Goblin Valley State Park | |
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IUCN category V (protected landscape/seascape) | |
![]() Hoodoos in Goblin Valley | |
Location | Emery, Utah, United States |
Nearest town | Hanksville, Utah |
Coordinates | 38°34′00″N110°42′36″W / 38.56667°N 110.71000°W |
Area | 9,915 acres (40.12 km2) [1] |
Established | August 24, 1964 |
Visitors | 268,760(in 2017–2018 FY) [2] |
Operator | Utah State Parks |
Website | Official website |
Goblin Valley State Park is a state park of Utah, in the United States. The park features thousands of hoodoos, referred to locally as goblins, [3] which are formations of mushroom-shaped rock pinnacles, some as tall as several yards (meters). The distinct shapes of these rocks result from an erosion-resistant layer of rock atop relatively softer sandstone. Goblin Valley State Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, also in Utah about 190 miles (310 km) to the southwest, contain some of the largest occurrences of hoodoos in the world.
The park lies within the San Rafael Desert on the southeastern edge of the San Rafael Swell, north of the Henry Mountains. Utah State Route 24 passes about four miles (6.4 km) east of the park. Hanksville lies 12 miles (19 km) to the south. [4] [5]
Evidence of Native American cultures, including the Fremont, Paiute, and Ute, is common throughout the San Rafael Swell in the form of pictograph and petroglyph panels. Goblin Valley is noted for several rock art panels, as well as the rock formations. [6] The secluded Goblin Valley was then found by cowboys searching for cattle. Then, in the late 1920s, Arthur Chaffin, later owner/operator of the Hite Ferry, and two companions, were searching for an alternate route between Green River and Caineville. They came to a vantage point about 1 mile (1.6 km) west of Goblin Valley and were awed by what they saw – five buttes and a valley of strange, goblin-shaped rock formations surrounded by a wall of eroded cliffs. In 1949, Chaffin returned to the area he called the Valley of the Mushrooms. He spent several days exploring the mysterious valley and photographing its scores of intricately eroded rocks. [7]
Publicity attracted visitors to the valley despite its remoteness. In 1954, it was proposed that Goblin Valley be protected from vandalism. The state of Utah later acquired the property and established Goblin Valley State Reserve. It was officially designated a state park on August 24, 1964. [8] In 2019, the state park was expanded by adding 6,261 acres of federal land. [9]
In October 2013, a delicately balanced hoodoo was intentionally knocked over by a Boy Scout leader while two other men watched, one of whom recorded a video that was later uploaded to the Internet. [10] The men claimed that the hoodoo appeared ready to fall, and that it was intentionally knocked over to prevent park visitors from being hurt. [11] The hoodoo formation had existed for many millions of years, having formed out of rock that dated back as far as 165 million years. [3] [11] The average rate of erosion of a hoodoo is approximately 2–4 feet (0.6-1.3 m) every 100 years. [12]
The two leaders, Glenn Taylor and David Hall, were subsequently dismissed from their leadership roles by the Utah National Parks Council, which is a local council of the Boy Scouts in Utah. The national Boy Scouts then removed the men from the scouting organization altogether. [13] In January 2014, two of the men—the one who toppled the hoodoo and the cameraman—were arraigned on felony charges of "criminal mischief" and "intentionally damaging, defacing and destroying property." [14] The two men pleaded guilty to lesser charges of criminal mischief and attempted criminal mischief, and received a sentence of one year probation plus fines and case-related fees. [15]
The flora of Goblin Valley include Mormon tea, Russian thistle, Indian ricegrass, and various cacti, as well as junipers and pinyon pines at higher elevations. [8]
Fauna include jackrabbits, scorpions, kangaroo rats, pronghorns, kit foxes, midget faded rattlesnakes, and coyotes. [8]
The unusual stone shapes in Goblin Valley result from the weathering of Entrada sandstone. The Entrada consists of debris eroded from former highlands and redeposited on a former tidal flat of alternating layers of sandstone, siltstone, and shale. The rocks show evidence of being near the margins of an ancient sea with the ebb and flow of tides, tidal channels that directed currents back to the sea and coastal sand dunes.
Joint or fracture patterns within the Entrada sandstone beds created initial zones of weakness. The unweathered joints intersected to form sharp edges and corners with greater surface-area-to-volume ratios than the faces. As a result, the edges and corners weathered more quickly, producing the spherical-shaped 'goblins'.
The Entrada sandstone from which the hoodoos developed was deposited in the Jurassic period around 170 million years ago. [16]
Average daytime highs in the summer average between 90 and 105 °F (32 and 41 °C), though the low humidity, high elevation, and sparse vegetation allow evenings to cool off rapidly to about 50 °F (10 °C). Also, the intermittent summer monsoon arriving from the south can bring intense and localized thunderstorms. The rugged terrain and intense rainfall can lead to devastating flash floods, while the low humidity combined with gusty winds and frequent lightning can spark wildfires. Winters have colder temperatures and occasional snow, with temperatures above freezing most days, but often dropping as low as 10 °F (−12 °C) at night. The average precipitation is less than 8 inches (20 cm).
Goblin Valley was prominently featured in the movie Galaxy Quest (1999) as an alien planet. The eroded sandstone dunes in the valley inspired the design of the fictional planet’s rock monsters. [17]
Bryce Canyon National Park is an American national park located in southwestern Utah. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rock. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views for park visitors. Bryce Canyon National Park is much smaller and sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park. The rim at Bryce varies from 8,000 to 9,000 feet.
A natural arch, natural bridge, or rock arch is a natural landform where an arch has formed with an opening underneath. Natural arches commonly form where inland cliffs, coastal cliffs, fins or stacks are subject to erosion from the sea, rivers or weathering.
Badlands are a type of dry terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded. They are characterized by steep slopes, minimal vegetation, lack of a substantial regolith, and high drainage density. Ravines, gullies, buttes, hoodoos and other such geologic forms are common in badlands.
The Entrada Sandstone is a formation in the San Rafael Group found in the U.S. states of Wyoming, Colorado, northwest New Mexico, northeast Arizona, and southeast Utah. Part of the Colorado Plateau, this formation was deposited during the Jurassic Period sometime between 180 and 140 million years ago in various environments, including tidal mudflats, beaches, and sand dunes. The Middle Jurassic San Rafael Group was dominantly deposited as ergs in a desert environment around the shallow Sundance Sea.
In geomorphology, a butte is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and tablelands. The word butte comes from the French word butte, meaning knoll ; its use is prevalent in the Western United States, including the southwest where mesa is used for the larger landform. Due to their distinctive shapes, buttes are frequently landmarks in plains and mountainous areas. To differentiate the two landforms, geographers use the rule of thumb that a mesa has a top that is wider than its height, while a butte has a top that is narrower than its height.
The exposed geology of the Bryce Canyon area in Utah shows a record of deposition that covers the last part of the Cretaceous Period and the first half of the Cenozoic era in that part of North America. The ancient depositional environment of the region around what is now Bryce Canyon National Park varied from the warm shallow sea in which the Dakota Sandstone and the Tropic Shale were deposited to the cool streams and lakes that contributed sediment to the colorful Claron Formation that dominates the park's amphitheaters.
The Colorado Plateau, also known as the Colorado Plateau Province, is a physiographic and desert region of the Intermontane Plateaus, roughly centered on the Four Corners region of the southwestern United States. This province covers an area of 336,700 km2 (130,000 mi2) within western Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, southern and eastern Utah, northern Arizona, and a tiny fraction in the extreme southeast of Nevada. About 90% of the area is drained by the Colorado River and its main tributaries: the Green, San Juan, and Little Colorado. Most of the remainder of the plateau is drained by the Rio Grande and its tributaries.
A hoodoo is a tall, thin spire of rock formed by erosion. Hoodoos typically consist of relatively soft rock topped by harder, less easily eroded stone that protects each column from the elements. They generally form within sedimentary rock and volcanic rock formations.
The San Rafael Swell is a large geologic feature located in south-central Utah, United States about 16 miles (26 km) west of Green River. The San Rafael Swell, measuring approximately 75 by 40 miles, consists of a giant dome-shaped anticline of sandstone, shale, and limestone that was pushed up during the Paleocene Laramide Orogeny 60–40 million years ago. Since that time, infrequent but powerful flash floods have eroded the sedimentary rocks into numerous valleys, canyons, gorges, mesas, buttes, and badlands.
The exposed geology of the Canyonlands area is complex and diverse; 12 formations are exposed in Canyonlands National Park that range in age from Pennsylvanian to Cretaceous. The oldest and perhaps most interesting was created from evaporites deposited from evaporating seawater. Various fossil-rich limestones, sandstones, and shales were deposited by advancing and retreating warm shallow seas through much of the remaining Paleozoic.
The exposed geology of the Capitol Reef area presents a record of mostly Mesozoic-aged sedimentation in an area of North America in and around Capitol Reef National Park, on the Colorado Plateau in southeastern Utah.
A mushroom rock, also called rock pedestal, or a pedestal rock, is a naturally occurring rock whose shape, as its name implies, resembles a mushroom. The rocks are deformed in a number of different ways: by erosion and weathering, glacial action, or from a sudden disturbance. Mushroom rocks are related to, but different from, yardang.
Hanksville is a small town in Wayne County, Utah, United States, at the junction of State Routes 24 and 95. The population was 219 at the 2010 census.
Arches National Park is a national park in eastern Utah, United States. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, 4 mi (6 km) north of Moab, Utah. More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches are located in the park, including the well-known Delicate Arch, as well as a variety of unique geological resources and formations. The park contains the highest density of natural arches in the world.
The Summerville Formation is a geological formation in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah of the Southwestern United States. It dates back to the Oxfordian stage of the Late Jurassic.
The Devils Garden of the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument (GSENM) in south central Utah, United States, is a protected area featuring hoodoos, natural arches and other sandstone formations. The area is also known as the Devils Garden Outstanding Natural Area within the National Landscape Conservation System.
A fin is a geological formation that is a narrow, residual wall of hard sedimentary rock that remains standing after surrounding rock has been eroded away along parallel joints or fractures. Fins are formed when a narrow butte or plateau develops many vertical, parallel cracks. There are two main modes of following erosion. The first is when water flows along joints and fractures and opens them wider and wider, eventually causing erosion. The second is where the rock type (stratum) is harder and more erosion resistant than neighboring rocks, causing the weaker rock to fall away.
The bedrock under the U.S. State of Colorado was assembled from island arcs accreted onto the edge of the ancient Wyoming Craton. The Sonoma orogeny uplifted the ancestral Rocky Mountains in parallel with the diversification of multicellular life. Shallow seas covered the regions, followed by the uplift current Rocky Mountains and intense volcanic activity. Colorado has thick sedimentary sequences with oil, gas and coal deposits, as well as base metals and other minerals.
Wild Horse Butte is a 5,760-foot (1,756-meter) elevation summit located in Goblin Valley State Park, in Emery County, Utah. Wild Horse Butte is situated 2.3 mi (3.7 km) west of Mollys Castle, and the top of this geological feature rises over 800 feet above its surrounding terrain, with precipitation runoff from Wild Horse Butte entering the Colorado River drainage basin. John C. Frémont's fifth expedition (1853–1854) stopped at Wild Horse Butte in January 1854, when Solomon Nunes Carvalho recorded a daguerreotype image of this butte.
Mollys Castle is a remote 5,265-foot (1,605-meter) elevation summit located near Goblin Valley State Park, in Emery County, Utah. Mollys Castle is situated 2.3 mi (3.7 km) east of Wild Horse Butte, and one-half mile outside the park's east boundary. The top of this magnificent butte rises 265 feet above its surrounding terrain. Precipitation runoff from Mollys Castle enters the Colorado River drainage basin.
fiscal year from July 2017 to June 2018
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