Arches National Park

Arches National Park, established as a national park in 1971 near Moab in eastern Utah, protects the greatest concentration of natural stone arches in the world — more than 2,000 of them, from small openings to soaring spans like the famous Delicate Arch, an icon of the state. Set on the Colorado Plateau, the park is a wonderland of red sandstone fins, balanced rocks, pinnacles, and the graceful arches that give it its name.

The arches form where a layer of salt deep underground bends and cracks the sandstone above into long parallel walls, or fins, which then erode and collapse in just the right way to leave a freestanding span. The process is ongoing — arches occasionally fall, and new ones slowly emerge. The intense red rock, sculpted into improbable shapes against a deep blue desert sky, draws more than a million and a half visitors a year.

• Utah
  The Beehive State, red rock and the Great Salt Lake located in
• The Colorado Plateau
  The high red-rock heart of the Southwest part of