National Monuments * * * * 163 



THE NATURAL BRIDGES OF UTAH 



Three natural bridges of great size and beauty are included in the 

 Natural Bridges Monument of San Juan County, Utah, containing 2,740 

 acres. Owanchomo Bridge, the smallest of the three, has a span of 194 feet 

 and is 108 feet above the stream bed. The Caroline Bridge, three miles down 

 stream, is the most massive, having a span of 186 feet and a height of 205 feet 

 above the stream bed. A short distance away is the Augusta Bridge, the 

 largest, its span extending 261 feet and rising 222 feet above the stream bed. 

 This great natural bridge is 28 feet wide and 65 feet thick at its smallest 

 part. It is truly an enormous structure. On the Caroline Bridge are carvings 

 of the symbols of the Hopi dancers, while near by are ruins of cliff dwellings. 

 The natural bridges were formed by stream erosion which washed out the 

 canyons below them. These objects of great interest are reached by trail 

 parties, a fifty-mile trip from Blanding, Utah, on the Rio Grande Railroad 

 and on the Pikes Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway. 



DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT 



The greatest collection in the world of fossil remains of dinosaurs and 

 other prehistoric reptiles is in Dinosaur National Park in northeastern Utah. 

 In some ancient time this area was probably a sand bar, in which great 

 reptiles, floating down some prehistoric river, were mired and trapped. 

 Many species of the strange creatures who inhabited the earth in the dim 

 past were caught in these bogs. Already four hundred thousand pounds of 

 material, including bones and matrix, have been taken from the quarry, now 

 the walls of a beautiful mountain canyon. 



The greatest prize of all was a skeleton of the largest brontesaurus 

 known to science, a creature which measured one hundred feet long and 

 twenty feet high, and probably weighed twenty tons in life, so huge that be 

 side him a full-grown elephant would appear as a dog is to a horse. There 

 are thousands of other skeletons in these walls, awaiting excavation. The 

 monument is reached by motor from Jensen, Utah, on the Victory Highway, 

 or from Watson, Utah, on the narrow-guage Uintah Railroad, connecting 

 with the Denver & Rio Grande Western at Mack, Colorado. 



SCOTTS BLUFF MONUMENT 



Thousands of pioneers, headed for the Pacific over the old Oregon Trail, 

 marked their course by a great promontory known as Scotts Bluff in the 

 northern part of Nebraska. As far back as 1812, trail blazers noted this 

 point of sandstone, towering four thousand feet above the neighboring Platte 

 Valley. Hiram Scott, for whom the point was named, was one of three trap 

 pers separated from a large party that was to rendezvous by the bluff. Scott 

 was deserted by his two companions when he was stricken with mountain 

 fever. He crawled seventy miles, hoping to rejoin the larger party; but he 

 was too late. Beneath the bluff which now bears his name Scott died. His re 

 mains were found the next year. 



