfway be-feccn be-feccn Canyonlands and Bryce inyon National Parks. - Capitol Reef was so rugged and 1 mote that it was left almost disturbed by white settlers until J late 1800s. It was very much an ocean reef around a tropical and very difficult and dangerous to cross. As a matter of fact, that's how Capitol Reef got its name. It too was a barrier to travel and had large white sandstone domes that looked like the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. The first white explorers found Paiutc Indians hunting in the nearby mountains during summer months, and following game animals ani-mals down to lower, warmer valleys val-leys during the winter. The Paiutes, however, were not the first inhabitants inhabi-tants of Capitol Reef. Earlier, the Fremont Indians lived in rock shelters shel-ters and farmed the river valleys from 800 A.D. to 1200 A.D. These early settlers of Capitol Reef left rock carvings and picture writing (petroglyphs) that are difficult to understand clearly. In the late 1700s, Father Es-calante, Es-calante, a Spanish explorer, passed 50 miles west of Capitol Reef. Later, Colonel John C. Fremont, on his last western expedition in the fall and winter of 1853-54, explored ex-plored the region north of the Colorado Col-orado River. By 1866, Mormon settlers had begun to occupy land to the west of Capitol Reef. Their knowledge of Capitol Reef no doubt increased when Captain James Andrus of St. George, Ut., led a posse into the Capitol Reef area looking for Indian raiders. The first white pioneer families established homes along the Fremont Fre-mont River near Capitol Reef in the 1880s. Long droughts, frequent flooding, wind, cold, insects and lonely isolation would severely test the hardy Mormon colonists. Lry ' ' ' - r i i t Escalante UUP Museum . . -'- r - -x J; The tilted layers of the Waterpocket Fold are seen clearly in this aerial photo looking from the Burr Trail Vicinity to Lake Powell and Na- j vajo Mountain in the background. |
