Arches National Park and Golden Spike National Historic Site

Arches National Park, Moab, Utah

Delicate Arch (Photo by Hunner)

I usually write histories from documents, oral history interviews, or archaeological works, you know human stuff. At Arches NP, history begins 300 million years ago. The geological history is etched in the landscape itself where 2,000 arches exist within the park boundaries. Geological time manifests itself at the Park.

Creating the Arches

Hundreds of millions years ago, this area lay under a vast sea. Along the shores and under the waves, sand dunes existed which when buried, formed sandstone, petrified sand dunes. Oceans covered the area, then evaporated, returned, evaporated, depositing thick layers of salt seventy five million years ago. A mountain range one mile thick grew over the salt deposits. The salt flowed under the earth and uplifted some of the land so that horizontal sandstone flipped ninety degrees and became vertical ranges. Around sixty million years ago, the Colorado River eroded the upper layers of that mountain range and exposed the now vertical sandstone, which when eroded further, emerged as the fins which eroded further to make the arches. Water and wind wore down the softer stone to form dramatic landscapes, not just of arches, but also balanced rocks, pinnacles, skyscrapers of red and tan structures. Water, time, and gravity made the arches.

Sandstone fins where arches come from (Photo by Hunner)

Perhaps another powerful force played a role. When salt is hydrated, it forms crystals which exert enormous pressure on anything around it. Research in New Mexico on the effect of salt on adobe buildings shows its destructive capability. The Arches Visitors’ Center exhibit notes that “both mechanical and chemical forces attack the weaker spots and begin the process which forms arches.” Perhaps salt’s expansive forces also helped carve the landscape.

This is a dynamic process. Again from the exhibit: “What you see now is the result of millions of years of gradual change. Some of the changes have been dramatic. Mountains have come and gone. Oceans gave way to deserts. The changes occurred slowly, have not stopped, and will continue as erosional forces reshape the land.” The arches we see today might collapse under its own weight, as the Wall Arch did in 2008. Like all living things, arches die. In the words of the NPS, this is a “never ending story of deposition, uplift, collapse, and erosion.”

Hiking the Arches

I spent the Thursday before Memorial Day, the busiest weekend of the year, at the Park. Almost 1.5 million people visited it in 2015. I hiked up to Delicate Arch, a three mile roundtrip that traversed the desert landscape, across the red sandstone slick rock, and around a narrow ledge hugging a cliff. The dramatic arch rose above a basin and tottered over a cliff with the snow covered La Sal Mountains as a back drop. Delicate Arch serves as the iconic image of Utah on its license plates.

Hiking over slickrock to Delicate Arch (Photo by Hunner)

I then drove to Devil’s Garden and hiked a seven mile round trip trail past several distinctive arches, including Landscape Arch and Double O Arch. I walked past collapsed arches and nascent arches, along the yard wide top of a fin with steep drops on each side, past blue varnished cliffs, and saw an arch whose span was as long as a football field and another where a small arch lay under a larger one.

The 100 yard span of the Landscape Arch (Photo by Hunner)

The over and under Double O Arch (Photo by Hunner)

Visitors from around the world converge on Arches National Park to wander in awe through this magical landscape. Although Driven by History focuses on human history, in my travels, I can’t pass up hitting some of the stunning parks of natural beauty that are jewels in the NPS crown.

Arches National Monument, designated by President Hoover in April 1929 contained about 4500 acres. President Roosevelt expanded it to 34,000 acres, and then President Johnson doubled its side in 1968. Congress voted it a National Park in 1971 with 76,000 acres.

Golden Spike National Historic Site

The replica of No. 119 making a run past the visitors' center at Golden Spike NHS. Engineer Tom Brown is waving from the cab.  (Photo by Hunner)

Next I drove to Golden Spike NHS near Corinne, Utah. In 1869, at this place, a vast continent-wide engineering and construction effort connected the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and helped unite the nation after the Civil War. Thousands of workers graded a path 1,800 miles across prairies and mountains, laying wood ties and iron rails, and completing the first transcontinental railroad line. As you enter the visitors’ center, these words greet you: “Inscribed here, amid the sagebrush and bedrock of northern Utah is a tale of grand dreams and brute work, greed and glory.” Brute force, daring engineering, and federal financing muscled the railroad across the continent.

The driving of the golden spike on May 10, 1869 culminated almost four decades of industrial progress. The earliest railroads ran in England in the first decades of the 19th century. Soon after the railroad came to the United States, people started dreaming of a “Pacific Railroad.” Embracing such public opinion, the U.S. House of Representatives in 1850 called for a Pacific Railroad that would "cement the commercial, social, and political relations of the East and the West," as well as providing a "highway over which will pass the commerce of Europe and Asia." Railroads fueled the industrial revolution in the 19^th century.

While many voices advocated for a Pacific Railroad, some objected. Primarily, they did not support the federal government financing internal improvements; however for railroad companies to build a route over hundreds of miles, government support proved essential. With laissez-faire capitalism saying hands off to the government, some of the public did not want federal support of such a project. The transcontinental railroad changed this.

Transcontinental Railroad Route (www.ducksters.com)

Building the Pacific Railroad

In 1862, the U.S. Congress loaned $50 million to the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad companies to start construction. The Pacific Railway Act of 1864 loaned another $50 million to the railroad companies. These subsidies lent the railroads $16,000 for each mile constructed east of the Rockies and west of the Sierras, $32,000 for each mile between the mountain ranges, and $48,000 for each mile in the mountains.

The 1864 act also granted that for every mile laid, railroad companies received ten sections or ten square miles of land extending out from the main lines. As historian Richard White calculated, the Union Pacific received the square mileage of New Hampshire and New Jersey combined, while the Central Pacific’s take equaled the land mass of Maryland. In total, railroads around the country received 131,230,358 acres of land grants from the United States.

Railroad construction on the Pacific route went full throttle after the end of the Civil War. Often using military men as managers who had built or repaired railroads during the war, both companies raced to lay more track than the other to secure more government subsidies. The Central Pacific had the tougher route. Almost immediately after leaving Sacramento, the route climbed up the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and its progress was slowed as tunnels and steep switchbacks slowed their efforts. The Central Pacific only reached the top of the Sierras in July 1867 and a year later had descended the high mountains to link up with its Nevada construction. Much of the material for the Central Pacific had to come by sea around the tip of South America and then from San Francisco or Oakland by train to the rail head. With labor scarce, the Central Pacific hired 11,000 Chinese to grade the land, dynamite the cuts and tunnels, construct the bridges and culverts, lay the track, and hammer home the rails. Without the Chinese, the Central Pacific section of the Pacific Railroad would have taken at least twice as long as four years.

The meeting of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroads at Promontory Summit 

(Courtesy of http://up150.com/timeline/)

Here are some statistics from the visitors’ center exhibit: once the monumental feat of leveling a road bed by hand and draft animal was finished, it took 400 iron rails for a mile of track. A rail was secured to wooden ties by 24 spikes. Each spike took three blows to nail it in. Thus, each mile of track took 12,000 blows of a sledge hammer. Multiply this over 1,800 miles.

Another interesting part of the interpretation at Golden Spike NHS is the replicas of the two famous locomotives which met here in 1869. The Central Pacific’s Jupiter and the Union Pacific’s No. 119 operate in the summer and make short runs along the track outside of the center. The sounds of the whistle, the clacks of the wheels on the rails, the smell of the coal smoke, and the chuffing of the moving steam locomotive is a glorious experience.  

Golden Spike's Chief of Interpretation Justin Glasgow talking to the Mountain Valley Elementary School in front of No. 119
(Photo by Hunner)

Transforming the Nation

The transcontinentals transformed the role of the federal government in using public monies to support works for private gain. They also changed the way we experienced time and space. Prior to trains, people often measured time by how far one could travel in a day. Now distances that had taken months to traverse were covered in days.

Railroads also redefined space as they privileged what lands were important. Many established towns bypassed by the railroad withered while nearby newly created towns blessed by a station thrived. Finally, lands distant from markets now were connected to regional and even national and international businesses and customers. The railroads enabled farmers, miners, lumbermen, and other producers to send their goods across vast distances to markets.

As Justin Glasgow, Chief of Interpretation at Golden Spike mentioned, this spot transformed the U.S. from a regional economy into a world power. Justin also added that railroads ignited the protest movements at the end of the 19^th century. In reaction to the monopolies and high transportation costs of the railroads, discontent farmers organized the Populist Reform movement which eventually led to Progressivism at the beginning of the 20^th century. Justin concluded that railroad culture and language are still with us. For example, the national time zones we use today came about in 1883 to facilitate the railroads’ moving goods and people quickly across our vast lands.

The Golden Spike NHS preserves the monumental effort of a nation reeling from the Civil War to reinvent itself as a united country again. Tying together the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts and the lands in between, putting its industrial might to work, and building what many considered impossible, the transcontinental railroad that joined at Promontory Summit in 1869 transformed the United States perhaps as much as the Civil War. The Golden Spike NHS was created in 1965.

Visitors can auto tour and hike some of the old cuts leading up to Promontory Summit. While hiking out to the Big Fill several miles east of the headquarters, I encountered a rattlesnake near the sign below. we both quickly went our own ways.

Roadbed to UP's Big Trestle over Spring Creek Ravine. Central Pacific's Big FIll of the ravine off to the left. Sign on right is where I spooked the rattlesnake. (Photo by Hunner)

Next on the Driven by History road trip, I will visit Minidoka NHS where Japanese American citizens were imprisoned during World War II. What’s your favorite Park? Please let me know.