COLOSSAL NATURAL BRIDGES OF UTAH 



THREE gigantic bridges, greatly 

 surpassing the great Natural 

 Bridge of Virginia, have re- 

 cently been discovered at the head of 

 White Canyon, in San Juan county, 

 Utah. They are described in the Cen- 

 tury Magazine for August by W. W. 

 Dyar, and the magazine also publishes 

 several photographs of them and a re- 

 markable colored picture of the largest 

 bridge. The bridges are many miles 

 from the railway, and, it is said, can be 

 reached only during the spring of the 

 year, as lack of water makes the region 

 inaccessible except during the early 

 months. In March, 1903, Mr Horace 

 J. Long, a mining engineer, conducted 

 by a cattleman named Scorup, who had 

 caught a distant glimpse of the bridges 

 in 1895 and had desired to examine 

 them ever since, entered White Canyon 

 at a point two days' march from Dandy 

 Crossing, on the Colorado River. They 

 ascended the canyon for several miles, 

 passing numerous ancient cliff dwell- 

 ings, until they had their first sight of 

 the first of the great bridges. 



' The travelers had with them no sci- 

 entific instruments for making accurate 

 measurements, but by a series of rough 

 triangulations Long obtained results 

 which are doubtless correct within nar- 

 row limits. The first bridge, which they 

 named the Caroline (in honor of Mr 

 Scorup' s wife), measures two hundred 

 and eight feet six inches from buttress 

 to buttress across the bottom of the can- 

 yon. From the surface of the water to 

 the center of the arch above is a sheer 

 height of one hundred and ninety-seven 

 feet, and over the arch at its highest 

 point the solid mass of sandstone rises 

 one hundred and twenty-five feet farther 

 to the level floor of the bridge. A trav- 

 eler crossing the canyon by this titanic 

 masonry would thus pass three hundred 

 and twenty-two feet above the bed of 

 the stream. The floor of the bridge is 



one hundred and twenty-seven feet wide, 

 so that an army could march over it in 

 columns of companies, and still leave 

 room at the side for a continuous stream 

 of artillery and baggage wagons. ' ' 



The second bridge is about 3^ miles 

 farther up the canyon. Its " height is 

 more than twice and its span more than 

 three times as great as those of the fa- 

 mous Natural Bridge of Virginia. Its 

 buttresses are 1 18 feet farther apart than 

 those of the celebrated masonry arch in 

 Maryland, known as Cabin John Bridge, 

 a few miles from Washington city, 

 which has the greatest span of any ma- 

 sonry bridge on this continent. This 

 bridge would overspan the Capitol at 

 Washington, and clear the top of the 

 dome by 51 feet ; and if the loftiest tree 

 in the Calaveras grove of giant sequoia 

 in California stood in the bottom of the 

 canyon, its topmost bough would lack 

 32 feet of reaching the underside of the 

 arch. 



" Emulating the example of Mr 

 Scorup, Long named this bridge the 

 "Augusta," in honor of his wife, and 

 it is fortunate that the lady was so ap- 

 propriately christened. 



' ' This bridge is of white or very light 

 sandstone, and, as in the case of the 

 Caroline, filaments of green and orange- 

 tinted lichens run here and there over 

 the mighty buttresses and along the 

 sheltered crevices under the lofty cor- 

 nice, giving warmth and color to the 

 wonderful picture. 



' ' Our explorers were unable to scale 

 the walls of the canyon in the immediate 

 neighborhood of either of these two 

 bridges, and their time was too limited 

 to permit an extended search for a ravine 

 or wash that would lead them to the top 

 of the cliffs." 



About 12 miles down the canyon is 

 the third bridge. " Long, in his rough 

 notes of the trip, calls this the ' Little 

 Bridge,' and we may well retain this 



