Cedar Mesa: Southeast Utah’s Wonderland

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Most of far southeast Utah is covered by a large mesa, Cedar Mesa.

Early pioneers mistook the juniper trees that cover it for cedars.

The mesa gets much less notice that the National Parks to the north and west, because on first glance it’s less scenic.

For those willing to explore, it contains numerous memorable sights.

Edge of the Cedars State Park

I began my time here at Edge of the Cedars State Park.

Like ‘Capitol Reef’, it’s confusingly named.

The park actually contains the ruins of a small pueblo, plus an incredible history museum.

Cedar Mesa contains one of the highest concentrations of ancient puebloan ruins in the southwest, enough to make the collection at Mesa Verde (see Ancient Civilization) look small by comparison.

The major sites, like most in the southwest, were first rediscovered by Richard Wetherill, the archeologist and professional artifact looter who started at Mesa Verde.

Edge of the Cedars exists in part due to his successors; when the state successfully prosecutes someone for looting, the confiscated artifacts end up at the park museum.

Together, they tell a remarkable story of area history.





Archeologists identify a given culture mainly through ruins and pottery.

These items tend to be the best preserved.

Every culture had its own distinct pottery style.

The displays cover many of them, with samples from each.

Ruins are identified by the architecture style and masonry.

Diagonal doorways, for example, are a dead giveaway that the pueblo was founded by migrants from Chaco Canyon (see Rocky Mountain Highs).





Ancient tribes left behind far more remains than just those two.

The dry air preserves many things out in the desert that are found intact nowhere else.

The museum has a display on the evolution of moccasins with samples.

It has an incredible blanket covered in turkey feathers.

One corner holds the remains of an ancient loom, a near copy of the modern version in the Pueblo Cultural Center (see New Mexico history is US history).





One wall holds a set of ancient baskets.

Fiber normally disintegrates quickly, so they are very rare.

The display notes that they were confiscated from Earl Shumway, the most notorious looter to ever work in Utah.

He openly boasted of his activities, and of carrying a gun to “take care of” any rangers he encountered.

State authorities finally convicted him in 1995 after he dropped a single cigarette butt while working, tying him conclusively to a particular crime.

Archeologists have no idea which culture made the baskets, since their looting erased any record.





A climate controlled room holds what may be the most precious artifact in the museum, the ladder from Perfect Kiva.

As noted back in Mesa Verde, ancient puebloans worshiped in kivas, round rooms in the ground.

They entered through a center hole in the roof.

Nearly all known kivas are missing their roofs, so archeologists had no idea how.

They got their answer when an intact kiva was discovered deep in a canyon in Cedar Mesa, Perfect Kiva.

Residents entered by ladders, made by binding logs together with thin wooden straps.





Part of the museum discusses rock art.

A long timeline shows the evolution of different styles, and what makes each one distinct.

The display sits next to a stairwell whose walls contain copies of many famous petroglyphs, including the Holy Ghost from Horseshoe Canyon (see Indiana Jones Meets Southern Utah).

They were painted by local artist Joe Pachak.





One section discusses pueblo religion.

It’s deeply tied to the crop growing cycle.

The ceremonial year is divided into two periods roughly split by the spring and autumn equinoxes, summer for growing crops and winter for everything else.

Some pueblos had separate sets of religious leaders for each period.

Ceremonies had an obsessive focus on bringing rain, the giver of life in a dry desert.





The last part discusses why the pueblos were abandoned and where people went.

Like Mesa Verde, it states that people ultimately moved for a number of reasons, mainly a combination of resource depletion and drought.

This continued a long standing pattern.

Most pueblo descendents ultimately moved to the valley of the Rio Grande, which had more reliable water.





Every visitor to the southwest ultimately encounters the figure of a flute player, Kokopelli.

He is found everywhere, usually on some piece of tourist kitsch.

The museum has a temporary exhibit on the real legend behind it.

The figure shows up in several sets of pueblo myths as a wandering trader.

The part left out of the kitsch version is that he is also a potent fertility figure, and a model of bad behavior.

To the Hopi, he represents an evil spirit who seduces young women with his flute and then ravages them.





Another exhibit is aimed directly at people who hike the area regularly.

Cedar Mesa has so many ancient sites local residents have a century long tradition of casually collecting artifacts.

Some of them go much further, looting artifacts for profit.

Both destroy a valuable archeological record.

The exhibit discusses people who found artifacts and then called the state instead of looting them.

The panels discuss what archeologists ultimately learned from finding something in its original place.

One of the artifacts, found deep in a Cedar Mesa canyon, is the oldest farming tool ever found in Utah, basically some sharpened sticks bound together with twine.





The pueblo that gave the state park its name sits behind the museum.

It’s very small, and most is buried underground for protection.

It has the now familiar design of buildings around a plaza.

One part holds a restored kiva, which is square instead of the round ones seen at Mesa Verde.

Visitors need to stay on the paved walkways to prevent damage, so the pueblo has the following signs: “Please respect the rattlesnakes’ privacy; stay on the trail”.





The trail ends at a large concrete spiral on two walls.

It’s a sculpture called the Solar Marker by Joe Pachak.

Close up, cutouts and petroglyphs appear on the walls.

Ancient pueblo societies determined the time for planting and religious rituals by following the path of the sun.

Cracks in rocks were lined up with petroglyphs on walls, and the resulting shadows indicated the times for different events.

The Solar Marker is a modern version of the same concept.

A signboard near the sculpture shows many of the events for this sculpture, such as a dagger of light hitting the center of a spiral figure on the summer solstice.





Heading south from Blanding, the road reaches the Bicentennial Highway, one of only two paved roads across Cedar Mesa.

It got the name because it was only paved in 1976.

The early part crosses desert scrub and a few canyons.

It then enters an area of white slickrock mounds.

That leads to a long slope of slickrock, which the highway passes through an artificial cut.

The back side reveals that the slope is really a fold, Comb Ridge, one of the long cliffs that early settlers called a reef (see Incredible Foliage and a Big Red Fold).

Like the Waterpocket Fold, the view from the cliffs side is fantastic.

Soon afterward, the highway reaches flatland covered in desert scrub, the heart of the mesa.

Natural Bridges National Monument

Cedar Mesa contains an unbelievable number of canyons.

Natural Bridges National Monument protects a small portion of one of them, White Canyon.

The monument holds the highest concentration of natural bridges in the United States.

It has three of them.

Yes, three.

Arches National Park (see Large Rocks With Holes), by contrast, contains over two thousand arches.





A small museum at the entrance talks about the geology of the area.

A natural bridge must span a watercourse, and is eroded by that water.

A natural arch or window, by contrast, is just a hole in a rock eroded by rain and ice.

Natural bridges occur all over the planet, but in small numbers in any one place, while natural arches only occur in certain areas, but in huge numbers within those areas.

Finding three bridges within a small area is truly astonishing.





Streams erode bridges for many reasons.

All three in this park were eroded to cut off meanders.

When flowing across the sandstone tens of thousands of years ago, the streams encountered some obstacles, and flowed around them.

As the canyons deepened, these became long loops.

If the rock inside the loop is soft enough, the force of the water flowing on the curves will create alcoves.

If the alcoves break through the rock, the stream then flows through, creating the bridge.

One nice effect of this process is that geologists can estimate the age of the bridge by comparing the depth of the canyon to the depth of the cut off loop.





The visitors’ center sits next to something precious, a faucet marked “Drinking Water Only”.

My guidebook points out that the water comes from a well drilled over an eighth of a mile down, one of the deepest in Utah.





A loop road follows the canyon to all three bridges.

From the rim it looks like a deep canyon of white sandstone with really steep walls.

Bits of green poke up in places, trees along the creek.

The creek itself, like most on the mesa, is dry.





The road reaches an overlook at the head of a large sandstone bowl, a short side canyon.

In the distance appears a large sandstone cylinder, the cut-off meander.

A thick slab of sandstone runs from the cylinder to the far canyon wall, with obvious trees beneath it.

This is Sipapu Bridge, the second largest natural bridge in the world.

Its remarkably thick, and middle aged geologically speaking.





A steep trail leads from the roadway to the base of the bridge.

The path first crosses slickrock with a view of the canyon.

It reaches the rim above the meander and then descends metal ladders to a rock shelf.

The shelf loops around the meander to an overlook with an absolutely fantastic view of the bridge close up.

Along the way, it gives some good views of the meander itself.

The floor is considerably higher than the canyon floor, showing the age of the bridge.

For some reason, the thick stone cylinder and bridge reminded me of a hand-cranked coffee grinder.





After the overlook, the path descends steeply through thick bushes.

Like Cave Spring in the Canyonlands, the shade of the canyon creates a cooler environment for vegetation to grow.

The trail passes through several switchbacks, ultimately arriving at the point where the meander joins the main canyon.

The first fantastic view of the bridge with blue sky underneath it appears at this point.





After the junction, the path turns to open slickrock and gets very steep.

The trail drops through steps blasted into the side of the canyon, aided by railings.

That leads to a very narrow rock shelf protected by another railing, which heads for the bridge.

Two steep ladders brought me to the floor of the canyon itself.

It’s covered in trees, a huge contrast to the environment above.

The path then crosses the dry wash and ends directly under the bridge.

From underneath, the size is even more impressive than from above; Sipapu has the unusual combination of a thick top over a large opening.





Climbing back out of the canyon is much harder than descending.

The trail is steep, fairly exposed, and at high altitude.

These facts are easier to ignore on the way down, where gravity aids the descent.

The view, thankfully, is still fantastic.





The next bridge, Kachina Bridge, is located a distance from the highway.

A well marked trail heads a short distance over the sandstone to an obvious overlook.

The bridge occurs where two canyons join together.

Both make S curves right before the junction.

In one canyon, the stream ultimately broke through to form the bridge, while the other did not.





Thanks to the layout, the bridge is not immediately obvious.

Careful looking finally shows a hole in the sandstone with trees in it.

Kachina is two thirds the size of Sipapu.

The meander is nearly the same depth as the canyon, indicating that the bridge is young geologically.

Kachina is the least interesting of the three bridges, so I skipped the descent to the base.





The road finally passes Owachomo Bridge, the third largest natural bridge in the world and possibly the oldest.

It’s so old that the main stream has cut-off multiple meanders, leaving the bridge crossing a side stream with abandoned meanders on either side.





From the overlook, the bridge is not that impressive.

It’s very long and incredibly thin, with an enormous hole underneath it.

That hole shows so much of the canyon behind it that the bridge does not initially stick out from the surrounding landscape.

A trail leads into the side canyon, where the bridge looks much better.

The trail is short and not that steep, so it’s much more popular than the other two.





The trail, for the most part, crosses slickrock, marked by rocks and wooden fences.

Along the way, it passes the most dramatic demonstration of the importance of cyrobiotic crust I have ever seen.

A gentle sandstone slope is covered in an inch of soil and then the distinctive dark mounds of the crust.

A stream has washed out the soil where the crust is absent, leaving a rut down to the rock.

Step on the crust, and the entire slope will just wash away.





The trail finally reaches the bottom of the side canyon.

From here, the bridge now dominates the view.

Blue sky shows through it, showing the incredible size.

The hole is huge.

Owachomo is the bridge version of Landscape Arch, a very long, very thin, and very old ribbon of stone that may collapse at any moment.

The trail ends right underneath it.



I drove south after seeing Natural Bridges National Monument.

The highway crosses Cedar Mesa.

No canyons appear along the way, so it’s flat, covered in bushes, and utterly unremarkable.

The view never changes for quite some time.

Why, then, does this highway have multiple warning signs of a dangerous gravel roadway with incredibly tight switchbacks and steep grades?

I had my answer when I reached the edge of the mesa and the road apparently disappears.

The view shows a vast desert plain far below leading to mountains in the distance, with no way down.

Muley Point

A tiny sign sits at the edge pointing to a road on the right, reading “Muley Point”.

Knowledgeable visitors know to follow it.

The road follows the edge of the mesa westward.

The dirt road is deeply rutted, otherwise it’s in great condition for Utah.

It passes a viewpoint on the left and then reaches an area of gravel and rocky ledges.

The ledges must be crossed carefully, because they can hit and break something on the car bottom.

That leads to a flat area in front of some sandstone outcrops with a view of mountains beyond.





The outcrops are Muley Point, on the southwest corner of Cedar Mesa.

Hiking over the sandstone reveals the full view, one of the vastest available in the United States.

It covers hundreds of square miles of land.

The central portion is a large flat desert with a deep twisting canyon in the middle, the San Juan River.

A long mountain shaped like a person sleeping on their back appears on the far left, Sleeping Ute Mountain in southwest Colorado (see Old Traditions in a Modern World).

Near it is a barely visible pyramid shaped peak, Shiprock in New Mexico (see Rocky Mountain Highs).

Near it in the far distance is a row of peaks, the Carrizo Mountains in northeast Arizona.

A long ridge appears to the south, the backside of Black Mesa.

A set of narrow red spires appears to its right on the horizon, the famous buttes of Monument Valley.

Finally, a set of cliffs appears on far right, the Red Rock Plateau above Glen Canyon.

Every visitor to the southwest hears about the Four Corners Monument, the overcommercialized location where four states meet.

Muley Point is the other location to see landmarks in all four states simultaneously.

Moki Dugway

Back at the main road, I still need some way down the mesa.

My answer is a thrilling and terrifying piece of highway engineering called the Moki Dugway.

In the 1950s, uranium prospectors found a large deposit on the mesa.

They needed to get the ore to the nearest town that could process it.

To do so, they blasted an incredibly steep and narrow set of switchbacks down the side of the mesa.

They are still in use.

The path is one lane of gravel with pullouts, through some of the tightest U turns ever made.

Naturally, it has no guardrails.

The pullouts, for those calm enough to stop and look, feature fantastic views.





I did the entire drive in second gear.

My guidebook calls it the most memorable curved road in the United States.

It was thrilling, although after such nasty routes as the Old Coast Road (see California Coast and Open Road), Stevens Canyon (see The Great Mountain), and Hells Backbone (see Incredible Foliage and a Big Red Fold) I’m getting used to thrills like this.

(LATE UPDATE)

Watch it from the cab of a semi!

Goosenecks State Park

The environment changes completely at the foot of the mesa.

The desert and the mesa are both mostly flat, but the comparison ends there.

The lowland has no trees, and relatively few bushes.

Cedar Mesa towers above as a huge reddish rock wall.





Once again paved, the road continues south.

A side road branches right, with a sign for Goosenecks State Park.

It ends at a parking lot on the edge of a canyon.

The entire park consists of essentially a single overlook next to the parking lot, but that is all it needs.

The view shows a deep canyon, twisting back and forth like a snake through the flat desert plain.

Seven separate horseshoe curves are visible.

As guidebooks love to point out, the park shows nearly five miles of the San Juan River, in a view less than a mile wide.

These are entrenched meanders, also called goosenecks, the most dramatic example of the phenomenon in the world.





The San Juan River originally flowed over a flat plain, twisting back and forth in long curves.

The path moved constantly as the river current eroded the soil.

The land then tilted and rose, which made the river flow faster.

It started cutting downward, making its existing channel deeper.

The river ultimately carved a deep canyon following its original twisting course.

It was not able to cut through the canyon walls to form bridges because the rock is too dense to erode from the sides.





I spent the night in the town of Mexican Hat, which I chose mostly for convenience.

It’s located west of the goosenecks where the land drops to the San Juan River making a crossing possible.

The town consists of less than ten buildings, three of which are hotels.

Two of them sit on the riverbank.

Only one restaurant was still open this time of year; the food was tolerable.

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Photos

Sipapu Bridge
The world's second largest natural bridge. I took this from the highway overlook with camera zoom

Ancient pueblo pottery
Pueblo pottery organized by culture at Edge of the Cedars Museum

Turkey feather blanket
Ancient pueblo blanket made of turkey feathers. The rarity of an item like this found intact can not be overstated.

Perfect Kiva ladder
The ladder from Perfect Kiva, the only intact ancient kiva ladder in existence

Pueblo ruins
Portion of the pueblo ruins at Edge of the Cedars

Solar Marker
A modern version of an ancient solar observatory. Note the shadows on the upper portion

Comb Ridge
A portion of a hundred mile fold

Sipapu Bridge
The world's second largest natural bridge, from the trail to the base

Sipapu trail
The steep climb from the base of Sipapu Bridge

Kachina Bridge
The smallest of the three bridges in the canyon

Cryrobiotic Crust
Step on the black mounds, and it will become the bare wash between them. The crust holds the soil together.

Owachomo Bridge
The third largest natural bridge in the world, and likely the oldest

Muley Point looking east
Edge of Cedar Mesa with Sleeping Ute Mountain in the far distance

Muley Point looking south
The canyons of the San Juan River, Mexican Hat, and Black Mesa in the distance looking south from Muley Point

Muley Point looking southwest
The buttes of Monument Valley looking southwest from Muley Point with camera zoom.

Insane driving
The Moki Dugway down Cedar Mesa is just as tough as it looks.

Moki Dugway switchback
One of the easier U turns on the Moki Dugway

Goosenecks
Three entrenched meanders (out of seven) of the San Juan River visible from a single overlook